Tech & AI
Every major AI story has an Asia-Pacific chapter, whether Silicon Valley admits it or not. The platforms, chips, and startups building what comes next in technology, first.
-
Jun- 2026 -19 June
China’s state-backed 3D printer makers are closing the Western gap
Rongsu Technology raised RMB 100 million from government investors to scale wire-fed metal printing, signaling Beijing's shift from catching up to controlling who qualifies for mass production.
-
18 June
Asia’s scam economy runs on trafficked workers, not just code
Cybercrime now accounts for over 30% of recorded offenses across Asia and the South Pacific, driven by USD 40 billion annual fraud industry using AI deepfakes and coerced labor in…
-
17 June
Two streaming rivals just agreed to stop competing for your wallet
Viu and iQiyi International will bundle their separate libraries across Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia starting in the second half of 2026, testing whether regional pooling can match the…
-
16 June
Washington just showed Asia who controls frontier AI
On June 12, the US Commerce Department ordered Anthropic to cut off Claude Fable 5 for every foreign user worldwide, including Singapore—a founding member of the Pax Silica AI alliance—revealing…
-
15 June
Asia will fuse AI and blockchain before the West even tries
Yat Siu, cofounder of Animoca Brands, argues autonomous agents need wallets to transact at scale, and Asia's regulatory sandboxes are already shipping the infrastructure the West is still debating.
-
14 June
Indian workers film their homes to train robots they’ll never afford
Nexxus AI has recruited 400 workers since 2024 to record household chores at INR 250 per hour, creating training data for home robots sold globally while India captures minimal value.
-
11 June
A Seoul data centre fire shows why digital sovereignty through localization fails
When 647 public services went offline in September 2025 after a fire destroyed 850 terabytes of state records with no backup, the cause was not a cyberattack—it was a localization…
-
11 June
Telecom operators are quietly becoming AI infrastructure gatekeepers
SK Telecom, NTT and Chunghwa Telecom launched a $500 million fund on June 10, 2026, to back optical networking and cooling startups, betting that power efficiency—not algorithms—now limits AI growth.
-
6 June
A Chinese robotics startup is already beating Western rivals at scale
Zelostech has 4,000 autonomous vehicles running across 300 cities, while DHL's Singapore deployment marks the first permanent operation beyond pilot stage.
-
5 June
Singapore built an AI coach for the small businesses that need it most
The Singapore Artificial Intelligence Association launched in June 2026 to guide 291,600 SMEs through adoption, targeting 10,000 firms and 100,000 trained workers using diagnostic clinics instead of grants.
