Asia's tech news, weekly: March 12th 2024

India & AI, Australian as-you-code cybersec, China's reusable rockets, Thailand & virtual banks, Google's Tokyo cyber-defense, cyber-scams from Myanmar...

• India: Gov't approves $1.25BN investment in artificial intelligence, spanning computing infrastructure and development of large language models, targeting industry value of $17BN by 2027

• State-owned China Aerospace Science & Tech Corp to launch 4-meter and 5-meter-diameter reusable rockets in 2025 and 2026, with 4-meter capable of delivering up to 6500kg of payload to orbit

• Japan's Astroscale launches rocket via New Zealand's Rocket Lab services to inspect 'dead' rocket debris in orbit, aiming to identify method to remove this, and later, other, debris, from space

• Huawei rolls out initiatives including global ITU-Huawei Generation Connect Young Leadership Program, Huawei-UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning in Morocco, and Huawei Cloud startups program

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BadGPT, FraudGPT & beyond: "...the challenge in stopping AI-enabled cybercrime is some AI models are freely shared on the open web. To access them, there is no need for dark corners of the internet..."

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• 6G principles backed by US, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Sweden and UK, seeking secure, resilient and privacy-protecting tech under global standards

• China: Gov't unveils initiative in 17 cities providing AI startups with cloud computing vouchers to access tools without large initial investments, with vouchers reportedly between $140K and $280K

• Myanmar: Chainalysis report finds scam syndicate in Myanmar has cheated individuals out of more than $100M in less than 2 years with online romance scheme

• Thailand: Financial regulator to open applications for virtual banks within 6 months, hoping to address the 50% of the population that has no access to financial products

APAC Semiconductor Trends

• An overview of opportunities for Australia, Singapore and Malaysia to collaborate on addressing the various cyber issues that each nation faces

• AsterX 2024 Military Space Exercise took place in France, with Japan and South Korea taking part for first time, likely heralding future presence in European, NATO and US bids to boost cyber defense

• Western Australia moves forward with plan for digital twin of the state, announcing $140M package for 10-year project to improve outcomes across infrastructure, emergencies and more

• Japan: Google opens its first Asia-Pacific cyber defense hub in Tokyo, aiming to facilitate cybersecurity research, and to share critical information with gov't officials, business and universities

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"Following its recent agreement to assist in construction of a 5G standalone network in the Middle East, Microsoft is stepping up its efforts to take on Huawei Technologies and other manufacturers of telecom equipment."

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• India: IDfy identity verification and onboarding platform raised $27M with services including know-your-customer and risk/fraud mitigation, and a throughput of 60M verifications per month

• Inaugural India-Philippine Tech Summit took place recently, gathering stakeholders in digital domains for networking and to explore government-to-business and business-to-business partnerships

• 'Darwin Dialogue on Critical Minerals and Rare Earth Elements' is set for April 17-19, an event from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute

• South Korea: China's PonyAI driverless vehicles firm inks JV with Korea's GemVaxLink to deploy a fleet of autonomous vehicles in Seoul, initially for ride-hailing services

• Hong Kong: Gov't unveils Project Ensemble initiative to test functionality of a wholesale central bank digital currency and tokenization of private bank deposits

• China's UBTech Robotics Corp stock price more than tripled in 2 days following the firm's entry to the Hong Kong stock connect program, allowing mainland China investors to purchase its shares

•Thailand: Bank for Agriculture & Agricultural Cooperatives in JV negotiations with unnamed Chinese tech giant for e-commerce platform for sale of agri products to China, with 49/51% ownership

• India: Azimuth AI gains backing from UAE's AUM Ventures with first generation of System-on-Chip products, developing purpose-built SoCs for smart city and broad EV applications

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"North Korean hackers breached at least two South Korean microchip equipment companies in recent months, stealing product design drawings and facility site photos..."

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• Australia: Nullify cybersecurity startup raised US$3.4M seed funding with AI-backed assistant bot that helps software devs and security teams detect and fix code vulnerabilities as it is being written

• China's Kaixin Auto inks export order with Myanmar New Power Motor for part-assembled delivery of 1000 electric cars, seeing market opportunities in Myanmar's population of over 50M

• Arrest of Binance execs sought by Nigerian lawmakers following failure to appear to answer questions on terrorism financing, money laundering, tax evasion and other financial crimes

• Australia-ASEAN Summit saw Prime Minister Albanese unveil a $2BN fund to boost Australian trade and investment in South-East Asia, focusing particularly on clean energy and infrastructure

2024 Tech Trends Report

• China & critical minerals: Which controls can China meaningfully deploy, in line with which specific interests, and with what domestic consequences?

• India: mPokket raises $60M debt capital from credit arm of Baring Private Equity Asia with credit, insurance and 'career acceleration' products for underserved youth, working professionals and the self-employed

• Indonesia's East Ventures VC and Singapore's state fund, Temasek, unveil 3 new tracks for Indonesia-focused Climate Impact Innovations Challenge 2024

• The Philippines and Australia ink agreements around boosting maritime commitments, and for cooperation on cyber and critical technologies

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"More than $9 million in funding has been awarded to 12 Australian space firms as part of the latest rounds of the federal government’s Moon to Mars Supply Chain Capability Improvement Grants program..."

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• India: US-based D-Matrix AI chips firm outlines goals for India as a crucial market, with sights on the country for 30% of its workforce

• Asia's new food frontier: 'Lab-grown meat to 3D-printed food: inflation, climate, animal welfare shape future menus'

• China reportedly planning lunar surveillance camera network based on the country's domestic surveillance system, using AI systems to identify and respond to perceived issues

• 'Assessing India’s Readiness to Assume a Greater Role in Global Semiconductor Value Chains' from Information & Technology Innovation Foundation

• Australia: Former coal mine in Queensland set to become a Tesla Megapack grid-scale battery energy facility

• US gov't issues Executive Order 'to prevent the large-scale transfer of Americans’ personal data to countries of concern and provides safeguards around...those countries access to Americans’ sensitive data'

• China: Alibaba leads $600M round for MiniMax, AI firm behind Kimi AI chatbot, built on 100 billion-parameter Moonshot LLM

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"Vietnam led in terms of female founders’ share of the total capital raised by startups...with an impressive 53%. The Philippines (23%) was ranked 2nd, followed by Malaysia (19%) and Singapore (18%)..."

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• India: OnGrid HR-tech firm expands SE Asia and Middle East footprint with Elockr ISO-certified background verifications and checks platform, delivering tamper-proof certificates of experience

• South Korea: Jeju Island proposes use of NFTs and blockchain tech to spark growth in tourism, agriculture, livestock and fisheries sectors

• South Australian Gov't and Fearless Females Network join for 2-year pilot program providing grants to female-founded businesses

ASEAN Digital Masterplan 2025

• Australia: Flight Information Management System moves forward with traffic control system linking drones, air taxis and other uncrewed aircraft with existing air traffic management system

• 'Why hydrogen is losing the race to power cleaner cars, from MIT Tech Review

• 'A Google engineer ran a secret startup in China while stealing AI technology, DOJ alleges'

• Semiconductors: An overview of 49 firms and startups that collectively raised over $800 million in February 2024

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"Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI) in India was USD40.84 billion. In 2023 alone, this figure was USD1.79 billion, making Japan the fifth-largest investor in India..."

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In wider-world technology news:

» Chevron Technology Ventures, part of Chevron oil-and-gas major, joins $100M funding round for OQC quantum computing firm, seeing potential for efficiency improvements

» Efficient Computer unveils chip processor architecture set to be 100 times more energy-efficient than current general-purpose CPUs, with software re-configuring workloads for quicker execution

» France rolls out French National Strategy for quantum technologies with projected investments of $1.1BN over 4 years with additional investments from the private sector

» HP launches world-first business PCs with chip-level measures to protect firmware against quantum computer hacks

» Startup Qatar Investment Program launches, backed by Qatar Development Bank, looking at $500K investments in seed-stage firms and up to $5M at growth stage, drawn from $100M corpus

» Barcelona Supercomputing Center's moves to develop a European presence in expertise and manufacturing for RISC-V-based chips

» 'Anticipating the Quantum Threat to Cryptography', a deep dive from HP Security Lab

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"Taiwan’s semiconductor industry chain was worth NT$2.67 trillion (US$86.3 billion), making it the second largest in the world after the US..."

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