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AI in ASIA
Thursday, 5 March 2026

3Before9

3 must-know AI stories before your 9am coffee

Who should pay attention

Students | Educators | Small Business Owners | AI Developers

What changes next

The AI model quality and trust race will intensify.

1

Apple's MacBook Neo Is Real, and It's $599

Apple officially announced the MacBook Neo yesterday at its Special Experience event in New York, London and Shanghai. The name leaked a day early in regulatory filings, but the details are now confirmed: A18 Pro chip (the same one in iPhone 16 Pro), 13-inch Liquid Retina display, 8GB RAM, 16-hour battery life, and four colours: Silver, Blush, Citrus, and Indigo. Base price is $599 with 256GB storage, or $699 for 512GB and Touch ID. Education pricing starts at $499. Pre-orders are live now, with shipping from March 11.

Why it matters for Asia

At $400 less than the MacBook Air, this is the Mac Apple has never been willing to build before. For Southeast Asia, where Chromebooks and budget Windows machines dominate classrooms and SME desks, this is a genuine category disruptor. Every MacBook Neo runs Apple Intelligence on-device. The on-device AI conversation in schools and small businesses just got a lot more affordable.

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2

OpenAI Ships a Less Preachy ChatGPT

OpenAI released GPT-5.3 Instant on Tuesday, an update to its most-used model focused on something most users have complained about for months: tone. The previous version would open responses with "Stop. Take a breath." and similar phrases that derailed conversations. The new model cuts unnecessary caveats, reduces moralising preambles, and reportedly brings hallucinations down 26.8% when using web search. Available to all ChatGPT users now. OpenAI then immediately teased GPT-5.4 with a single post: "5.4 sooner than you think."

Why it matters for Asia

OpenAI is accelerating its iteration cycle under real competitive pressure. The week's Anthropic drama sent Claude to the top of global app store charts, and ChatGPT uninstalls spiked 295% after the Pentagon deal backlash. The model quality race is now also a trust race, and OpenAI knows it.

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3

The Anthropic Fallout Is Getting Wider

Defence tech companies are now actively telling employees to stop using Claude following the Pentagon blacklist. Ten portfolio companies at defence-focused VC firm J2 Ventures have already dropped Claude for government use cases. Palantir, which counts on government contracts for 60% of its US revenue and embedded Claude into classified networks, is under pressure to migrate. Meanwhile Congressional Democrats and at least one Republican senator have called the whole episode "sophomoric," with Senator Ron Wyden pledging to "pull out all the stops" to fight back and seek bipartisan legislation.

Why it matters for Asia

This is no longer just a US story. Any Asian enterprise with exposure to US defence supply chains, or using Claude as a core AI dependency, is watching a live test of what AI governance looks like when a government decides to make an example. The precedent being set this week will shape how AI contracts are written in boardrooms across the region.

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Recent Editions

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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