Asia's Tech News, Weekly: September 25th 2024

China's space goals, Australia wCBDC, Bhutan's bitcoin, Cambodia-Swiss smartcity tech, Startup Korea Fund, Indian space missions, Japan's semiconductors, Aus-Germany quantum, Vietnam's subsea cables..

• Taiwan's TSMC and Korea’s Samsung Electronics reportedly discussing semiconductor plant based in the UAE, potentially rivaling TSMC's world's-largest fab in Taiwan / full item

• China: Alibaba released over 100 open-source AI models under Qwen 2.5 release, claiming the Max edition surpasses Meta's Llama and OpenAI’s GPT4 in specific areas / full item

• Reserve Bank of Australia postpones pursuit of a retail CBDC, with focus instead shifting to exploration of a wCBDC, wholesale central bank digital currency / full item

• YouTube and Shopee e-commerce platform to launch online shopping service in Indonesia, with sights on wider Southeast Asia, as competition with China's TikTok grows / full item

• India's GalaxEye space-technologies firm gains $2M from Infosys Innovation Fund, seeing opportunities in multi-sensor satellites and comprehensive datasets generated / full item

• Philippines' franchise holder of McDonald's partners India's Tata Consultancy Services for cloud-focused upgrade of more than 760 restaurants. / full item

---

"...with fewer than 800,000 people... Bhutan’s Bitcoin holdings are estimated to be more than double the size of El Salvador’s, a country often spotlighted for Bitcoin adoption." / full item

---

• Malaysia: MYHackathon 2024 is open for registration from Malaysian citizens, with 7 problem statements to address around digitalization of government services / full item

• China's space plans:"...5 main scientific themes have been identified for future breakthroughs...""..extreme universe, space-time ripples... habitable planets... biological & physical space...." / full item

• Japan's SoftBank partners Intelsat for hybrid satcom solution allowing ongoing connection via mobile or satellite, globally, using single device and single account / full item

• Vietnam's NextBold Capital private equity firm looks to raise $100M fund to back SME's in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos / full item

• Cambodia: Switzerland's Dfinity, behind Internet Computer Protocol, inks agreement with Ministry of Industry, Science, Tech & Innovation for smart city tech exploration / full item

India’s semiconductor startups

• Securing Minerals for the Energy Transition: "McKinsey... indicates that investments of $300-400 billion in mining, refining & smelting would be needed per year through 2030..." / full item

• Australia's Quantum Brilliance to help deliver world-first mobile quantum computer for Germany’s cyber innovation agency by 2027, with civil and defense use cases / full item

• South Korea: Government announces Startup Korea Fund formation with a total capital pool of $629M, attracting more private investment than expected / full item

• China: Deep Blue Aerospace completes 10 of 11 tasks with first-of-its-kind reusable kerosene-fuelled Nebula-1 rocket, but crashes at the final stage / full item

• India: Gov't has approved space projects including Chandrayaan-4 lunar sample return mission, a first space station module, and Venus Orbiter Mission / full item

---

"An estimated 20% of the global semiconductor engineering workforce is of Indian origin... Despite this... [the] sector has struggled to generate significant financial returns" / full item

---

• Vietnam: BlockchainWork talent community raises $87K, looking to position Vietnam to address the global blockchain industry talent shortage / full item

• Australian Federal Police arrests crime syndicate members including creator of encrypted messaging platform specifically designed for use by criminals / full item

• Malaysia and Cambodia central banks launch cross-border QR payments, allowing consumers and merchants to make and receive instant payments via mobile / full item

• Japan: An overview of Hokkaido's moves into semiconductor manufacturing, touching on the Rapidus-IBM partnership for a 2nm semicon fabrication plant / full item

• China: YMTC, a key player in the flash memory segment, achieves minor chip design architecture innovation in response to 'tech war' limitations / full item

• Singapore: OCBC Bank makes $500M investment in developing new innovation hub in Punggol Digital District, looking to host up to 4000 tech staff / full item

• HSBC successfully trials first quantum-secure tech for trading tokenized physical gold, looking at protection from future quantum computing attacks / full item

• Vietnam: An overview of Vietnam's 10 proposed undersea cabling projects, and concerns around possible participation of a number of China's cable ecosystem firms / full item

• Taiwan: TSMC is preparing ground for two 2nm semiconductor fabrication plants to commence operations in Q1 and Q3 of 2025, building on volume of 3nm chip orders / full item

• Indonesia-to-Singapore Nongsa-Changi undersea cable was announced earlier this year, targeting Q4 2025 operations connecting with Indonesia's Nongsa Digital Park / full item

---

"According to investigations by Chinese media, data center players have built too much capacity, lack the skills to carry out complex AI processes, and have overestimated demand." / full item

---

• India: China's Lenovo announces AI server manufacturing in India, alongside inauguration of state-of-the-art Infrastructure Solutions R&D lab / full item

• New Zealand: Lucidome Bio secures $13.5M for 'methane vaccine' research, aiming to reduce emissions from ruminant animals globally / full item

• 'Central Bank Digital Currency and the Future of Digital Money in Australia' / "...there is no clear public interest case to issue retail CBDC in Australia as yet..." / full item

• 'The State of Global Cryptocurrency Ownership in 2024' / "As of 2024, we estimated global cryptocurrency ownership at... over 560M crypto owners worldwide... Asia is leading this surge..." / full item

• Hong Kong's WeLab and Thailand’s Lighthub Asset, a 46M-customer fintech, partner to apply for a virtual bank license in Thailand / full item

The Dawn of the AI Era - teens, parents, home and school

• Available now: 'Adobe 2024 Digital Trends Asia Pacific and Japan', focusing on the impacts of artificial intelligence / full item

• India: Uttar Pradesh unveils plans for state's first semiconductor park in Noida, aiming to attract global chip firms with a range of subsidies / full item

• 'Will Temu find success in Southeast Asia? A preliminary pricing study from Thailand' from Cube Asia / full item

• Australia: 30X30 program opens for applications, seeking founders and C-suite leaders for mentoring on the challenges of high-growth enterprizes / full item

• Taiwan's National Development Fund and Japan's Kyoto University Innovation Capital ink MOU to boost shared talent pools across a range of deep technology fields / full item

---

GenAI in Southeast Asia: "...44% of GenAI startups are based in Singapore, followed by Vietnam (27%), Indonesia (13%), Thailand (7%), Malaysia (6%), and the Philippines (3%)..." / full item

---

• Australia: A brief intro to the 8 tech startups selected for cohort 1 of the Google for Startups AI First Accelerator, working in assets management, online communities, customer insights and more / full item

• Philippines: DOON peer-to-peer car-share platform secures $1.5M pre-seed funding, looking to boost presence in key cities and tourist destinations across the country / full item

• Thailand's Krungsri and Japan's MUFG ink MoU with banks from Vietnam, Indonesia and The Philippines to coordinate market entry for Thai firms across ASEAN / full item

• Australia: A brief intro to the 8 startups selected for the Google for Startups Accelerator AI First program, working in areas from coding to pet health / full item

• China's Nio launches first Onvo brand EV, with sights on competition with Tesla's Model Y / full item

• Australia: 2024 Startup Daily selects 2 firms as joint winners of Most Innovative Startup, Goterra insect protein agri-tech and Agili8 remote community healthcare firm / full item

• "China’s efforts to match US computing power in artificial intelligence are being hampered by bug-ridden software..." / full item

• "Blockchain tech has the potential to transform the way we bank but when you dig down a little deeper... it becomes clear that implementing them on a global scale isn't feasible" / full item

• Japan: Startup Horizon 2024 event from JETRO is set for November 15th, showcasing the startup ecosystem in Osaka, and the Kansai region and coinciding with Japan Innovation Week / full item

• "Pacific Island nations, notably Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Fiji, have become significant areas of geopolitical competition..." / full item

• Australia: An intro to the 4 tech startups selected for cohort 2 of the AWS Global Generative AI Accelerator program / full item

• Meet the Asia Pacific cohort of tech startups selected for the AWS Generative AI Accelerator / full item

---

"US Commerce Department on Monday proposed prohibiting key Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles on American roads... a move that would effectively bar Chinese cars and trucks from the US market." / full item

---

In wider-world technology news:

» Crowdstrike Cybersecurity Startup Accelerator launches, in partnership with AWS and with NVIDIA as a new supporter, and with applications closing January 2025 / full item

» Disarming Disinformation Solutions Challenge 2024 is open for submissions, an initiative from the International Center for Journalists / full item

» Google is to soon flag AI-based images in Search, Lens and Android, with flags likely rolling to other G platforms - but only referring to loose C2PA standards / full item

» Microsoft, BlackRock and partners unveil $30BN fund for AI infrastructure, looking to mobilise up to $100BN focusing primarily on US data center development / full item

---

'Data and AI Trends Report 2024' from Google Cloud: "69% of employees had bypassed their organization’s cybersecurity guidance in the past 12 months..." / full item

---

» Intel's contract manufacturing arm signed on as a customer with Amazon's cloud unit for the production of customized AI-focused chips / full item

» Google and Microsoft web browsers prep to change security coding to defend against risks likely to be posed by quantum computers / full item

» AMD now classifies itself as a 'data center first' company, with CPU and gaming businesses unable to match data business revenue / full item

» Fiverr on-demand workers platform launches new Financial Services Vertical aiming to help startups and entrepreneurs with filling finance roles / full item

» Oracle unveils its first zettascale cloud computing clusters, delivering the largest AI supercomputer in the cloud with up to 131,072 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs / full item

---

"Swiss stock exchange is exploring the creation of a venue in Europe for trading cryptocurrencies, in a bid to muscle in on a market dominated by... digital assets firms such as Binance, OKX and Coinbase." /

---

Asia & Indo-Pacific tech news: Other editions

• LinkedIn / Twitter / Facebook / Monthly / Substack / Web / Connect