AI in Asia
Thursday, 2 April 2026

3 Before 9

3 must-know AI stories before your 9am coffee

1

Microsoft Commits Over US$1 Billion to Thailand's Cloud and AI Build-Out

Microsoft will invest more than US$1 billion in cloud and AI data centre infrastructure across Thailand from 2026 to 2028, the company announced on Monday following a meeting in Bangkok between Vice Chair and President Brad Smith and Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul. The investment anchors what Microsoft calls its "Advancing National Growth, Prosperity, and Global Competitiveness with AI" initiative and includes partnerships with five Thai corporates - Gulf Development, Advanced Info Service, Charoen Pokphand Group, True Corporation and True Internet Data Center - to build and operate the facilities. Microsoft says it has already helped more than two million Thai workers acquire AI-related skills over the past two years and plans to certify a further 150,000 through training programmes with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Labour. The data centres will be built to global standards for performance, reliability and sustainability, including green energy and water positivity commitments.

Why it matters for Asia

Southeast Asia's hyperscaler land grab is accelerating and Thailand is emerging as a serious contender alongside Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia for regional AI infrastructure spend. For enterprise buyers across the region, the deal signals that first-tier cloud capacity - and the AI services running on it - will increasingly be available locally rather than routed through hubs in Singapore or Tokyo, potentially cutting latency and easing data residency concerns for regulated industries.^

Read more
2

Chinese AI Chipmaker Moore Threads Triples Revenue as Domestic GPU Bet Pays Off

Moore Threads Technology, the Beijing-based [GPU](https://www.amazon.sg/s?k=nvidia+gpu&tag=aiinasia-22) maker founded by former Nvidia China head Zhang Jianzhong, expects 2025 revenue of 1.45 to 1.52 billion yuan (roughly US$208 million), a jump of 231 to 247 per cent over 2024. The surge is driven by enterprise adoption of the company's MTT S5000 chip, which entered mass production last year and can support the training of AI models with trillion-level parameters. Moore Threads listed on Shanghai's Star Market in December 2024 and its shares have climbed nearly 450 per cent since debut, making it one of the most volatile large-cap names in the region. Fellow Chinese AI firms MiniMax and Zhipu have seen similarly wild swings, with half of Asia's ten most volatile stocks above US$10 billion in market value now coming from the sector's recent IPO class.

Why it matters for Asia

Beijing's push for semiconductor self-sufficiency is producing companies that can now credibly claim performance parity with foreign alternatives on certain workloads, and investors are pricing that in aggressively. For enterprise technology buyers across Asia weighing their AI infrastructure options, the rapid maturation of China's domestic GPU ecosystem introduces a genuine second supply chain - one that sits outside US export controls and could reshape procurement strategies for organisations operating in or trading with mainland China.^

Read more
3

Asia-Pacific PC Shipments Set to Fall 14 Per Cent as AI Data Centres Devour Memory Supply

PC shipments across Asia-Pacific will drop 13.7 per cent in 2026 - from 106.6 million units to 92 million - as memory manufacturers redirect DRAM and NAND production towards higher-margin AI data centre customers, according to IDC. The research firm says strong demand driven by AI infrastructure is creating significant constraints in the global supply of both chip types, pushing component costs up and squeezing the consumer devices that sit at the other end of the priority queue. The decline follows an 11.6 per cent rise in 2025, which was largely a one-off driven by the Windows 10 end-of-support refresh cycle. Emerging markets in Southeast Asia face the sharpest impact because consumers there are more price-sensitive and depend more heavily on lower-cost devices.

Why it matters for Asia

The AI boom is no longer just creating winners in the data centre space - it is actively cannibalising the consumer hardware supply chain across Asia. For enterprise IT planners in the region, this means device refresh cycles will cost more and take longer to fulfil in 2026, particularly for organisations with large field workforces in price-sensitive Southeast Asian markets. Procurement teams would be wise to lock in hardware orders early before component shortages tighten further.^

Read more

That's today's 3 Before 9.

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

Recent Editions

View all

Sunday

26 April 2026

  • 1. Sarvam AI is closing a $300-350M Series B at a $1.5B valuation led by Bessemer with Nvidia, Amazon and HCLTech, India's first major sovereign-AI unicorn round.
  • 2. Tencent launched Hy3 Preview, a 295B-parameter MoE model, and swapped DeepSeek out of its Yuanbao chatbot in favour of the new in-house technology.
  • 3. Nissan committed to fitting AI-driven Level 2-plus hands-free driving from UK startup Wayve into 90 per cent of its future vehicle line-up.
Read edition

Friday

24 April 2026

  • 1. DeepSeek launches V4-Pro and V4-Flash with a 1-million-token context window, running on Huawei's new Ascend 950 supernode clusters and priced at roughly a tenth of OpenAI's output-token rate.
  • 2. SoftBank is seeking a $10 billion two-year margin loan collateralised by its OpenAI stake, pushing its total commitment to the ChatGPT maker to about $64.6 billion.
  • 3. TSMC unveiled A13, a 1.3nm-class shrink of A14 aimed at AI accelerators, with production slated for 2029 alongside a 1.2nm A12 variant, while A16 slips to 2027.
Read edition

Thursday

23 April 2026

  • 1. Microsoft pledges A$25 billion (US$17.9 billion) to make Australia its largest AI infrastructure hub, including skills training for three million workers.
  • 2. SK Hynix posts a record 72 per cent operating margin and US$27 billion quarterly profit as HBM demand keeps Asia's memory duopoly in the driver's seat.
  • 3. Japan's Nikkei 225 breaches 60,000 for the first time, but only 17 per cent of Tokyo stocks rose on the day, exposing a dangerously narrow AI-driven rally.
Read edition

Wednesday

22 April 2026

  • 1. LINE Yahoo launched Agent i on 20 April, a single AI agent now embedded in both the LINE app's 100m-plus user base and Yahoo! JAPAN, with enterprise and no-code versions due over the summer.
  • 2. SoftBank named Arm CEO Rene Haas to also run SoftBank Group International from 21 April, tightening coordination across the group's overseas chip and AI bets including Arm, OpenAI, Stargate and Project Crystal Land.
  • 3. Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Singapore-based Chinese AI start-up Manus is still under Beijing's national-security review, with co-founders barred from leaving China and the 'Singapore washing' route for China AI firms now under serious pressure.
Read edition

Tuesday

21 April 2026

  • 1. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon met Samsung and SK Hynix executives in Seoul to pitch 2nm wafer orders and lock in memory supply for Snapdragon and AI platforms.
  • 2. Chinese humanoid robot makers shipped roughly 90 per cent of global units in 2025 but still trade at a valuation discount to pre-production US rivals.
  • 3. Volkswagen confirmed its China cars will ship with an on-device AI voice agent from H2 2026, built on tech from Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu.
Read edition

Monday

20 April 2026

  • 1. SK Hynix has begun mass production of its 192GB SOCAMM2 memory module, a low-power AI server part for Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform.
  • 2. Alibaba launched Qwen3.6-Max-Preview, its strongest Qwen model to date, demonstrating top performance in several coding benchmarks.
  • 3. TSMC raised its 2026 outlook after Q1 profit jumped 58 per cent, citing "extremely robust" AI chip demand that still outpaces supply.
Read edition