2023 was a tough year for early-stage founders and VC funds around the globe, and HK is no exception. HK has been in an even trickier position than other cities, given its highly outward-facing economy and connectivity with China, when the sentiment of global investment in China turned so sharply after the huge bull runs in the country for the past 20+ years.

While the fundamentals of HK have shaken and shifted, 2023 was a year where much of the foundational work of building an innovation scene was done. Here are my two cents on what to expect in Hong Kong for 2024 in the early-stage startup scene, organised by opportunities and challenges:

Opportunities

RAISe+ Scheme: First batch of university startups carrying unique IPs to be unveiled

An HK government-led program with an allocation of HK$10 (US$1.28) billion, the RAISe+ scheme will, on a matching basis, fund 100 high-potential research teams in 8 universities. Each team can get up to HK$100 (US$12.84) million in non-dilutive funding.

From the $ sign — this is the biggest funding scheme available for university-originated startups in HK. The scheme was a core focus for many knowledge transfer offices in HK universities in 2023, where professors and their fellow researchers/project leads were busy writing proposals while university staff jiggled with all the letters of intent from investors/industry partners and requirements set forth by ITC. The first batch is expected to be announced within Q1 2024 after screening.

We met some of these projects with interesting underlying IPs. How the universities, professors, project leads, and investors handle the rest of the difficult parts of starting a venture – hiring, fundraising, productisation, fundraising, and more — would be the next set of questions to be answered.

HK remains the go-to hub for GBA startups going global

We spent quite some time in 2023 meeting China-based early-stage startups related to advanced manufacturing (semiconductor, new material, ESG material), industry 4.0 (robotics, automation, innovations in traditional industries), and cross-border e-commerce.

Also Read: How AI will shape the future: A look ahead to 2024 and beyond

Chinese founders shared their firsthand experience facing the lowered spending power of local corporations and consumers. As a result, many of them have taken their products abroad, selling at a higher price point than what they could ask for in China. Over time, China has built up top-of-class manufacturing and operating know-how and trained skilled labour that is unreplaceable by other geographies (read: Will China Continue to Grow? by Weijian Shan).

China startups that possess unique R&D and manufacturing know-how and operate in non-sensitive industries will still utilise Hong Kong as the hub for initial funding and landing their first batch of overseas customers.

Lots of dry powder waiting to deploy in HK

In 2023, local and global GPs secured fresh funding to be deployed specifically to companies with a HK nexus, thanks to the setup of the Hong Kong Growth Portfolio. Last year, many of them were setting up their team and understanding the ecosystem in HK. On the other side, CVCs and universities are increasingly active in either direct investment or fund investment in HK as well. There is pressure to deploy for these investors, which should help to drive more deal activity in 2024 in HK.

Having said all this, the HK startup ecosystem is faced with some fundamental challenges:

Challenges

Opex: Cost of operating and funding gap between Seed → B

While GPs are loaded with cash, there is a lack of startups with a valuation range of US$200 million – $500 million that can digest a round of US$20 million – US$100 million in HK. On the other side, there has been a funding gap that remains unfilled for startups looking for Series A/+ lead investors.

Rent and labour costs continue to be the two biggest headaches for HK-based startups – needs no further elaboration.

Also Read: The quiet giants of 2024: Celebrating the success of ‘boring’ businesses

Talent: Lack of startup operators and operator-turn-founders

While there has been strong growth in the number of startups in HK over the past decade, the ecosystem of operators who are willing to take the risk and be the first employees of a fresh HK startup is still nascent. We are still building the flywheel where early employees of successful startups become founders or operators for another early-stage venture. Not to mention the challenge of the tech brain drain in the city since 2020.

Exit pathway: Billion-dollar question for both VCs and startups

With many corporates cutting their spending, the incentive for larger players to acquire startups has decreased, especially when M&A activity has already been low in the region. Coupled with a stagnant IPO market, HK startups are faced with an even tougher market compared to other comparable startups in other regions.

What are your thoughts about the startup scene in 2024?

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Semaai, a ‘farmer-first’ company building full-stack agritech solutions, has just announced a US$4.7 million investment round led by CyberAgent Capital to propel the expansion of its embedded fintech solutions and agronomy advisory services in Indonesia. The company aims to enhance the user experience in its marketplace by integrating with additional financial institutions. It plans to cover 75 per cent of over 8,200 Indonesian villages by 2024.

In an interview with e27, Semaai Co-Founder and CEO Muhammad Yoga Anindito delves into Semaai’s integrated digital ecosystem, strategies for growth in Central Java, and the pivotal role of technology in supporting agri-retailers and smallholder farmers.

Edited excerpts:

Can you share more details about how this funding will specifically contribute to expanding Semaai’s embedded fintech solutions and agronomy advisory services?

The funds will be utilised to enhance the integrated fintech experience within our marketplace, aiming for a more seamless user experience. Additionally, we plan to broaden our offerings by integrating with additional financial institutions and fintech players.

Also Read: Semaai nets US$4.7M to expand its agritech, fintech solutions to Central Java

Semaai aims to cover 75 per cent of over 8,200 villages in Indonesia by the end of 2024. How do you plan to achieve this ambitious goal, and what impact do you anticipate on the local agricultural communities?

Our mission is to empower the local communities, and our success depends on addressing their needs. Our full-stack agritech solution has enhanced access to crop nutrition through the input marketplace and increased knowledge about the latest agri-input products through advisory services. But this is just the beginning, and we believe technology can add value to these communities in multiple ways.

Could you elaborate on how Semaai’s digital marketplace for agricultural inputs, agronomy advisory services, and financial solutions collectively form an integrated digital ecosystem? How does this address disruptions in the supply chain and support agri-retailers and smallholder farmers?

When combined, these services can help retailers and smallholder farmers make smarter, more well-informed decisions and implement more sustainable farming practices. Never before had farmers and retailers had better access to pricing and knowledge transparency, thanks to the efficiency and speed that we bring to the supply chain.

You plan to focus on strengthening Semaai’s presence in Central Java. What factors led to the decision to prioritise this region, and how do you see it contributing to the overall growth and impact of Semaai’s services?

Central Java has a sizable agricultural sector and farmer population. Strengthening our foundation in this province could serve as a blueprint to make our expansion outside the province easier.

Semaai claims a significant increase in net revenue, Toko Tani marketplace user base, and advisory feature adoption. What key strategies or initiatives do you attribute to this remarkable growth in the past 12 months?

Margin expansion came naturally as we grew in transaction volume, and our state-of-the-art logistics tech has proven to be a major leverage for us to go one step closer towards profitability.

This efficient logistics system contributed to margin expansion and enhanced the overall user experience, attracting more users to our marketplace.

As a ‘farmer-first’ company, how does Semaai ensure that its agri-tech solutions are tailored to the specific needs and challenges farmers and rural MSMEs in Indonesia face?

We have a specific bottom-up approach to business development. Every decision we make, every feature we plan to build, and every policy we enforce has to go through a rigorous proof-of-concept process from the field. Having a system to accommodate this process and living it as part of our culture is the key to maintaining our swift development as a customer-first company.

With the expansion of financial services in collaboration with institutions and fintech providers, how does Semaai plan to address the unique financial needs of agri-retailers and farmers? What role does technology play in enhancing financial inclusivity in the agriculture sector?

The unique integration of fintech institutions with our know-how of the input market, coupled with the data collected through a marketplace, uniquely positions us to develop tailored solutions for key stakeholders.

Also Read: Semaai nets funding to create integrated digital ecosystem for farmers, toko tanis in Indonesia

Can you provide insights into the partnerships with financial institutions and fintech providers? How do these collaborations enhance Semaai’s ability to provide comprehensive financial solutions to its users?

We have multiple integrations and conversations underway for digital financial services. We are exploring everything from supply chain financing to insurance to farmer lending. Watch this space for more.

The agronomy advisory service plays a crucial role in Semaai’s ecosystem. How is educational content organised, and how do you ensure that farmers can access relevant information to improve their farming practices?

Currently, the agronomy service is focused on pests and disease detection, and the educational content on the marketplace app is organised around that. With the raise, we are exploring digital tools to help farmers adopt better practices.

Looking ahead, what are the key milestones and plans for Semaai, both in terms of geographical expansion and the enhancement of your agri-tech solutions? How do you envision Semaai’s role in shaping the future of Indonesia’s agricultural landscape?

Our vision is to be the digital platform of choice for Indonesian agriculture, and we can only achieve this by addressing the different needs of our customers. Our priority is to advance our solution stack further to better cater to the needs of our customers, and we are confident we can easily expand this enhanced offering to the rest of Indonesia.

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OKX Ventures, the investment arm of global crypto exchange and Web3 technology company OKX, has joined the Series A funding round of Polyhedra Network.

The amount has not been undisclosed.

Polyhedra Network builds the next generation of infrastructure for Web3, focusing on interoperability, scalability and privacy, using advanced zero-knowledge (ZK) proof technology.

Also Read: What metaverse trends should you keep an eye on in 2024?

Polyhedra Network is the company behind zkBridge protocol, which facilitates trustless cross-chain infrastructure for Layer 1 and Layer 2 interoperability. By utilizing ZK proof technology, zkBridge enables the receiving chain to verify specific state transitions on the sending chain. This approach ensures better security without relying on external assumptions and reduces the costs associated with on-chain verification.

In April 2023, Polyhedra Network launched ‘zkBridge Mainnet Alpha,’ providing interoperability for over 20 Layer 1 and Layer 2 blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain and Arbitrium. zkBridge, secured by Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARK) technology, is the first trustless, efficient, secure and universal cross-chain interoperability protocol.

Also Read: Whampoa Digital, Wemade partner to form US$100M Web3 fund

In 2023, Polyhedra Network launched deVirgo, a novel distributed proof system that speeds up proof generation and recursive proofs, reducing the on-chain proof verification costs of zkBridge. In addition, it recently introduced its Bitcoin messaging protocol with zkBridge, bringing trustless interoperability to the Bitcoin ecosystem through ZK proof technology.

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In a recent survey of the behaviour and preference of Indonesian fintech services users in the second half of 2023, research firm Jakpat revealed buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) as one of the most popular fintech services in the country, with 25 per cent of users using them in addition to e-wallet (75 per cent) and mobile banking (45 per cent).

Involving more than 1,500 respondents of various ages, the survey revealed that in the second half of last year, 86 per cent of respondents had made a form of digital payment. They also performed other finance activities that included paying for credits (37 per cent), investing (37 per cent), and insurance (24 per cent).

In choosing a fintech platform, Indonesian users considered the following factors: Being registered on the Financial Services Authority (OJK) at 55 per cent, easy method of payment at 54 per cent, and an easy-to-use, user-friendly app at 50 per cent.

In a press statement, Jakpat Head of Research Aska Primardi explained the reason behind the rising popularity of BNPL, which is attributed to users’ ability to afford daily necessities and lifestyle needs.

“Considering how a single user might run out of salary to spend in less than a month, BNPL comes out as a solution for these users,” he said.

Also Read: Fintech funding in Southeast Asia hits a five-year low in 2023

Greater financial literacy in Indonesia

Another element that the survey looked into was user behaviour, particularly how Indonesian fintech service users view financial planning. It revealed that two-thirds of users have an understanding of the importance of financial planning and its role in achieving life goals.

Half of the respondents also saw savings and investments as relevant to their lives today. Of these respondents, 28 per cent believed that saving is the best option for the time being, while 10 per cent admitted to not having the budget to save.

“More than half of the respondents have a good understanding of the importance of financial planning. Half of them are also aware of the importance of having emergency funds, savings, insurance, and even investments,” Primardi said.

For investments, the most popular products owned by the respondents are mutual funds (42 per cent), deposits (36 per cent), and shares (32 per cent).

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On January 09, Singapore-based growth equity investment firm Asia Partners announced the final close of its second fund at US$474 million, which is 23 per cent larger than the inaugural US$384 million fund. With the final close of Fund II, Asia Partners has reached US$1 billion in assets under management.

In an interview with e27, Asia Partners – which has backed well-known names like ShopBack and Doctor Anywhere –sheds light on its optimism regarding Southeast Asia’s thriving tech ecosystem amid global IPO hurdles. With seven new publicly traded tech companies surpassing a US$1 billion market cap by 2022, well ahead of their 2019 prediction, Asia Partners explores the unique factors propelling the region’s entrepreneurial and innovative surge.

The interview with Nicholas A. Nash, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, delves into the firm’s investment strategy, targeting sectors with untapped public company potential. Additionally, it highlights the significance of employee and advisory board involvement and addresses the fund’s approach to Southeast Asia’s diverse markets.

Edited excerpts:

Given the challenging environment for IPOs and fundraising globally, what factors contribute to Asia Partners’s optimism about SEA being a “golden age of entrepreneurship and innovation”? How does the firm plan to navigate the current market conditions?

We have shared a perspective on this important question for several years in our roughly annual Southeast Asia Internet Reports.

Also Read: Asia Partners’s maiden fund hits final close at US$384M

There are multiple mutually reinforcing data points that help drive our constructive view of Southeast Asia’s potential.

For example:

But, probably the most interesting data point is this: In 2019, we formally predicted that by 2029, there would be at least ten more publicly traded technology companies from Southeast Asia with at least a US$1 billion market capitalisation. By the end of 2022, there were already seven new ones — well ahead of schedule for our prediction.

This is not to say that every year — between 2019 and 2029 — will be equally conducive for IPOs. The IPO markets tend to follow a roughly three- to four-year cycle between over-valuation and under-valuation. The periods of over-valuation tend to lead to periods in which IPOs are harder, which then gradually melt away to periods where IPOs resume.

Technology companies from Asia with at least US$25 million in gross profits tend to be qualified to become public companies. Southeast Asia is home to a meaningful population of such companies – some of which we are grateful to have in our portfolio.

Asia Partners targets investments of US$20-100 million per deal. Could you elaborate on the specific sectors or industries within the region the fund is particularly interested in and why?

We find that Southeast Asia is closely following the pattern of China, which had its first technology IPO in the mid-1990s and then built an extraordinarily successful ecosystem over the next three decades:

A similar pattern is unfolding here in Southeast Asia, albeit roughly a decade shifted in time:

We are interested in investments across many of these rows. Still, we are particularly interested in rows where there is not yet a public company from Southeast Asia or not yet enough public companies from Southeast Asia. Our portfolio thus far closely mirrors that approach.

Interestingly, over 9 per cent of Asia Partners II’s capital is from employees and advisory board members. Could you share more about the significance of their involvement and how it aligns with your vision for the fund?

It is all about alignment. We want the vast majority of our savings to be in the same investments we make on behalf of our global limited partners.

Southeast Asia is known for its diversity in terms of languages, consumer preferences, and regulations. In what ways does Asia Partners plan to address or navigate these challenges as the fund continues to make investments in the region?

Southeast Asia’s diversity lends itself to two frequent ‘go-to-market strategies’ we find entrepreneurs pursuing. In strategy 1, the company focuses primarily on Indonesia, and in strategy 2, it focuses on the region, but often from a ‘home base’ in Singapore or occasionally Malaysia.

Also Read: Fintech funding in Southeast Asia hits a five-year low in 2023

We are very interested in seeing whether a third strategy will emerge over time, focused on single countries other than Indonesia, particularly as the GDP of each of the other five major economies grows.

With US$1 billion in assets under management, what are the fund’s outlook and plans for the coming years? Are there new initiatives, partnerships, or focus areas that Asia Partners is exploring for future growth and impact in Southeast Asia?

For several years, going back to our first Asia Partners Internet Report in 2019, we have been quantifying the Series C and D gap for technology growth equity in Southeast Asia.

Our strategy, again as articulated in our roughly annual Internet Reports, has remained quite consistent since our inception and is grounded in three core pillars:

•  The long-term growth potential of Southeast Asia, a region with almost 10 per cent of the world’s population, and Southeast Asia’s increasing economic connectivity to the rest of Asia and the world.
•  The rapid growth of innovative technology and technology-enabled businesses in the region, many of which are platforms with pan-regional or global aspirations.
•  The scarcity of growth equity capital for these companies, particularly in the US$20 million to US$100 million investment size range, often described as the ‘Series C/D gap’ between early-stage venture capital and the public capital markets.

Observing how these three pillars interact and intersect – and, most importantly, evolve – has fascinated us greatly. For example, three themes which we have discussed in our Internet Reports, which we might highlight as interesting developments over the years, include:

• The increasing inter-connectivity of Southeast Asian companies with the rest of Asia, and indeed the world. Companies like Singapore-headquartered Shopback now operate in a dozen countries across three continents. SCI has operations across Southeast Asia and China, and RedDoorz derives virtually all of its revenues from Southeast Asia but has important technology development capabilities in India.
• The rising importance of enterprise software as an investment theme in Southeast Asia. We see enormous potential here, amplified by Singapore’s role as the ‘commercial capital of Asia’, as measured by the number of people on LinkedIn who have Asia, APAC, or Asia-Pacific in their job titles.
• The increasingly important role Southeast Asia is playing, and will continue to play, in the global semiconductor value chain.

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Bangkok-based biotechnology firm UniFAHS has secured US$1.4 million in seed funding, with A2D Ventures leading the investment.

ADB Ventures and Thailand’s InnoSpace also participated.

UniFAHS plans to utilise the funds to expand production capacity and increase market reach in Southeast and South Asia through strategic partnerships, targeting a 20 per cent growth in customer segments by 2024 to influence global food production.

Founded in 2020, UniFAHS utilises its patented phage technology for sustainable and safe food production, specialising in meat alternatives. The company actively contributes to combating antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and advocates for climate-friendly agriculture.

Also Read: Fintech funding in Southeast Asia hits a five-year low in 2023

UniFAHS adopts a ‘One Health’ approach, recognising the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health to address challenges holistically.

Dr Kitiya Vongkamjan, Co-Founder of UniFAHS, stated, “Our vision at UniFAHS is to create a sustainable future for food production. This funding is a financial boost and a strong endorsement of our phage technology’s potential to revolutionise the agriculture and food safety sectors.”

UniFAHS has partnered with leading poultry producers, employing phage technology to address bacterial control challenges and combat antimicrobial resistance in agriculture and animal health.

“This investment underscores our confidence in Thai founders and Thailand-based startups’ potential to redefine and recreate industries, offering solutions that can be exported to global markets and achieve substantial growth quickly,” said Ankit Upadhyay, Founder and CEO of A2D Ventures.

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Be Group, the Vietnamese startup behind the multi-service consumer platform ‘Be’,  has secured VND 739.5 billion (US$30.3 million) funding from VPBank Securities Joint Stock Company (VPBankS), a subsidiary of VPBank.

The fresh capital injection will enable Be Group to accelerate its expansion, particularly in the realms of ride-hailing, delivery, and digital finance services.

With plans to explore new markets and services within the consumer and transportation sectors, Be Group aims to serve 20 million users in collaboration with strategic partners.

Also Read: Be Group ties up with VPBank to launch digital bank Cake in Vietnam

The company has set an ambitious target to achieve EBITDA-positive status in the 2024 financial year.

Upon completion of the deal, VPBankS will acquire shares in Be Holdings, the parent company of Be Group, becoming its first institutional investor.

The investment comes as a follow-up to a prior financial arrangement with Deutsche Bank Singapore in 2022.

A representative from VPBankS said: “By officially becoming a shareholder of Be, VPBankS anticipates that this deal will bring great investment return by riding on the potential presented by the multi-service consumer platform Be, which is one of the frontrunners to become one of Vietnam’s technology unicorns.”

Also Read: Is Vietnam Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing digital economy?

Started around five years ago, Be Group has worked with over 300,000 drivers. In 2023 alone, the company facilitated over 120 million rides, maintaining a dominant 35 per cent market share in the ride-hailing sector across 40 cities and provinces in Vietnam.

The platform currently offers more than 15 services, including multimodal transportation, express delivery, food delivery, insurance, and telecommunications.

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2023 has been one of the most exciting years to witness the breakthrough of AI technology and Generative AI in particular, with the increasing popularity of ChatGPT (Generative Pretrained Transformer) and LLM (Large Language Models). This is thanks to its impressive ability to comprehend human languages and make decisions that remarkably mimic human intelligence.

ChatGPT reached an unprecedented milestone of 1 million users within five days. Since then, big tech giants have been quickly entering the race, releasing dozens of LLMs both open source and proprietary, such as LaMDA (Google AI), Megatron-Turing NLG (NVIDIA), PaLM (Google AI), Llama-2 (Meta AI), Bloom (Hugging Face), Wu Dao 2.0 (Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence), Jurassic-1 Jumbo (AI21 Labs) and Bard (Google AI), etc.

Alongside the race of big tech giants, the adoption of ChatGPT and LLMs in business is growing rapidly. According to the Master of Code Global report “Statistics of ChatGPT & Generative AI in business: 2023 Report”, 49 per cent of companies presently use ChatGPT, while 30 per cent intend to use it in the future.

Another report by Forbes suggests that 70 per cent of organisations are currently exploring generative AI, which includes LLMs. This suggests that LLMs are gaining traction in the enterprise world and that more and more companies are seeing the potential of this technology to revolutionise their businesses.

Multimodal Generative AI

Although ChatGPT and most other LLMs have been demonstrating superior performance in human language understanding (in text form), text is just one kind of data modal human beings perceive every day. However, multimodal data is ubiquitous in the real world, as humans often communicate and interact with all types of information, including images, audio, and video.

Multimodal data also poses significant challenges for artificial intelligence systems, such as data heterogeneity, data alignment, data fusion, data representation, model complexity, computational cost, and evaluation metrics. The AI community, therefore, often opts to successfully address the unimodal data before dealing with more challenging ones.

Inspired by the tremendous success of LLMs, the AI community has been creating Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) that can achieve similar levels of generality and expressiveness in the multimodal domain. LMMs can leverage massive amounts of multimodal data and perform diverse tasks with minimal supervision.

Also Read: Navigate in a cookie-less world, leverage AI and think community-first

Incorporating the other modalities into LLMs creates LMMs, which solve many challenging tasks involving text, images, audio, videos, etc., such as captioning images, visual question answering, and editing images by natural language commands etc.

OpenAI has been pioneering the development of GPT-4V, the upgraded multimodal version of the GPT-4 model that can understand and generate information from both text and image inputs. GPT-4V can perform various tasks, such as generating images from textual descriptions, answering questions about images, and editing images with natural language commands.

• LLaVA-1.5: This is a model that can understand and generate information from both text and images. It can perform tasks such as answering questions about images, generating captions for images, and editing images with natural language commands.
• Alpaca-LoRA: This is a model that can perform various natural language tasks by providing natural language instructions or prompts.

Adept, on the other hand, has been aiming at a bigger ambition: building an AI model that can interact with everything on your computer. “Adept is building an entirely new way to get things done. It takes your goals in plain language and turns them into actions on the software you use every day.” They believe that AI models reading and writing text are still valuable, but ones using computers like human beings are even more valuable to enterprise businesses.

This is driving the race among big tech companies to deliver Large Multimodal Models. It will take a few years for LMMs to reach the same levels as LLMs today.

Generating vs leveraging Large Foundation Models

Producing AI applications for many diverse tasks has never been easier and more efficient than before. Recalling several years ago, if we would like to make a sentiment analysis application, for example, it may take a few months to implement POC with both in-house and public datasets.

It also takes a few months to deploy the sentiment analysis models into the production system. Now, LLMs facilitate the development of such applications in a few days, simply formulating a prompt for LLMs to evaluate a text as positive, neutral, or negative.

In the field of computer vision, visual prompting techniques, introduced by Landing AI, also leverage the power of Large Vision Models (LVMs) to solve a variety of vision tasks, such as object detection, object recognition, semantic segmentation, etc.

Also Read: How Asia Pacific startups propel the evolution of Generative AI

Visual Prompting uses visual cues, such as images, icons, or patterns, to reprogram a pre-trained Large Vision Model for a new downstream task. Visual prompting can reduce the need for extensive data labelling and model training and enable faster and easier deployment of computer vision applications.

Generating pre-trained Large Foundation Models (LFMs), including LLMs and LVMs, requires not only AI expertise but also a huge investment in infrastructure, i.e., data lake and computing servers. Hence, the race to create pre-trained LFMs among big tech companies this year will continue in 2024 and in the years to come.

Some are proprietary, but many others are open source, leading to diverse alternatives for enterprises. Meanwhile, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and AI startups will be the main forces in realising the commercials of LFMs. Thus, they will primarily focus on the creation of LFMs applications.

Agent concept in Generative AI

The agent concept is a new trend in Generative AI that has the potential to revolutionise the way we interact with computers. Agents are software modules that can autonomously or semi-autonomously spin up sessions (in this case, language models and other workflow-related sessions) as needed to pursue a goal.

One of the key benefits of using agents is that they can automate many of the tasks that are currently performed by humans. This can free up humans to focus on more strategic and creative tasks. Agents can be designed to be more user-friendly and easier to use than traditional Generative AI tools, making Generative AI more accessible to a wider range of users.

Here are some of the trends of agent concept in Generative AI:

• Increased use of agents to automate tasks: As Generative AI becomes more powerful and sophisticated, we can expect to see a greater use of agents to automate tasks that are currently performed by humans. For example, agents can be used to automate the process of creating and deploying AI models.
• Increased use of agents to make Generative AI more accessible: As agents become more user-friendly and easier to use, we can expect to see greater use of agents to make Generative AI more accessible to a wider range of users. This could lead to a new wave of innovation as more and more people are able to use Generative AI to create new products and services.
• Development of new agent-based Generative AI tools and platforms: As the agent concept becomes more popular, we can expect to see the development of new agent-based Generative AI tools and platforms. These tools and platforms will make it easier for developers to create and deploy agent-based Generative AI applications.

Also Read: Gen AI in banking: How to ensure a successful transformation for an age-old industry

Here are some specific examples of how the agent concept is being used in Generative AI today:

• Agent-based Generative AI tools: There are a number of agent-based Generative AI tools that are currently available. For example, Auto-GPT and BabyAGI are two tools that allow users to create and deploy agent-based Generative AI applications.
• Agent-based Generative AI platforms: There are also a number of agent-based Generative AI platforms that are currently available. For example, Google’s AI Platform and Amazon Web Services’ SageMaker platform both allow users to deploy and manage agent-based Generative AI applications.
• Agent-based Generative AI applications: There are a number of agent-based Generative AI applications that are currently in use. For example, agent-based Generative AI applications are being used to create new products and services, automate tasks, and make Generative AI more accessible to a wider range of users.

Overall, the agent concept is a new and promising trend in Generative AI. It is being used to develop new tools, platforms, and applications that are having a significant impact on a variety of industries.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

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Silicon Box, an advanced semiconductor packaging company specialising in cutting-edge chiplet integration services, has secured US$200 million in a Series B fundraising round, bringing its valuation to over US$1 billion.

The capital came from the company founders, as well as other strategic investors, including BRV Capital, Event Horizon Capital, Maverick Capital, Prasedium Capital, Tata Electronics, TDK Ventures, and UMC Capital.

The money will be used to expand production in its advanced US$2-billion packaging factory in Singapore, which has been in mass production for early customers since October 2023, shortly after its grand opening on July 20, 2023.

Also Read: Semiconductor manufacturing nations set for growth as AI takes center stage: Alpha Intelligence Capital CEO

Current semiconductor chips are hitting a wall in scalability, limited by conventional packaging approaches. Meanwhile, chip designers’ development and manufacturing costs have become cost-prohibitive except for the most well-funded players, leaving the industry bottlenecked and consumers paying high prices.

Founded in 2021 by semiconductor design and packaging industry titans Dr Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai and CEO Dr Byung Joon Han, Silicon Box aims to bring affordable, high-performance, power-optimised, scalable solutions that enable next-gen large language models (LLM), generative AI, automotive, data centres and mobile computing.

The startup enables chiplet architecture, allowing chip designers freedom from the constraints of a single, monolithic chip for processing. By leveraging multiple smaller chips interconnected in a single package, chip designers can create the equivalent of a “system-on-a-chip” (SoC) in a package.

Chiplets enable dramatically better performance, smaller device sizes, and better device reliability. Most importantly, they make it easier for foundries and chip designers to collaborate to build chips for the most cutting-edge applications.

The company claims its solutions are more reliable and cost-effective due to the standardised packaging process for the shortest chiplet-to-chiplet interconnection, reducing the manufacturing costs for high-performance devices by up to 90 per cent, with better thermal and electrical performance. This is especially crucial for the high-growth AI accelerator market.

Also Read: How Infineon aims to build better semiconductors with the help of Singapore startups

“We are leading the pack to bring high performance, power-optimised, affordable, and scalable solutions that enable next-gen large language models (LLM), generative AI, automotive, data centres, and mobile computing globally,” said CEO Joon Han. “Our state-of-the-art factory and advanced panel-level packaging are delivering a solution to scale high-growth markets, such as AI accelerators, to the masses.”

The post Silicon Box bags US$200M to expand production in its US$2B semiconductor factory in Singapore appeared first on e27.

Indonesia-based HR tech company VENTENY today announced that it has acquired 30 per cent of shares in PT Digitalisasi Perangkat Indonesia (DPI), a fintech holding company providing integrated digital banking services which includes rural digitalisation, financing, e-money, and e-remittance.

In a press statement, the company said that the acquisition is a way for VENTENY to acquire DPI’s e-money license, which it has secured for its Dipay platform.

The integration of Dipay into the VENTENY ecosystem will allow users to pay bills, top-up credits, and send remittances. It is also expected to increase the level of security in the ecosystem.

In the future, VENTENY also wants to introduce new features, such as enabling users to pay employee salaries using the e-money feature.

Also Read: How AnyMind Group achieved profitability through its approach to human resource and leadership

“Through this corporate action, VENTENY aims to optimise the integration of digital payment technology to help users perform transactions. In addition to giving added value for users, the e-money integration will enable a more practical and efficient payment experience through the VENTENY Employee Super App,” said VENTENY Founder and Group CEO Jun Waide.

IDX-listed VENTENY provides an “employee super app” ecosystem with features including insurance, employee benefits, and corporate training for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The company operates in the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and Japan. It claimed 9,600 SMEs onboard its platform, with over 250,000 users of its app in Indonesia.

VENTENY said it recorded a 125 per cent increase in revenue in Q3 2023 compared to Q3 2022. It has also experienced a 57 per cent increase in profits from Q2 2022 to Q3 2023.

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Image Credit: RunwayML

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