3 Before 9: Google's Wiz Acquisition March 13

Google Closes Its $32 Billion Wiz Acquisition

Google has officially completed its purchase of cloud security company Wiz for $32 billion in cash, the largest acquisition in the company's history. Wiz will join Google Cloud but keep its brand and continue protecting customers across AWS, Azure, Oracle Cloud and Google's own infrastructure. The deal cleared US antitrust review in November 2025 and European Union approval in February 2026, with Singapore and Japan among the final jurisdictions to sign off in March 2026. Wiz had crossed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue during 2025 and brings roughly 1,800 employees and a product specifically built for multicloud environments.

Why it matters for Asia

Singapore and Japan being among the last regulatory gatekeepers is a signal of how seriously APAC authorities are now scrutinising large technology consolidations. For enterprise buyers across Southeast Asia and Japan already running AI workloads across multiple cloud providers, Wiz offers protection against a growing class of threats - prompt injection, model-level attacks and code-to-cloud vulnerabilities. Google has explicitly committed to keeping Wiz available across competing clouds, which should ease adoption conversations for IT and security teams in the region regardless of their primary cloud provider.^

Meta Is Building Four Generations of Custom AI Chips by End of 2027

Meta has unveiled an aggressive in-house silicon roadmap, with four generations of its custom Meta Training and Inference Accelerator chips planned for deployment on a six-month release cadence through to the end of 2027. The current production chip, MTIA 300, already runs ranking and recommendation across Facebook and Instagram. Three further generations follow in sequence: MTIA 400 "Iris" entering deployment imminently, MTIA 450 "Arke" due in early 2027, and MTIA 500 "Astrid" targeted for mid-2027. All are built in partnership with Broadcom on a RISC-V architecture and manufactured by TSMC, and are designed strictly for Meta's own internal use rather than sold externally.

Why it matters for Asia

TSMC's Taiwan fabs are the backbone of this entire programme, making it a direct APAC supply chain story and a concrete example of how hyperscaler chip demand continues to concentrate in the region. Cheaper, faster inference underpinning Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has real downstream consequences across Southeast Asia and South Asia, where Meta's platforms reach hundreds of millions of users and where ad market pricing is directly linked to how efficiently the company runs its recommendation systems. The six-month release cadence is a meaningful acceleration from anything Meta has previously committed to on silicon.^

Uber, Wayve and Nissan Target Tokyo Robotaxi Launch by Late 2026

Wayve, Uber and Nissan signed a memorandum of understanding on March 12 to begin preparing for a robotaxi pilot in Tokyo, with the aim of launching by the end of 2026. The service will put Wayve's AI Driver software into Nissan LEAF electric vehicles, available to riders through the Uber app. A safety driver will be on board during the pilot phase while the three companies work with Japanese authorities to finalise the licensing structure and identify a local taxi operator partner. The Tokyo announcement follows Wayve's $1.2 billion Series D round from February 25 and forms part of a broader plan to deploy Wayve-powered robotaxis across more than ten cities globally, with London first.

Why it matters for Asia

Tokyo is considered one of the most demanding environments for autonomous vehicle software - dense traffic, complex road layouts and strict safety standards that few platforms have navigated without heavy city-specific engineering. Wayve's pitch is that its AI Driver can generalise across cities without bespoke mapping work, and Tokyo will be the sharpest test of that claim yet. For policymakers and mobility operators across Singapore, South Korea and Australia watching AV licensing conversations closely, a successful Japanese pilot backed by Nissan would carry considerable weight in their own domestic frameworks.^

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

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Google Closes Its $32 Billion Wiz Acquisition

Meta Is Building Four Generations of Custom AI Chips by End of 2027

Uber, Wayve and Nissan Target Tokyo Robotaxi Launch by Late 2026

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