Welcome back,
This week’s newsletter held fire one day as Donald Trump completed a remarkable turnaround by becoming the first US President to assume a second White House term despite previously losing an election.
US politics is not the focus of Asia Tech Review but the US administration has never been more relevant for our beat, as our top two stories in focus this week prove.
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Trump is trying to stop a ban on TikTok in the USA, even though he initiated the move during his previous tenure
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Outgoing President Joe Biden dropped a bomb on the rest of the world by moving to regulate US AI technology, and not only in China
I’m hoping we can move on from the election, but these are far from normal times—Trump launched his own memecoin over the weekend, as I’m sure our readers know—so chance may be a fine thing.
Enjoy the rest of your week,
Jon
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Blink and you missed it. TikTok was briefly offline in the US over the weekend as the company took steps to comply with a US ban that went live on 19 January. The service came back online, however, as President Trump assumed office in the White House and granted a reprieve with an executive order pushing the ban back by 75 days.
This doesn’t mean TikTok is saved, yet. Trump initiated the move to ban the app on the grounds of national security during this previous term more than four years ago. Now, though, he is having a change of heart. Critics suggested it may be down to his popularity on the service, where he has over 15 million followers; but it could be down to his pragmatism, or just a desire to do things differently to the Biden administration, which took his initial actions and turned them into law.
It’s a saga that I’m more than a little tired of, but don’t doubt that there’s plenty more twists and turns to come.
Speaking of Presidential actions, outgoing US supremo Joe Biden dropped a brutal final salvo in his battle with Beijing with new export controls on AI technologies. The goal was to limit foreign access to Nvidia’s industry-leading chips in order to maintain the US lead on AI advancements.
The will impact countries beyond China, including India, as The Information details:
In its final week, the Biden administration announced new export controls on AI technologies, aimed at limiting foreign access to Nvidia’s AI chips. The rules seek to maintain U.S. leadership in AI and encourage American companies to develop AI chip clusters primarily in the U.S. The proposal divides countries into three tiers: one with no restrictions (e.g., Canada), a second with caps on chip purchases, and a third, including China and Russia, facing continued export bans. However, the rules don’t seem to prevent Chinese companies like ByteDance from quietly renting Nvidia chips through cloud providers in countries where exports are allowed—a loophole previously detailed by my colleagues.
Nvidia strongly argued that the measures could harm US AI leadership, the very goal they seek to achieve:
In its last days in office, the Biden Administration seeks to undermine America’s leadership with a 200+ page regulatory morass, drafted in secret and without proper legislative review. This sweeping overreach would impose bureaucratic control over how America’s leading semiconductors, computers, systems and even software are designed and marketed globally. And by attempting to rig market outcomes and stifle competition — the lifeblood of innovation — the Biden Administration’s new rule threatens to squander America’s hard-won technological advantage.
Polymarket became one of the most important companies in Web3 last year as its predictions market, which allows users to bet on the outcome of topics ranging from politics to sport, crypto and lifestyle, blew up. In one case, a user made around $50 million from betting on the outcome of the US election—Polymarket has processed nearly $10 billion in volume to date, according to analytics platform Defi Llama.
The service isn’t available in the US, where it violates current gambling laws, and it is now getting banned across Asia. Singapore blocked access to the service earlier this month and now Thailand may follow suit after the country’s cybercrime authorities announced plans to ban it. Gambling is illegal in the country.
Amazon doesn’t often get acquisitive but it is buying buy-now, pay-later startup Axio for a reported fee of $150 million to expand its financial services in India.
The companies are well known to each other, Amazon has been an investor for 6 years but obviously now it sees the opportunity to take on the business.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, formerly known as Capital Float, has so far raised $135 million from investors including Peak XV Partners, Ribbit Capital, and Elevation Capital over the years.
Axio specializes in providing credit to self-employed individuals and households at the point of sale on major e-commerce platforms, including Amazon and MakeMyTrip. It claims it serves more than 10 million customers and that its loan book is worth more than $260 million.
The US Commerce Department announced a new rule barring Chinese and Russian connected car technology from the US, citing national security risks link
The US is planning new regulations to prevent advanced chips from TSMC, Samsung, and Intel from reaching China link
In just five years, despite US restrictions, China has grown its global memory chip market share from nearly zero to 5% and could double that this year link
Washington has blacklisted Zhipu, China’s most prominent startup developing large language models for artificial intelligence, alongside two dozen other Chinese entities link
The Commerce Department and FBI are investigating Baicells Technologies, a telecom hardware firm founded in China by former Huawei executives, over potential security risks link
Last week we wrote about China tightening controls on the movement of employees and specialised equipment for high-tech manufacturing in India and now media reports suggest Southeast Asia, another region where manufacturers are shifting their focus to, is also in the headlights link
Temu’s new challenge to Amazon is focused on advertising link
Chinese sellers now dominate Amazon worldwide having increased market share to more than 50% last year link
DJI will no longer stop drones from flying over airports, wildfires, and the White House link
Shenzhen-based UBTech Robotics, China’s largest maker of humanoid robots, will deploy its robots in Apple supplier Foxconn’s factories to help with “complicated and delicate production”, according to a senior executive link
Zhou Chaonan, founder of data center operator Range Intelligent Computing, has joined the world’s 500 richest people with a net worth of $7.7B after the company’s stock surged over 100% last year—ByteDance is among the customer base link
Crypto exchange BitMEX is the latest in regulatory crosshairs after it was fined US$100M for violating US anti-money-laundering laws link
Hackers who breached AT&T’s system last year likely stole months of FBI agents’ call and text logs, prompting urgent efforts to protect confidential informants, a document reviewed by Bloomberg shows link
Flipkart is in advanced talks to lead a $35–40M funding round for its fintech venture Super.money—the plan is for external investors to join but Flipkart to retain a majority ownership. Super.money recently surpassed Amazon Pay with over 100M UPI transactions link
Apple’s exports from India grew 24% year-on-year to reach $12.8B in 2024—the figure is forecast to more than double in coming years which would increase India’s share of global iPhone production to over 26% link
Pixxel, an Indian space tech startup backed by Google, successfully launched the first three hyperspectral satellites of its commercial constellation Firefly aboard a SpaceX rocket link
Tata Electronics is in talks with Xiaomi and Oppo to begin contract manufacturing for the Chinese smartphone firms as it diversifies away from a reliance on Apple link
The Dunzo app and website went offline after co-founder Kabeer Biswas left to join Flipkart to lead its quick commerce service link
Walmart-backed PhonePe is poised to become the latest to enter the quick commerce market link
Manufacturing and logistics firm Zetwerk has reportedly chosen banks for a potential $500M Mumbai IPO this year at a $5B valuation link
Electric air taxi startup Sarla Aviation raised $10M in a Series A round led by Accel—the startup focuses on high-payload aircraft for the country’s congested streets link
Meta may need to “roll back or pause” some features in India after an antitrust directive barred WhatsApp from sharing user data with Meta for ads, according to a court filing seen by Reuters link
Google has agreed to purchase 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits from Indian startup Varaha, its first such deal with a carbon project in India link
A number of investors in Oyo, including Lightspeed, are in talks with family offices to divest a portion of their stake at a valuation of around $3.9B—that’s up 60% on the last funding round from August 2024 which attracted family offices—Oyo now claims to be profitable link
Super Bank Indonesia, backed by Grab, is considering a domestic IPO this year that could raise $200M-$300M at a valuation of $1.5B-$2B link
Crypto bank Sygnum raised $58M at a valuation of $1B link
KKR hired Goldman Sachs to sell its 20%+ stake in Philippine fintech Maya, potentially valuing the company at over $2B link
Apple and Google remove apps from Huione Guarantee, after an article noted that the Cambodian company is tied to Southeast Asian fraud networks that is said to have enabled $24B in illicit scams link
Thailand is considering approving local bitcoin ETFs link
Krafton, maker of PUBG: Battlegrounds, plans to invest over 200B won ($136M) this year in more than a dozen game studios link
South Korea is reportedly planning to introduce new crypto law in second half of 2025 link
Samsung will begin paying part of executives’ bonuses in stock instead of cash, tying compensation to share performance amid struggles in chipmaking link
Japanese chip gear makers have cut their fiscal 2025 revenue forecast, citing weaker spending in China and among automotive and power chipmakers link
Apple is finalising tests on its first “Made in America” advanced chips from TSMC’s Arizona plant, with mass production expected as early as this quarter after quality checks link
Taiwan’s MetAI, a startup that creates “SimReady” digital twins by converting CAD files into functional 3D environments in minutes, raised $4M link
TSMC’s Q4 profit rises 57% to a record, in line with forecast link
North Korean hackers stole at least $659 million in crypto through multiple heists in 2024, according to a joint statement from Japan, South Korea, and the US link
