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AI in ASIA
Wednesday, 8 April 2026

3Before9

3 must-know AI stories before your 9am coffee

Who should pay attention

Founders | Investors | Governments | Law enforcement | Tech companies

What changes next

Debate is likely to intensify regarding the ethical implications of AI in law enforcement.

1

GITEX AI Asia Opens in Singapore as Regional AI Spend Hits $78 Billion

Asia's largest technology and AI conference kicked off at Marina Bay Sands today, drawing more than 550 enterprises and startups, 250 investors managing over $350 billion in funds, and speakers from 110 countries. The second edition of GITEX AI Asia arrives as IDC projects regional AI spending will reach $78 billion in 2026, driven by enterprise and government deployment across healthcare, finance and public services. Country pavilions from Australia, China, India, South Korea, Vietnam and 15 other nations are showcasing everything from semiconductor advances to quantum computing research, while the co-located North Star Asia startup platform features 300 startups from 50 countries including 20 unicorns.

Why it matters for Asia

Singapore is positioning itself as the gravity centre for Asia-Pacific deep tech, producing roughly 15 percent of the world's semiconductors and hosting a new quantum R&D centre launched last month. For enterprise buyers evaluating AI infrastructure partners and for startups chasing capital, the concentration of deal flow at GITEX signals that Singapore, not Silicon Valley, is where Asia's AI investment decisions are increasingly being made.

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2

World Bank Cuts East Asia Growth Forecast but Flags AI Investment as Regional Bright Spot

The World Bank lowered its 2026 growth projection for East Asia and the Pacific to 4.2 percent, down from 5.0 percent in 2025, citing the energy shock from the Middle East conflict, elevated trade barriers and domestic economic drag. China's economy is expected to decelerate from 5.0 to 4.2 percent this year, while the rest of the region is forecast at 4.1 percent with a rebound to 5.0 percent in 2027 once geopolitical tensions ease. The report, released yesterday, identified surging AI-related exports and investment in Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam as a notable counterweight to the broader slowdown.

Why it matters for Asia

The Bank's finding that only 13 to 17 percent of multinational subsidiaries in China and Thailand currently use AI - roughly a third of the rate in developed economies - points to a massive adoption gap that is also a massive commercial opportunity. Enterprise technology vendors targeting Southeast Asia now have hard data showing the region's AI readiness is constrained by connectivity and skills rather than demand, which should shape go-to-market strategies for the rest of 2026.

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3

Microsoft Commits $10 Billion to Japan's AI Infrastructure in Largest Single Country Bet

Microsoft announced a $10 billion investment in Japan spanning 2026 to 2029, making it the company's largest single-country AI commitment in Asia. The package covers GPU-based AI infrastructure built with domestic partners Sakura Internet and SoftBank, a cybersecurity partnership with Japan's national agencies, and a pledge to train more than one million engineers and developers by 2030. Sakura Internet's stock surged 20 percent on the news, while the plan directly addresses Japan's projected shortfall of 3.26 million AI and robotics workers by 2040.

Why it matters for Asia

Japan has lagged behind China and South Korea in enterprise AI adoption despite having one of the world's most advanced manufacturing sectors. Microsoft's decision to route $10 billion through domestic partners rather than building alone signals a shift toward embedded local ecosystems, and the workforce training commitment is the clearest acknowledgement yet that Asia's AI bottleneck is talent, not capital. Enterprises operating in Japan should expect a step change in locally hosted AI compute availability from 2027 onward.

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Recent Editions

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Tuesday

14 April 2026

  • 1.Japan's major technology companies, including SoftBank, Honda, Sony, and NEC, have launched a joint venture to build a trillion-parameter AI for autonomous machines, ensuring all data remains within Japan.
  • 2.Chinese embodied AI startup Spirit AI secured $420 million from prominent investors, including Lei Jun and Jack Ma, to develop humanoid robots and general-purpose robotics.
  • 3.These investments signify a strategic pivot in Asian AI, with Japan prioritising data sovereignty for physical AI and China focusing on hardware and real-world embodied intelligence.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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