Asia's tech news, weekly: June 20th 2023
Korea/Saudi VC fund, Facebook in Cambodia, Huawei 5G stations, Hong Kong & Ethereum, Hikvision & Ukraine, quantum tech in Australia, Taiwan and the UK...
• South Korea and Saudi Arabia announce creation of joint $160M fund to invest in South Korean and Saudi startups
• Australia: Hysata hydrogen-focused clean energy firm gains Morgan Stanley backing with sights on raising as much as $68M Series B funding, with conditional orders and letters of intent in place
• China: Huawei ‘wins’ 52% of China Mobile 5G base station contracts to provide 45,426 stations, with rival ZTE to deliver 23,227 5G base stations
Ukraine has formally designated China's Hikvision and Dahua tech firms "international sponsors of war", alleging supply of drones and more to Russia, alongside contributing to war budget
• Micron US memory-chip maker to invest $603M in packaging facility in China’s Xian...despite firm being sanctioned as a 'security risk' by China tech regulator
• South Korea: "A total of 30 startups have been spun off from Hyundai so far, generating a total of 280 billion won in sales and creating more than 800 new jobs."
• Japan: A brief intro to the 5 startups presenting at the Japan–US Innovation Awards Symposium at Stanford University, working in Web3 solutions, metal printing and more
• Tech Council of Australia National Tech Summit is set for July 20-21 in Brisbane
• Hong Kong: Bank of China investment arm and UBS issue tokenized, regulated security in HK, adding regulated securities onto main, public Ethereum blockchain
• The Security Implications of Quantum Computing & India’s National Quantum Mission: "...quantum technology will emerge as a major frontier in cybersecurity"
• Facebook faces a litmus test around community standards versus 'newsworthiness' in Cambodia in the approach to July elections
Ride-sharing for space tech: "(June 12) SpaceX is launching a Falcon 9 rocket with 72 different payloads onboard...offer[ing] small satellite companies a chance to put their hardware on orbit for cheap."
• Taiwan's Minister of Digital Affairs to visit UK to discuss deepening gov't tech and security cooperation, and to discuss communications resilience planning
• Australia: Gov't announces $55M quantum industry feasibility grants, with estimates the industry 'could be worth as much as $6.1 billion and employ 19,000 Australians by 2045'
• South Korea: Former Samsung exec arrested over theft of factory and clean-room blueprints used in unsuccessful bid to replicate facilities in China
• China: US TikTok ban expands to federal contractors, blocking app use on devices used for official business, regardless of whether owned by gov't, contractor or employees
• Hong Kong gov't launches court bid to prevent internet platforms from hosting 'Glory to Hong Kong' song, lyrics, melody or video, criminalizing those who post
• China: 31 firms, including major 'supercomputing' facility, added to US export blacklist, due in part to military and hypersonic missiles research
• Australia: China's MG EV automaker cuts $6000 from price for MG4 electric vehicle, making it Australia's first entry-level model under $40K and undercutting rival BYD
• South Korea: Wrtn generative AI startup gains near $12M with local-language text creation
A database of 650K ad-tech segments provides "...consumers an unusual look at how they and their families are packaged, described, and categorized by ad companies."
• An intro to the Taiwanese tech startups featured at VivaTech innovation exhibition in France, working in UAV systems, health-tech, blockchain-connected imaging and more
• Vietnam: Singapore's UOB bank launches UOB FinLab innovation accelerator in Vietnam, focusing on digital technologies to boost SME business growth
• Singapore: WhatsApp launches Channels, allowing users to receive messaging from selected individuals and organizations
• Indonesia: DS/X Ventures looks to raise $15M for maiden fund, aiming to back early-stage startups enjoying early traction in the B2B software-as-a-service space
In other news…
» Finland and US partner for research, standardisation and tech development aiming for 'a joint global approach toward sustainable, competitive, secure, trustworthy technology and supplier-neutral 6G technologies'
» Swiss gov't warns IT service provider supporting several federal agencies has been hit by ransomware, potentially exposing huge 907GB of financial and other data
» "...2023 Global Cyber Confidence Index...found that not only did the average number of ransomware attacks increase from 4 to 5 from 2021 to 2022, but also that 83% of victim organizations paid a ransom..."
» Google's Generative AI learning path, a curated collection of content on generative AI products and technologies, from the fundamentals of LLMs to how to create and deploy solutions on Google Cloud
» An intro to Meta's I-JEPA, an AI architecture to 'help AI models to learn faster, plan how to accomplish complex tasks and readily adapt to unfamiliar situations'
» An intro to Ordinals, also known as Bitcoin NFTs, digital assets inscribed on a satoshi, the lowest denomination of a Bitcoin
"...Amazon warned Twitter that it would withhold advertising payments because of the company's outstanding bills to Amazon Web Services for cloud computing services, according to the Information."