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Thursday, 5 February 2026

3Before9

3 must-know AI stories before your 9am coffee

Who should pay attention

AI leaders, founders, enterprise decision-makers, and teams deploying AI across Asia.

What changes next

Regulatory expectations tighten, infrastructure buildout accelerates, and enterprise AI governance matures.

1

KKR and Singtel complete major data-centre acquisition in Asia

A consortium led by private equity firm KKR and Singapore Telecommunications (Singtel) has agreed to acquire the remaining 82 per cent stake in ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) for S$6.6 billion (about US$5.2 billion), valuing the digital infrastructure provider at S$13.8 billion.

Why it matters for Asia

building and owning data-centre capacity is crucial for AI and cloud growth in Asia, and this large-scale acquisition shows how investors are treating AI infrastructure as a core strategic asset.

2

Alibaba triples spending to promote its Qwen AI ahead of Chinese New Year

China’s Alibaba Group plans to spend three billion yuan (about US$431 million) to attract users to its Qwen AI app during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, significantly higher than rival incentives from Tencent and Baidu.

Why it matters for Asia

heavy subsidy campaigns reflect intensifying competition among China’s biggest tech firms for AI market share, shaping usage patterns and accelerating consumer adoption of large-language-model services across Asia.

3

Global AI investment surpasses US$500bn but accountability gaps remain

Global investment in artificial intelligence technologies is expected to exceed US$500 billion this year, yet analysts warn that corporate boards are not keeping pace with accountability measures, leaving risk and governance frameworks lagging behind growth.

Why it matters for Asia

rapid capital flows into AI heighten competitive pressure on Asia’s tech and corporate sectors, but insufficient oversight could expose enterprises and regulators to strategic and operational risks as AI expands across industries.

That's today's 3-Before-9.

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Recent Editions

Tuesday

14 April 2026

1.Japan's major technology companies, including SoftBank, Honda, Sony, and NEC, have launched a joint venture to build a trillion-parameter AI for autonomous machines, ensuring all data remains within Japan.
2.Chinese embodied AI startup Spirit AI secured $420 million from prominent investors, including Lei Jun and Jack Ma, to develop humanoid robots and general-purpose robotics.
3.These investments signify a strategic pivot in Asian AI, with Japan prioritising data sovereignty for physical AI and China focusing on hardware and real-world embodied intelligence.

Monday

13 April 2026

1.Japan committed an additional $4 billion in subsidies to Rapidus, bringing total public backing to $16.3 billion to establish a domestic 2nm chip foundry.
2.The Stanford HAI 2026 AI Index reports the performance gap between top US and Chinese frontier AI models has narrowed to just 2.7 percent.
3.Hong Kong opens the 2026 World Internet Conference Asia-Pacific Summit with six AI governance sub-forums spanning agents, security, finance and health.

Sunday

12 April 2026

1.UK regulators including the Bank of England are urgently convening with financial firms to assess cybersecurity risks from Anthropic's Claude Mythos Preview, which can find software vulnerabilities faster than human experts.
2.Grab unveiled 13 AI-powered features at GrabX 2026, building an Intelligence Layer on 20 billion rides and orders to serve as Southeast Asia's first AI-native superapp.
3.India's Sarvam AI is closing a $350 million round at a $1.5 billion valuation, the largest ever for a pure-play Indian AI company, with backing from Nvidia, Amazon and Bessemer.

Saturday

11 April 2026

1.TSMC reported a record Q1 revenue increase of 35 per cent to NT$1.13 trillion, primarily driven by strong demand for advanced AI chips.
2.OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are collaborating through the Frontier Model Forum to counter unauthorised AI model copying from Chinese firms.
3.Digital Realty is committing nearly S$7 billion to expand data centre capacity in Singapore, reinforcing the city-state as Asia-Pacific's critical AI infrastructure hub.

Thursday

9 April 2026

1.OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are collaboratively sharing threat intelligence via the Frontier Model Forum to counter adversarial distillation by Chinese AI firms.
2.This coordinated defence operation targets firms like DeepSeek and Moonshot AI, potentially impacting enterprise buyers in Southeast Asia and informing AI governance frameworks in the region.
3.Meta has launched Muse Spark, a closed-source multimodal model from its Superintelligence Labs, featuring a "Contemplating" mode for complex reasoning.

Wednesday

8 April 2026

1.GITEX AI Asia, the region's largest technology conference, opened in Singapore, attracting significant investment and showcasing the city-state's role as a deep tech hub.
2.The World Bank revised East Asia's 2026 growth forecast downwards to 4.2%, while identifying AI-related exports and investment as a regional economic strength.
3.Microsoft committed $10 billion to Japan's AI infrastructure from 2026 to 2029, partnering with Sakura Internet and SoftBank to address the country's projected shortfall of 3.26 million AI workers by 2040.