3Before9

Nvidia GTC 2026 Kicks Off With Asia's Chip Giants in the Front Row

Jensen Huang takes the stage in San Jose today for Nvidia's annual GTC conference, where he has promised to unveil "a chip that will surprise the world." The spotlight falls on the Vera Rubin platform, Nvidia's next-generation GPU architecture reportedly packing up to 288GB of HBM4 memory. SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won is attending GTC for the first time to discuss expanding SK hynix's supply of high-bandwidth memory for Nvidia's new chips. In a parallel move, AMD chief Lisa Su visits Seoul on 18 March to meet Samsung Electronics and Naver executives about HBM supply, underscoring just how central Korean memory makers have become to the global AI hardware race.

China's OpenClaw Frenzy Draws in Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu

Alibaba launched a dedicated mobile app on 13 March for OpenClaw, the open-source agentic AI framework created by Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger that has become the fastest-growing open-source project in history. The app, called JVS Claw, lets users without coding knowledge deploy AI agents to handle everyday tasks such as online shopping and travel booking. Alibaba is far from alone: Tencent built WorkBuddy, Minimax launched MaxClaw, and Baidu released its own Android client this week. The phenomenon has been dubbed "raising lobsters" after OpenClaw's mascot, with nearly 1,000 people queuing outside Tencent's Shenzhen headquarters to get the software installed. Beijing has already moved to restrict government agencies from running OpenClaw on office computers over security concerns.

Anthropic Opens Sydney Office as Fourth Asia-Pacific Hub

Anthropic, the maker of Claude, announced on 10 March that it will open an office in Sydney, making it the company's fourth location in Asia-Pacific after Tokyo, Bengaluru and Seoul. The company says Australia and New Zealand rank fourth and eighth globally in Claude usage relative to population. Anthropic already counts Canva, Quantium and Commonwealth Bank of Australia among its regional customers, with enterprise adoption spanning AgTech, climate tech and physical AI applications. The executive team plans to visit Australia at the end of March to formalise partnerships and meet policymakers.