Asia's Tech News, Weekly: June 11th 2024

India's datacenters, Malaysia's $5.3BN semicon bid, China's reusable rockets, Adani Group & e-commerce, Baidu Maps & Tesla EVs, Singapore chip wafer plant, Startup Korea Fund, NVIDIA and Taiwan...

• South Korea: Wrtn Technologies raised $18.3M with aggregated AI services drawing on OpenAI ChatGPT4, Stable Diffusion 3 and Anthropic's Claude 3 and others

• China: Space Pioneer rocket developer completes $207 million funding round focusing on development of reusable rockets, building on kerosene-oxygen work

• Japan: NTT Docomo telco to launch network service using radio waves from unmanned stratospheric aircraft, providing coverage wider than grounded base stations

• Australia: Gov't orders 5 China-linked firms to divest shares in Northern Minerals rare earths project, citing national interest concerns

• India "...is on track to add up to 850 megawatts of new [data center] capacity in the three years through 2026, nearly doubling from about 950 MW at the end of last year..."

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"TSMC has achieved its heft while keeping most of its factories and employees in Taiwan... How it navigates global expansion will influence the fate of entire industries and economies."

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• Taiwan: Tether crypto/digital assets firm makes $18.75M investment in XREX Group, looking at USDT cross-border business-to-business payments in emerging markets

• Malaysia unveils $5.3 billion National Semiconductor Strategy, a 3-phase plan to strengthen the country's position in semiconductor related technologies and supply chains

• China's Baidu internet giant to provide Baidu Map services for Tesla EVs in approach to mainland launch of Tesla's fully self-driving system

• Google is to invest $2BN in Selangor, Malaysia, building out its first data centre and Google Cloud region in the country

• India: Adani Group multinational conglomerate to step into e-commerce and digital payments, positioning as a competitor to Google and India's Reliance Industries

Flight Critical: Drones, cyber security and critical infrastructure

• Singapore: NXP Semiconductors and TSMC subsidiary to build $7.8 billion chip wafer plant in the city-state, with production set for 2027

• Philippines: Batangas City and Prime Infra unveil 64-megawatt solar plant, adding to electricity mix for up to 80,000 households

• South Korea: First sub-fund of $1.4 billion Startup Korea Fund project launches, aiming to raise $588M in H2 of this year

• 'Silicon Malaysia Map' from Malaysia Semiconductor Industry Ass'n, an at-a-glance outline of the nation's key industry participants

• 'Organized crime groups in Southeast Asia have seized on Myanmar’s instability amid civil war to establish a string of scam centers engaged in global online fraud operations.'

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China: "But the new terminology also breaks fresh ground in three areas. First, 'new quality productive forces' is a specifically Marxist term..."

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• Gov't-owned Hong Kong Investment Corp to ink agreement with as-yet unnamed local 'unicorn' for industrial AI and smart manufacturing across the Greater Bay Area

• 'Australia’s space race: From red dirt to the stars'

• Philippines: Elevate fintech secures $5M with platform allowing digital workers to receive payment in US dollars, supporting deposits from platforms including Upwork and Fiverr

• Hong Kong: Mezzofy secures $2M with end-to-end digital coupons-as-a-service platform, simplifying issuance, campaigns, collateral and management for businesses

• Australia: Blockchain Week 2024 is on now, June 11-14, in Sydney

• Thailand's National Innovation Agency inks MOU with Asia Berlin Forum to boost tech and startup networks, business matching, and investment opportunities in Europe

• Indonesia: eFishery aquaculture firm gains $30M loan from HSBC Indonesia to lift uptake of automated feeding product for small-hold farmers, speeding crop cycle by up to 74 days

• China: Some AI chip firms are now reportedly designing less-powerful processors to maintain access to TSMC in bid to side-step US-led sanctions

• Download: 'Emerging Resilience in the Semiconductor Supply Chain', a May 2024 report from BCG and the Semiconductor Industry Association (pdf link)

• Taiwan: Taipei, New Taipei City, Tainan and Kaohsiung vie for new NVIDIA plant

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"Unlike other regions, many APAC issuers do not invest in cyber insurance, despite the increasing frequency of cyberattacks, Moody’s reported."

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• China: Police arrested 193 across 26 provinces in money laundering bust of gang using Tether cryptocurrency to evade for-ex regulations, transacting over $1.9BN illegally

• Singapore: Nium raises new round of $50M with real-time cross-border payments, focusing on the business-to-business market

• Singapore to increase the amount of power allocated for data centers by as much as 35%, potentially partnering clean energy providers

• 'Decoding The $150 Bn+ Semiconductor Market Opportunity For Indian Startups', an overview drawn from Inc42’s 'The Rise Of India’s Semiconductor Startups Report 2024'

• TikTok & EU elections: 'TikTok performed worst in new test of social media platforms’ ability to detect election disinformation'

IISS: Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment 2024

• Taiwan: Foxconn unveils plans for advanced computing center in Kaohsiung, partnering NVIDIA for platforms and processing

• China's Lenovo Group to sell $2BN convertible bonds to Saudi sovereign wealth fund in discounted deal, R&D centre set for Riyadh alongside boosted Saudi production plans

• Malaysia: MYStartup NXT Penang is set for June 21st featuring conference, info sessions, discussions and local tech and startup ecosystem intro

• Thailand's GMM Music, publishing unit of Thailand's biggest media/entertainment entity, partners China's Tencent Music in $70M share purchase deal, with Tencent taking 10% ownership

• China: Alibaba invests $27M in Zhejiang Jingzhunxue AI-driven education startup and Bong device, a personalized learning tool powered by large language models

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"It also estimated that more than 500,000 fraudulent unemployment insurance claims were sent from computers under his control, resulting in a loss of more than $5.9bn (£4.6bn)."

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• Philippines: US firm Intelsat becomes first foreign firm to provide infrastructure support to mobile network operators, telecoms carriers and ISPs

• Volvo, owned by China's Geely, to launch world-first EV battery 'passport' recording origins of materials, components and more for EX90 SUV using blockchain

• South Korea: A brief interview intro to Autocrypt, provider of automotive cybersecurity and mobility solutions, building on partnerships with BMW, Hitachi, Vingroup and others

• China's Gotion battery maker partners Spain's Phi4Tech Technology Group and UAE's Unicorn RE for energy storage and new materials in Spain, seeking growth in EU markets

• TCS, India's largest IT services firm by market cap, launches WisdomNext aggregated generative artificial intelligence platform, focusing on enterprise adoption of GenAI tech

• Deindustrialization risk & technology: "In Indonesia, the contribution of the manufacturing sector to GDP decreased from 29.3% in 2000 to 18.25% in 2022."

• Malaysia: Digital Penang 2024 Hardtech Incubator launches, aiming to make Penang a hub for deep-tech firms

• A quick overview of news from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and Asus, outlined at Taiwan's recent Computex 2024 event

• China: World's largest wind turbine for energy production enters testing with 260m rotor diameter, and a swept area of 53,000 square meters

• ‘Autocratic Connectivity In China And India': "The ruling parties of the world’s two largest nations are fusing high-tech tools with old-fashioned patronage and local wardens."

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TikTok's latest US markets move: "The code-splitting initiative, reportedly underway for several months, involves hundreds of engineers sifting through millions of lines of code."

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• Taiwan: Startup Terrace Kaohsiung rolls out 2024 Soft-Landing Program for global startups and tech firms

• Vietnam's SeABank and Visa boost partnership with new agreement on developing digital payments and services

• Australia: The Monochrome Bitcoin ETF, Australia's first spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund that holds the asset directly, launches for trading

• Malaysia: An intro to 5 startups that presented at MyStartup Pre-Accelerator Cohort 3 Demo Day, working on AI-backed health-tech, education technology and more

• South Korea: A quick intro to 3 tech startups from May's KoreaTechDesk Virtual Demo Day, working in e-commerce admin, robotics and AI content

• A quick intro to 5 Australian startups that raised $54.4 million in the week to June 7th 2024, working in health-tech, logistics and more

• Indonesia: Telkomsel Ventures and AppWorks unveil 7 startups selected for 9th cohort of Tinc accelerator, working in pediatric health, fintech, messaging tech and more

• LG Energy Solution opens applications for Battery Challenge 2024, seeking innovations and startups in all aspects of battery tech and energy storage

• Lufthansa Technik Philippines opens LTP Startup Challenge applications with Seedstars, seeking startups with artificial intelligence tech for aviation maintenance and repairs

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"According to the Munich Re Cyber Risk and Insurance Survey 2024, 87% of global decision makers say their company is currently not adequately protected against cyber-attacks..."

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In wider-world technology news:

» Microsoft to invest $3.2 billion in Sweden, boosting cloud and AI infrastructure over the next 2 years, building on $2.1BN in Spain and $3.4BN in Germany

» Franklin Templeton asset manager reportedly considering launching a new cryptocurrency-focused investment fund

» UK's Venture Hub AI firm looks to raise $50M to buy servers featuring NVIDIA processors, aiming to charge clients an hourly fee to use server clusters

» PwC becomes the largest customer, and first reseller, of OpenAI ChatGPT Enterprise in new deal, providing it to 75,000 US employees and 26,000 UK employees

» Quantum, a critical technology: 'Global public investments in quantum technology reached $42 billion in 2023' from McKinsey & Co Quantum Technology Monitor

» Germany's Wattando rolls out plug-and-play rooftop solar system that can be easily connected to a household’s power network via a simple AC connection

» Advertising tech: "...like a stock exchange, except that the buyer doesn’t know what stock he is buying, meaning that the advertiser doesn’t know whose advertising inventory he is buying."

» Revoy startup unveils 'electric dollies', integratable electric batteries converting diesel semi-trucks into hybrid vehicles

» AI safety legislation proposed in California will require developers to report on safety testing, and to introduce a 'kill switch' to shut down their models

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Why you shouldn't trust AI search engines: "They are excellent at predicting the next word in a sentence, but they have no knowledge of what the sentence actually means."

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