Asia's Tech News, Weekly: November 2nd 2024

Singapore FinTech, Asia in Space, Tokyo & startups, Indonesia vs Apple, Australia AI Centre, Vietnam-UAE EVs, Intel & Chengdu, Cambodia-Japan 5G, Beidou vs GPS...

• South Korea: Government launches National AI Research Lab with plans to invest $68.2M by 2028, looking at AI research projects and global partnerships / full item

• Taiwan may soon establish overseas support hubs for chip-making firms to help in acquiring land, electricity, water, and workers, boosting partnerships in the process / full item

• Malaysia Digital Economy Corp inks MOUs with Singapore's Ascent venture fund and Indonesia's Central Capital Ventura, looking to boost cross-border collaboration and innovation / full item

• 'Asia’s Space Ambitions - Driving the Next Chapter in Global Space Competition', articles from NBR touching on China, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore & India / full item

• China: Domestic firms dominate state-owned China Telecom $2BN server procurement shortlist, likely continuing moves to eliminate foreign hardware from its networks / full item

• Download: 'FinTech's state of play 2.0 - Taking stock of Singapore’s FinTech landscape, 2024' from PwC and Singapore FinTech Association / full item

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"Instant payments are rapidly replacing cash in developing markets... In India, the [cash] share is expected to decline from 23% of consumer spending to less than 10% by 2028." / full item

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• China: BeiDou sat-nav system gained $1.78BN in commitments for new projects, deepening competition with GPS and targeting integration with vehicles, agriculture and more / full item

• 'Invest Tokyo Webinar 2024 for Oceania' is set for November 8th, looking to boost overseas startup awareness of the benefits and resources available from a base in Tokyo / full item

• South Korea: Busan Digital Asset Exchange formally launches, aiming to tokenize real-world assets including precious metals, raw materials, and carbon credits / full item

• Monetary Authority of Singapore has launched the Global Finance & Technology Network, aiming to deepen the city-state's position as a global fintech hub / full item

• China: Space Transportation, aka Lingkong Tianxing Technology, claims successful prototype engine test for future Yunxing hypersonic passenger airplane / full item

• Indonesia: Government has effectively banned sale, and use, of iPhone 16 and Apple Watch 10 devices, citing Apple failure to meet in-country investment requirements / full item

WEF Chief Risk Officers Outlook, October 2024

• Singapore is to invest an additional Sg$440M in the Startup SG Equity scheme in bid to attract more VC firms to invest in local Singaporean deep-tech startups / full item

• China: GDS data centers firm raises $1BN in round predominantly led by US investors, looking to further develop data center capacity outside China and SEA / full item

• Vietnam's VinFast EV manufacturer secures $1BN, led by UAE's Emirates Driving Company, looking to both boost Vietnam driver training and boost UAE industrial sector / full item

• Australia: National AI Centre rolls out AI Impact Navigator to help Australian companies to understand, manage and tackle the challenges of artificial intelligence / full item

• China: Intel is planning a $300M investment to expand chip packaging and testing in Chengdu, expected to bolster the Chengdu plant's role in Intel's global supply chain / full item

• HSBC Hong Kong unit has joined China's worldwide interbank renminbi payment system, CIPS, as a direct offshore participant, with Beijing pushing to internationalise the yuan / full item

• Cambodia: Japan's NTT Docomo and Nippon Electric Company partner for 'Orex Sai' 4g wireless in Cambodia, creating a base for future 5G services / full item

• Singapore: National Graduate Research Innovation Programme preps for January 2025 launch, a Sg$50M, 5-year initiative to add to support for founders and researchers / full item

• Australia: Green Gravity commences studies to develop 2GWh gravitational energy storage project at disused copper mine in Northwest Queensland / full item

• New Zealand: Alimetry raises US$18M with AI-backed gut health diagnosis via a wearable device, looking to commercialize for the US market / full item

• Bhutan: A quick look at the successes, and challenges, faced by NoMindBhutan, the country's first AI-powered chatbot platform / full item

• Singapore: Gov't preps Shared Responsibility Framework for December roll-out, looking to strengthen accountability of financial institutions and telcos for phishing scam losses / full item

GITEX Asia 2025 tech conference: April in Singapore

• China: Greater Bay Technology unveils Phoenix EV battery, claiming superconducting materials enable charging and functioning within 6 minutes, regardless of temperature / full item

• South Korea: Rebellions chip-maker partners Samsung Foundry, Arm, and ADTechnology for AI CPU chiplet platform, looking for scalable power and processing efficiency / full item

• Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing launches HKEX Virtual Asset Index Series, providing pricing benchmarks for Bitcoin and Ether / full item

• Japan's JPYC, issuer of yen-pegged stablecoin, partners South Korea's ITCEN IT major for stablecoin research, particularly focusing on integrations with real-world assets / full item

• China: Xpeng e-car manufacturer breaks ground on construction of facility focused on Aeroht brand eVTOLs, electric vertical take-off aircraft, targeting production capacity of 10,000 units / full item

• India continues space industry positioning with Chandrayaan-4 mission targeting a lunar south pole landing for samples collection, potentially in 2028 / full item

• India: Hanooman AI launches Everest 1 multilingual LLM, a model supporting 35 languages currently and with plans for 90, built with NVIDIA partnership / full item

• Australia: New package of proposed cybersecurity legislation has been released, with mandates including 72-hour reporting obligation of cyber-ransom payments / full item

• Japan: Toyota and NTT telecoms giant partner for R&D on driver assistance systems, looking to leverage artificial intelligence, and optical communications technology / full item

• China: Zeekr EV auto-maker unveils new Mix model, spacious 'people mover' capitalizing on an electric vehicle's longer wheelbase, and featuring limited elements of autonomous driving / full item

• Paloma Capital has launched its second fund, targeting high-growth tech firms in Australia and New Zealand, looking at 14-18 investments over 3 years / full item

• Singapore: Gemini cryptocurrency exchange gains in-principle approval from Monetary Authority for digital payment token services, and cross-border money transfers / full item

'How quantum computing will reshape Australia's economy', an interview with Rita Gatt, National Lead Partner on Regulation, Security and Risk with Deloitte / on YouTube

• Project Mandala proof-of-concept: Automating compliance procedures on cross-border financial transactions, with central banks of Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and Korea participating / full item

• Saudi Arabia's deep-tech focused Beta Lab launches $300M startups fund aiming to boost cross-border collaboration between the Middle East and Southeast Asia / full item

• Australia: A quick intro to 12 tech startups backed by Antler VC, with solutions in retail-tech, customer experience, the creator economy and more / full item

• Vietnam: Vingroup conglomerate launches VinVentures VC fund with $150M corpus, looking to back tech startups in critical technology areas / full item

• Australia-China research identifies new method for lithium extraction from saltwater, with lower environmental impacts and faster processing, and freshwater as a by-product / full item

• Taiwan's TSMC suspended shipments reportedly for Sophgo, a China-based chip designer affiliated with Bitmain crypto-mining firm, after chip made for Sophgo appeared on a Huawei AI processor / full item

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"Sophgo was founded by Micree Zhan... Zhan is also the co-founder and chair of Bitmain, the largest Bitcoin ASIC designer and a provider of water-cooled crypto mining systems." / full item

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• Western Australia State Government Innovation Booster Grant awarded to WaveX, renewable energy business generating electricity from ocean wave movement / full item

• Taiwan: Singapore's Keppel Data Centre Fund II inks JV with BlackRock-backed Digital Decarbonization Solutions Platform for 80MW Northern Taiwan data centre / full item

• Australia: An intro to the 10 tech startups emerging from the University of Newcastle I2N accelerator, with solutions in sports-tech, disabilities, clean-tech and more / full item

• Malaysia: EY Young Technology Professional Challenge 2024 launches, seeking Malaysian graduates and university students for team-based STEM competition / full item

• Australia: Tasmanian gov't was recently under fire for use of AI in 'validating' economic benefits of proposed hotel development / full item

• India: Karnataka stage gov't unveils ELEVATE 2024, a grant-in-aid seed funding scheme for early-stage startups, and KAN acceleration network / full item

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"Russia fines Google more money than there is in entire world... A Russian court has fined Google two undecillion rubles... for restricting Russian state media channels on YouTube." / full item

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In wider-world technology news:

» Italy's Energy Dome, backed by the European Union and others, preps for US construction of first CO2-based long-duration energy storage facility / full item

» Niron Magnetics launches commercial-scale production of rare earth-free magnets, potentially cutting wind turbine industry reliance on raw materials from China / full item

» Dubai launches Ignyte digital platform aiming to accelerate over 100,000 startups and entrepreneurs, alongside goal of 5000 VCs and investors and 500 partners / full item

» Ten emerging energy storage technologies, with solutions utilizing gravity, super-heated bricks, modified concrete and more / full item

» 'The Future of Fintech', a report from Silicon Valley Bank - "Costs are growing for fintechs, but it's not just higher interest rates affecting their margins..." / full item

» Pacific Fusion, a US-based nuclear fusion development company secures $900M Series A / full item

» Download: '2024 Crypto Q3 Quarterly Report' from CoinEx and ViaBTC Capital, looking at Bitcoin, Ethereum, TON, Sui, and a small selection meme-coins / full item

» Meta inks multi-year Reuters deal for news content in real-time answers to users about news and current events in Meta AI chatbot across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger / full item

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"Norway is to enforce a strict minimum age limit on social media of 15 as the gov't ramped up its campaign against tech companies it says are 'pitted against small children’s brains'." / full item

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