3 Before 9: March 11, 2026

Advanced Machine Intelligence, the Paris-based research startup co-founded by former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, confirmed on 10 March that it has closed a $1.03 billion seed round - reportedly the largest ever for a European company. The round values AMI at $3.5 billion before investment and includes backing from Nvidia, Singapore's Temasek, South Korean fund SBVA, Jeff Bezos' personal investment vehicle, and a clutch of European VCs. Day-to-day leadership sits with Alexandre LeBrun, previously CEO of medical AI firm Nabla, while LeCun serves as executive chair. The company is building what it calls world models - AI systems designed to reason from real-world physical data rather than from text prediction - with initial applications aimed at healthcare, robotics, and industrial automation. Offices are confirmed in Paris, New York, Montreal, and Singapore, with LeBrun citing proximity to future Asian clients as the rationale for the regional base.

Japan's government formally designated 61 goods and technologies as priority targets for state investment on 10 March, following a meeting of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's growth strategy panel. Physical AI systems - software-driven AI that controls robots and industrial machinery - were listed among 27 items under early-stage review, alongside quantum computing, regenerative medicine, and marine drones. Each of the 17 identified strategic sectors will have a designated minister responsible for multi-year budget planning, and officials have committed to publishing spending estimates and implementation timelines for every priority item by the summer. Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry had already earmarked roughly 387 billion yen for domestic AI development in fiscal 2026 alone, quadrupling prior-year levels. The selection explicitly reflects both economic security considerations and export potential.

Nebius, the Nasdaq-listed AI cloud company, announced on 10 March that it is formally expanding across Asia-Pacific, appointing John Haarer as General Manager for the region. Haarer - formerly at Cloudflare and Twilio - will be based in Singapore and will lead commercial growth across Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and India. The move comes off the back of 479% year-on-year revenue growth in 2025, a contract backlog exceeding $20 billion tied to multi-year infrastructure deals with Microsoft and Meta, and $3.7 billion in cash on hand. Nebius positions itself as purpose-built for AI workloads, offering GPU cloud capacity to research institutions and enterprise customers who cannot or do not want to rely solely on hyperscaler supply. The company is targeting annualised run-rate revenue of $7 billion to $9 billion by end of 2026.