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Tuesday, 10 February 2026

3Before9

3 must-know AI stories before your 9am coffee

Who should pay attention

AI founders | Investors | Regulators | Infrastructure developers

What changes next

Debate is likely to intensify for AI shopping trust and transparency.

1

South Korea AI startup Wrtn plans U.S. expansion and IPO

South Korean AI entertainment startup Wrtn, known for its interactive storytelling service, is expanding into the U.S. market and targeting an IPO as early as 2028, after achieving strong revenue growth from South Korea and Japan.

Why it matters for Asia

an Asia-born AI startup planning an international expansion and IPO highlights regional innovation strength and shows Asian AI companies can scale beyond home markets.

2

Visa survey finds 74 % of Asia-Pacific consumers use AI for shopping

A new survey shows 74 % of Asia-Pacific consumers already use AI tools for shopping activities, but concerns about trust and transparency at checkout remain significant, with 26 % unsure whether AI recommendations align with their interests.

Why it matters for Asia

as AI becomes a mainstream part of consumer experiences, trust and transparency issues could shape regulatory priorities and platform design requirements across Asia.

3

Asia AI Infrastructure Malaysia Summit 2026 highlights regional AI build-out

The Asia AI Infrastructure Malaysia Summit 2026 will bring together industry, government, and tech leaders to shape the future of regional AI infrastructure, focusing on cloud, data centres, connectivity, and sustainable compute capacity.

Why it matters for Asia

infrastructure, not just models, underpins AI growth. Regional coordination and investment in physical AI foundations can speed adoption and competitiveness in Asia.

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.