Asia's Tech News, Weekly: May 24th 2025

Vietnam semicon packaging bid, Huawei autonomous mining tech, Japan Active Cyber Defense law, Taiwan robotics industry, Tencent WeChat-driven AI move, Malaysia Silicon Island project...

May 25, 2025

• China: Huawei tech aids milestone with Yimin coal mine in Inner Mongolia, activating a fleet of 100 autonomous, 5G-controlled electric mining trucks / full item

• South Korean satellite launch firm, INNOSPACE, inks MoU with US firm, Saturn Satellite Networks, to jointly develop next-gen sats, commercialise complementary products, and more / full item

• Malaysia: Sovereign AI Cloud project between Skyvast Corporation and China's Huawei is to feature Huawei Ascend Graphic Processing Units in the first deployment outside the China market / full item

• Vietnam: Danang city seeks investors for $69.3M semiconductor chip lab, focusing on advanced packaging / full item

• Taiwan: National Science & Technology Council Minister announces NT$10 billion plan to fund robotics startups, including one modeled on contract manufacturing giant TSMC's operations / full item

'Vietnam recorded nearly 20 million brute-force cyberattacks in 2024, or 37% of all such incidents in Southeast Asia.' / full item

• China: Xiaomi smartphone giant is reportedly preparing to invest up to $6.9BN over the next 10 years to develop its own mobile processors, following the recent roll-out of its Xring O1 chip / full item

• South Korea's K-Startup Grand Challenge 2025 program applications close June 13th - details here / full item

• 'India's Semiconductor Aspirations: Scanning the Horizon' from the Observer Research Foundation / full item

• Western Australian Government invites local organisations in the space industry to submit an EOI to join its delegation to the International Astronautical Congress in Sydney in September / full item

• Japan: Active Cyber Defense Law passes, allowing monitoring of communications and hacking of servers involved in cybercrime activities / full item

ADB: Digital Economy Agreements in Asia and the Pacific

• China: Tencent bets on its 1.4 billion-user WeChat empire to take pole position in China's artificial intelligence race, aiming to leverage the super-app's many features / full item

• Vietnam: Danang Venture and Angel Summit 2025 is set for May 29-30, featuring startup pitching, exhibition and more / full item

• India: Space agency mission to launch new Earth observation satellite into orbit failed after the launch vehicle encountered a technical issue during the third flight stage / full item

• Japan: Adyen and JCB roll out JCB card-on-file tokenization service, aimed at enhancing security of credit card transactions for e-commerce merchants / full item

• Vietnam: China's BYD EV giant looks to expand operations at its $366M plant in Vietnam's north to meet growing market demands for new products / full item

"Other proposed products in this expansion include USB chargers, in-car fast wireless chargers, robotic pool cleaners, lithium batteries, 4G/5G chips, GPS modules for smartphones and tablets, gimbal stabilizers, ultra-light consumer drones, and graphic processing boards." / full item

• China's JinkoSolar is to supply panels to construct a 100MW solar power plant in Azerbaijan / full item

• Malaysia: The proposed 'Silicon Island' project, off the southern coast of Penang island, is projected to take between 10 and 15 years to complete / full item

• South Korea finds North Korea's APT37 hacking group has launched a new espionage campaign against the South, targeting national security organizations / full item

• 'Sri Lanka stalls Starlink over security and sovereignty concerns' / full item

• Malaysia: Young Creator Fellowship applications are open until May 31st, seeking creatives aged 18 to 25 interested in journalism / full item

Malaysia: Young Creator Fellowship applications close June 1st

• Vietnam: "The Ministry of Education and Training has issued a decision on the Standard Curriculum for Semiconductor Microchip Training at the undergraduate and master's levels." / full item

• 'Can AI-Trained Humanoid Robots Solve China's Labor Crisis — And Lead The Future Of Work?' / full item

• Vietnam: China's Shein is reportedly to establish a Vietnam warehouse of near 15 hectares in size in a bid to hedge against the impact of US tariffs / full item

• China: Xiaomi smartphone giant is to launch its self-developed XringO1 mobile chip in late May, moving further into advanced chip production / full item

• Indonesia: "From China's BYD to Vietnam's VinFast, foreign EV investors in Indonesia are reportedly facing disruption from shadowy local enforcers" / full item

"A new investor group is expected to take over debt-ridden Neta Auto, looking to revive the Chinese battery electric vehicle maker in China and Thailand..." / full item

• China: "Operating 17 hours a day, the site's goal is to generate reams of data that... Chinese humanoid startup AgiBot, uses to train robots it hopes will become ubiquitous..." / full item

• South Korea: The 2nd 2025 edition of the Asia Startup Expo virtual event is set for June 25th, with pitch applications open until May 30th for AI, SaaS, and Consumer Tech startups / full item

• NVIDIA CEO outlined plans to allow customers to deploy rival chips in data centers built around NVIDIA technology, recognizing in-house chips from clients including Microsoft / full item

• China: A brief video intro to the Tien Kung robot which took part in the recent Half Marathon in Beijing / full item

• "At Taiwan's annual Computex trade show... the spotlight is expected to fall... on the latest in artificial intelligence, but also on the potential destabilising impact of higher US tariffs." / full item

"A team of Dutch scientists... built a new kind of robot that can run, go over obstacles, and even swim, all driven only by the flow of air. And it does all that with no brain at all." / full item

In wider-world technology news:

» NVIDIA has unveiled the Blackwell Ultra AI chip, developed for the 'age of AI reasoning' / full item

» Amazon is to work with Saudi Arabia's Humain AI company, investing '$5 billion-plus' in a strategic partnership to build an 'AI Zone' in Saudi Arabia / full item

» NVIDIA is to send 18,000 of its top AI chips to Saudi Arabia's Humain, a company owned by the Saudi Public Investment Fund / full item

» Blockchain: "The downside of the public internet is it was never built for high-performance systems. It was always built for this sort of relationship of one big server talking to one little server" / full item

Canada: 'Ontario government has green-lit Ontario Power Generation to build the first of four Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) at the Darlington New Nuclear Project site.' / full item