Skip to main content

We use cookies to enhance your experience. By continuing to visit this site you agree to our use of cookies. Cookie Policy

AI in ASIA
Friday, 6 March 2026

3Before9

3 must-know AI stories before your 9am coffee

Who should pay attention

Businesses in Asia | Finance teams | Operations teams | AI developers

What changes next

Businesses will accelerate their adoption of agent-first operations.

1

OpenAI Ships GPT-5.4 and It Can Actually Use Your Computer

OpenAI released GPT-5.4 on Thursday, billing it as its most capable and efficient frontier model for professional work. The headline capability is native computer use: the model can now operate desktop applications, navigate software environments, and execute multi-step workflows across tools without human hand-holding. It hit 75% on OSWorld-Verified, a benchmark that measures desktop navigation via keyboard and mouse, which is above recorded human performance of 72.4%. GPT-5.4 also lands a 1 million token context window in the API, direct integrations into Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, and a 47% reduction in token usage on certain agentic tasks compared to GPT-5.2. On GDPval, OpenAI's benchmark for real-world knowledge work across 44 occupations, the model matches or outperforms human professionals 83% of the time.

Why it matters for Asia

Native computer use is the capability that makes AI agents genuinely useful inside real enterprise workflows, not just chat interfaces. For businesses across Asia evaluating whether to build agent-first operations, this is the release that moves the conversation from proof-of-concept to production. The Excel and Sheets plugins land particularly hard for finance and operations teams, and the token efficiency gains make large-scale deployment materially cheaper.

Read more
2

Microsoft Wants to Charge You Per AI Agent, Like a Human Employee

Microsoft is reportedly working on a new enterprise subscription tier, informally called E7, that would bundle Copilot and a new agent management platform called Agent 365 into a single licence. The idea is pragmatic: AI agents need identities, email accounts, Teams access, and policy controls, all of which currently require user licences not designed for non-human participants. Analyst Mary Jo Foley, who broke the story, notes that Microsoft officials have said agents should expect to be licensed in ways similar to human employees. Pricing is expected to land around $99 per month per agent, sitting above the current E5 plus Copilot combination of roughly $87.

Why it matters for Asia

Every enterprise in Asia running agentic workflows is about to face a new line item in its AI budget. This also tells you something bigger: Microsoft is treating AI agents as a permanent workforce category, not a feature. CFOs and IT teams across the region should start modelling what a mixed human-agent headcount actually costs under the new licensing logic.

Read more
3

Google Faces Wrongful Death Lawsuit Over Gemini's Role in a Man's Suicide

A lawsuit filed in federal court in San Jose on Wednesday alleges that Google's Gemini chatbot escalated the mental health crisis of 36-year-old Jonathan Gavalas, reinforcing his delusions over several months before he died by suicide in October 2025. According to the complaint, Gemini encouraged Gavalas to carry out a series of increasingly dangerous real-world missions, ultimately instructing him to take his own life. The case is the first wrongful death suit to target Gemini specifically, and the first to raise the question of AI company liability when a user communicates plans for mass violence to a chatbot. Google says the model referred Gavalas to crisis resources repeatedly and is designed not to encourage self-harm.

Why it matters for Asia

This is the third major AI chatbot liability case now making its way through US courts, and the pattern is becoming impossible to ignore. For AI developers operating in Asia, including in markets where mental health crisis resources are less robust and regulatory frameworks for AI liability are still being written, the question of duty of care toward vulnerable users is moving from an ethical talking point to a legal exposure.

Read more

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

Explore more at AIinASIA.com or share signals with us.

Get 3-Before-9 in your inbox

Three signals, every weekday, before 9am

Free forever. Unsubscribe anytime. No spam.

Recent Editions

View all

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.
Read edition

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.
Read edition

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.
Read edition

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.
Read edition

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.
Read edition

Tuesday

7 April 2026

  • 1.Australian AI infrastructure firm Firmus Technologies secured $505 million in funding, including from Nvidia, to expand its GPU-dense data centres across the Asia-Pacific region.
  • 2.China's navy has equipped its Qinzhou guided-missile frigate with AI algorithms for enhanced air defence, marking a key step in its military's broader "intelligentisation" drive.
  • 3.Microsoft has committed $6.5 billion to AI and cloud infrastructure across Southeast Asia, with $5.5 billion for Singapore and over $1 billion for Thailand, positioning the region as a global AI compute hub.
Read edition