Asia's Tech News, Weekly: April 5th 2025
Australian quantum tech, Taiwan's 2nm jobs boost, South Korea's Digital Won, China's space roadmap, Qualcomm acquired Vietnam genAI firm, NUS Enterprise expands in Japan, PNG trials Facebook ban...
• Taiwan: TSMC's new 2nm-focused fabrication plant in Kaohsiung is projected to create 7000 new technology jobs for the country / full item
• New Zealand: Government is investing NZ$60M to explore 'supercritical' geothermal energy, potentially delivering three to seven times more energy for conversion to electricity / full item
• India: Reytm chips firm has raised $75M to further develop networking chips for AI-driven computing in data centres, focusing on streamlining connectivity bottlenecks / full item
• North Korea: Kim Jong Un orders establishment of 'Research Center 227' under the military’s Reconnaissance General Bureau to develop international cyber hacking technologies / full item
• South Korea: 7-Eleven convenience store giant has announced that all South Korean branches will accept the nation's Digital Won CBDC as payment from June / full item
• China’s PLA is using DeepSeek AI for non-combat support. Will actual combat be next?': "The article also used an amphibious-landing scenario to illustrate how DeepSeek could dynamically adjust..." / full item
"The big difference in 2025 is that Huawei is building out a much broader income base. Its digital energy business, which provides solutions for power grids and EVs, was worth RMB69 billion ($9.5 billion) – up 24% – while cloud revenue grew 8.5% to..." / full item
• Taiwan's MediaTek leads $10M seed round in Egypt's InfiniLink semiconductors firm, seeing promise in InfiniLink's silicon photonics chiplets for data centres / full item
• China: Zhipu AI launches a free AI agent, AutoGLM Rumination, intensifying the domestic AI tech race / full item
• Australia: DeteQt 'quantum sensing' firm raised $750K pre-seed funding to commercialize diamond-on-silicon quantum magnetometer technology / full item
• Taiwan's UMC semiconductor firm announces new fabrication facility for Singapore, looking at up to $5 billion phase 1 investment, with the possibility of phase 2 expansion / full item
• China: Newly-released mission roadmap shows long-term deep space strategy built around planetary habitability and the search for extraterrestrial life / full item
• India's KABIL partners Coal India, Oil India and ONGC Videsh in bid to gain 20% stake in Australia's SQM's Mount Holland and Andover lithium projects / full item
• Japan: Space agency and partner firm commence work on Mars landing spacecraft using inflatable decelerators / full item
• Papua New Guinea government trialled shutting down Facebook in what it describes as a 'test' to mitigate hate speech, misinformation, pornography and 'other detrimental content' / full item
• Australia: CommBank has opened a Tech Hub in Seattle to advance the bank's technologies across efficiency and customer service / full item
• Vietnam: VinAI generative artificial intelligence startup has been acquired by Qualcomm, boosting R&D capabilities / full item
• Thailand: An intro to OsseoLabs, using 3D printing, AI-driven automation, and biocompatible materials to create customized medical implants / full item
• Singapore: Singapore’s Defence Science and Technology Agency partners Oracle to pilot and test an air-gapped cloud platform / full item
"...ChatGPT sparked a government-driven data center construction boom in China. More than 500 city and provincial-level projects have been announced, but now the economics are in freefall and investment has dried up." / full item
• Taiwan's United Microelectronics and US' GlobalFoundries are reportedly mulling a merger, resulting in a larger US-based firm with manufacturing in Asia, the US and Europe / full item
• Go Digital ASEAN program: 'In Thailand, more than 44,000 individuals and small businesses received free digital training, with 69% reporting positive revenue growth' / full item
• 'China’s two primary megaconstellations are now under construction, with 2025 set to be a turning point for the projects' / full item
• Australia's ApateAI, using synthetic voice tech to create a 'victim' designed to waste scammers' time whilst learning how each con works / full item
• China: iSpace launch company, aka Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology Ltd, secures 'several hundred million yuan' in new funding, with sights on first launch of Hyperbola-3 reusable rocket / full item
• Vietnam: An overview of the moves proposed for Ho Chi Minh City to develop a 'one-stop' mechanism for startups to set up and thrive / full item
• Mark your calendar, and get your pass now: GITEX Asia 2025 tech conference & expo is in Singapore from April 23rd to 25th Exclusive discount: MEDIAGAS50 / full item
• Philippines: An intro to AgriConnectPH, a student-developed app to help farmers identify early signs of crop stress before damage sets in / full item
• National University of Singapore's NUS Enterprise is to expand its Japan presence with the launch of its second BLOCK71 office, in Tokyo, adding to 2024 opening of Nagoya office / full item
• China is finalizing construction on what will be the world’s brightest X-ray light source, powering research across materials science, biomedicine, and physics / full item
• South Korean crypto traders 'duped into joining money laundering scams': "...he had executed some 300 million won ($204,415) worth of trades for the company in a week." / full item
• Vietnam allows SpaceX to trial Starlink low-orbit satellite internet service in the country on an extended basis until 2031 / full item
"Taiwan's semiconductor industry reached unprecedented heights in 2024, with production soaring to NT$5.3 trillion (around US$160.6 billion) in 2024, a robust 22% increase..." / full item
• Malaysia: Earlier in March, hackers attempted to infiltrate Malaysia Airports Holdings' digital systems and demanded $10M ransom from the government / full item
• 'China launches internet technology test satellites with Long March 2D' / full item
• Japan: Enish, a Tokyo Exchange-listed gaming firm, to use its balance sheet to purchase $667,260 worth of Bitcoin / full item
• US adds more than 50 Chinese firms to 'entity list', barring American companies from supplying to them without government permits / full item
• China: "I tried Manus: it's not the tech breakthrough you think it is... At this stage, I don’t see much technological innovation at the code level with Manus." / full item
• Asia's Tech News, Last Week: Starlink & India, China's space developments, Vietnam's first chip wafer facility, Taiwan gets Google TPUs, data centres in Thailand, BMW partners Huawei... / full item
"Renting out GPUs to companies that need them for training AI models... was once seen as a sure bet. But with the rise of DeepSeek and a sudden change in the economics around AI, the industry is faltering." / full item
In wider-world technology news:
» 'What could possibly go wrong? DOGE to rapidly rebuild Social Security codebase.' / full item
» Aetherflux has raised $50M Series A funding with tech that utilises small satellites to transmit power from low Earth orbit via infrared lasers / full item
» US Senators demand information from AI companion apps following kids' safety concerns, lawsuits / full item
» Meet the clip-on SunBooster, using near-infrared LEDs to bring the benefits of sunlight indoors, attaching to computer monitors and laptops / full item
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And here's the link to this week's edition of Asia's Tech News, Weekly, published over on LinkedIn, looking at developments in Asia's tech spaces to April 5th 2025:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/asias-tech-news-weekly-april-5th-2025-startup-news-asia-7dnyc/
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https://www.linkedin.com/company/indopacific-insight/