
Indonesia’s Davos push was less about headline-grabbing meetings and more about signalling intent in a world where semiconductors have become geopolitical currency. By courting Nvidia, AWS, and leading US cybersecurity firms, Jakarta is making it clear that it no longer sees chips as a peripheral manufacturing play, but as foundational infrastructure for its digital and economic ambitions.
What stands out is timing. As AI accelerators, data centre GPUs, and advanced packaging emerge as global bottlenecks, Indonesia is positioning itself precisely where supply chains are under strain. Its recent progress — from the Batam assembly facility to advanced packaging investments in East Java — gives the pitch credibility. This is no longer a greenfield dream; it is an ecosystem under construction.
Yet ambition alone will not secure a place in the upper tiers of the semiconductor value chain. Assembly and testing are important entry points, but they are also crowded and margin-thin. The harder work lies in talent depth, sustained capital flows, and policy consistency over decades, not election cycles. Fast permits and generous incentives buy attention, not loyalty.
For Nvidia, AWS, and others, Indonesia offers optionality: cost advantages, geopolitical neutrality, and scale. Whether that optionality turns into long-term commitment will depend on execution. Davos opens doors; factories, engineers, and stable rules decide who walks through them.
REGIONAL
Indonesia courts Nvidia and AWS as it eyes a bigger role in global chip supply chains: Over the past three years, Indonesia has moved aggressively to establish a foothold in the semiconductor industry, transitioning from a near-absent player to a credible assembly and testing destination.
Singapore places a US$786M bet on AI sovereignty: A large public fund creates room to expand national compute capacity, subsidise cloud access, and build shared research infrastructure that universities, labs, and startups can tap.
Juspay raises US$50M, makes secondaries mainstream in Indian fintech: WestBridge-backed round underscores how employee liquidity, cleaner cap tables, and price discovery are reshaping Asia’s private funding playbook. The company claims its annualised TPV now exceeds US$1T and that it processes 300M+ transactions daily.
Singapore’s AI startup Level3AI raises US$13M: Investors include Lightspeed, Beenext, and 500 Global. Level3AI builds customer support and sales agents for enterprises. It deploys its engineers to co-design the AI agents with the client. The agents are then integrated into the client’s text and voice support channels.
Singapore’s data centre firm DayOne eyes IPO at US$20B valuation: The firm considers hiring banks for a share sale that could occur as early as this year, and is also evaluating a dual listing in the US and Singapore. Earlier this month, DayOne completed a US$2B+ Series C round, which was expected to value the company at around US$10B.
Malaysia reopens Grok AI access after temporary ban: This follows the social media platform’s introduction of additional safety measures. The country temporarily blocked Grok earlier this month following concerns over a feature that allowed users to generate and share sexualised images.
FEATURES & INTERVIEWS
How SPUN uses agentic AI to untangle Southeast Asia’s visa mess: SPUN is a plug-and-play platform blending AI document checks with human savvy, boasting a 99% approval rate across thousands of applications. No blind automation here. AI flags dodgy docs or regulatory quirks, escalating to specialists.
How SMEs can vet and choose AI partners that truly deliver: AI is becoming a great equaliser for SMEs, lowering barriers through generative tools that boost agility, automate testing, improve software quality, and help smaller firms compete with enterprise giants globally.
INTERNATIONAL
UAE’s K2, WeRide to launch autonomous bus service in Abu Dhabi: K2, a local mobility solutions provider, will leverage its experience in fleet management and real-world mobility deployments, while WeRide will contribute its autonomous vehicle technology and deployment expertise.
South Korea launches US$186M AI manufacturing fund: This marks the largest allocation to date and an 11.5% increase from last year. The funding aims to support AI-powered manufacturing. The programme will fund shared equipment and facilities for testing, evaluation, and pilot projects.
BYD targets 1.3M overseas EV deliveries in 2026: The Chinese company plans to double its European showrooms to 2,000, and establish a local supply chain for European production. BYD also operates factories in Thailand and Brazil to support rising demand.
South Korea’s robotics industry faces supply chain risk: Korea ranked fourth globally in installed robotic equipment in 2024, with a high robot density of 1,012 robots per 10,000 employees. Despite this, nearly 89% of Korea’s imports of permanent magnets and 60% of raw materials like rare earth elements depend on China.
TikTok US uninstalls jump 150% after joint venture announcement: The deal was announced last January 22. Some users reacted skeptically after being asked to accept an updated privacy policy that mentions collecting sensitive data, though similar language already appeared in a version from August 2024.
Zoom’s Anthropic stake may be worth up to US$4B, analysts say: In May 2023, Anthropic announced a partnership with Zoom and said Zoom Ventures had invested, though the amount was not disclosed. Zoom reported US$51M in strategic investments that quarter, with analysts estimating most of it went to Anthropic.
EU tightens rules on WhatsApp to tackle harmful content: The move follows the platform’s reported 51.7M average MAUs in the EU during the HI 2025, surpassing the 45M-user threshold set by the DSA. The designation aims to strengthen oversight and accountability for platforms with significant user bases within the EU.
Antler Japan invests US$1.5M in 10 early-stage startups: The firm announced a new six-week Inception Residency for 2026, increasing initial funding to US$150,000 per startup. Selected companies operate in fields such as robotics, AI, logistics, legal tech, and biotech.
SEMICONDUCTOR
Taiwan electronics output hits record high on AI chip demand: The overall industrial production index rose to 112.2, with the manufacturing subindex climbing 17.9 percent to 113.1. The electronics component industry saw a 24.7% rise. In December, the industrial production index increased by 21.6% to 131.8.
Nvidia launches AI weather forecasting tools: The new models are designed to improve forecast accuracy and speed across different timescales. These open-source tools aim to make weather AI accessible for scientists, startups, and government agencies globally, reducing reliance on traditional supercomputers.
Microsoft, Tsinghua use Nvidia chip to train AI without real data: Using only synthetic data, the team trained a 7B-parameter coding model that outperformed larger 14B-parameter models on benchmarks. The experiment used 128 Nvidia H20 chips for 220 hrs during supervised fine-tuning and 32 H200 chips for 7 days during reinforcement learning.
Microsoft unveils new AI chip to cut reliance on Nvidia: The new Maia 200, an AI inference accelerator chip fabricated on TSMC’s 3nm process, is designed to improve the efficiency of large-scale AI workloads. The chip features native FP8/FP4 tensor cores, a redesigned memory system with 216GB HBM3e memory at 7TB/s.
AI
AI to add about US$607B to India’s economy by 2035: PwC: AI may add up to 15% to global GDP by that year, driven by productivity gains in sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, energy, and education. In agri, the sector’s gross value addition is projected to increase from US$637B in FY25 to US$2.4T in FY47.
Human-centric skills in the age of AI: How to never lose touch with humanity in the workplace: AI lacks the nuanced understanding and ethical reasoning that define human interactions. This is why human-centric skills remain relevant.
AI data centres vs climate: How can business leaders find a workable balance? AI adoption in Southeast Asia strains water and power resources, forcing businesses to confront ESG impacts and use AI more responsibly.
The US$1M per person revolution: How AI is reshaping Southeast Asia’s startup landscape: Southeast Asian startups are adopting AI to drive US$1 million revenue per employee through smart automation across research, content, and sales.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Building the ASEAN AI archipelago: How SEA can secure its place in the global AI value chain: ASEAN’s AI future depends on regional interoperability, deep localisation for SMEs, and an integrated semiconductor backbone—moving Southeast Asia from fragmented adoption to a resilient, collaborative force in the global AI value chain.
The surprising economics of orbital data centres — and the real solution: Falling launch costs make space-based solar viable for AI energy, but orbital data centres fail economically; the numbers favour beaming clean, firm power from space to Earth-based compute in future.
Hiring for human skills in a tech-heavy world: Southeast Asia must shift from tech-first thinking to human-centric problem-solving, using AI as a tool guided by empathy, critical thinking, and purpose-driven skills to ensure technology serves societies and governments.
Commercialisation ≠ sales: Understanding the difference early matters more than it seems: Early startups confuse sales with commercialisation, mistaking deals for validation. Without a clear commercialisation system, early revenue creates false traction, premature scaling, and fragile growth instead of repeatable businesses models.
The strategy trap: Why your best plan is failing to launch: Most SME strategies fail not from poor vision but weak execution, misaligned metrics and incentives, vague priorities, and unchanged behaviours, where leaders avoid decisions needed to turn intent into action.
Gold hits US$5K and crypto bleeds: What comes next? Markets opened amid geopolitical tensions, gold surged past US$5,000, equities diverged, Asia hedged dollar risk, while crypto slid on hacks and liquidations, exposing trust across traditional and digital financial systems.
The resume is dead: Why 80% of companies fail to hire based on real skills: Resumes dominate hiring despite being unreliable, leaving skills untested. As companies gamble on credentials, AI-driven, skills-based hiring is emerging to prioritise real ability, potential, and proof over polish.
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