Welcome back,
The end of the year is here, but it isn’t a happy one for Uber which may be forced to drop its planned near-$1 billion deal to buy Foodpanda’s Taiwan business. Antitrust regulators aren’t happy that the combined entity could own 90%-plus of the market. Times have changed since the Grab-Uber deal.
Things appear to be brightening up for ByteDance. Incoming President Donald Trump may have a change of heart that saves TikTok from an impending US ban in January, even though Trump himself kickstarted the process during his previous time in office.
We’ve written a lot about pig butchering—scams which use romance to solicit for investment in bogus schemes—and the Wall Street Journal has a fascinating look inside one scheme in the Philippines, which involved a local major, known Chinese fraudsters and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment.
That’s all for this week—have a great New Year and we will see you in 2025!
Jon
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The festive period is usually a quiet one for major news, but there’s a huge one in Taiwan where Uber is struggling to close its acquisition of local food delivery rival Foodpanda after the antitrust regulator blocked it.
The deal appeared to be a win-win for all. Delivery Hero, Foodpanda’s owner, has been looking to jettison its Asia-based businesses for some time in order to focus on its core European operations. Uber has been ramping up in markets it deems valuable, and this deal would have given the combined business over 90% market share. That’s exactly why the Fair Trade Commission is stepping in.
Bloomberg reported that Uber could abandon the deal rather than appealing.
The company managed to offload its Southeast Asia business to Grab in 2018 with only Singapore’s antitrust body making any kind of stand, and it greenlit the deal with some requirements around pricing and competition. The world feels like a different place six years later, with on-demand and delivery a key part of most economies.
I’ve heard plenty of chatter that Uber is open to reigniting parts of its Asia business now that it appears to have got its core focus in the US under control, this Foodpanda deal would be a major opening shot if it can be gotten over the line. If it doesn’t happen, Uber may still look for deals across Asia next year but it would be surprising if any were as big as this one.
The Trump Presidency truly touches all parts of the world, including Asia tech, but this one we could probably have seen coming. After going after ByteDance and its TikTok service during his previous Presidency, Trump is now backing off a potential ban which is slated to come into effect on 19 January, the day before he assumes office.
To recap: the law requires ByteDance to either sell or divest its ownership of TikTok’s US business on the grounds of national security. If it fails to do so, then the service will be banned in the US, where it claims 170 million users.
Trump said he’s looking for a “political resolution” from the situation. Four years ago, Trump ‘agreed’ a deal that would see Oracle and Walmart take over TikTok’s US business but the arrangement never came to fruition. His
TikTok has made a big effort to court Trump, with CEO Shou Chew meeting him at his Mar-a-Lago base in early December. Whilst it may be understandable for an incoming President to want a role in such a major decision, we all know Trump’s pragmatism when it comes to popular topics. The New York Times also notes that Trump has become “a star” on the platform with nearly 15 million followers.
Could that mean TikTok’s US business is spared? It’ll be an interesting 2025.
Elsewhere, Venezuela fined TikTok more than $10M after a viral video trend left three adolescents dead from intoxication by chemical substances
After plenty of uncertainty, one of the year’s unresolved threads is looking like it’ll get tied up. That’s because Montenegro has agreed to extradite Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon to the US for prosecution. Earlier this year, it reversed a similar decision in favour of sending him to his native Korea but this final decision from the nation’s justice minister appears to be a final one.
It’s easy to forget that Temu is still growing, but the app was once again the most-downloaded app in the US App Store this year, according to Apple—it held the number one spot last year, too, TikTok was top in 2022.
How long until it comes on Trump’s radar?
TP-Link, a maker of routers for homes and small businesses, may be investigated by the US for posing a threat to national a security—a ban could on the table for the company, which is estimated to hold around 65% of the mark for households and SMEs and is used by federal agencies including the Defense Department link
Ant Group is taking a leaf out of Huawei’s management playbook by introducing ‘rotating CEOs’ who will hold the title for 6 months at a time—that’s part of a bigger management change that will split the business into two units: one focused on payment products and the other on digital services including advertising and user growth link
AI chip firm Cambricon has seen its share price rise nearly 400% this year, outpacing Nvidia, TSMC and others as part of China’s efforts to develop homegrown technologies have accelerated—the 8-year-old company is still unprofitable but the localization of AI chips is set to fuel further growth and that’s got investors excited link
Amazon has reportedly instructed some Chinese cross-border merchants to stop offering lower prices on rival platform Temu link
AI startup DeepSeek unveiled its new large language model, DeepSeek V3—developed in just 2 months for reportedly $5.5M, it appears to mimic ChatGPT with jokes, references and more which analysts suggest may mean it was trained on datasets containing GPT-4 outputs link
Beijing-based Zhipu raised 3 billion yuan ($412 million) to boost its AI development. Backed by Alibaba and Tencent, the company announced the funding Tuesday, following a year of more than doubling its commercial revenue. link
Data center operator Yovole is exploring a US IPO, years after a failed mainland listing, sources said—the listing could raise $100M and a filing may come as soon as January link
Huawei has made significant progress developing devices using China-made components due to US sanctions, but a look inside its latest device series—Mate 70—suggests that China’s general chip development has stalled since there’s little progress on those used in last year’s devices link
Reuters looks at how Xiaohongshu, an Instagram-like service in China, has helped livestreamers find sales among an affluent niche, urban women who want to spend link
Russian e-commerce platforms are profiting from Chinese sellers who are signing up as merchants in droves to replace Western businesses that left the market link
A crucial component for semiconductors, Gallium, has seen prices shoot up 17% to a 13-year high after China imposed import restrictions and banned exports to the US as part of its ongoing tech battle with the US link
The Biden administration is preparing a trade investigation into China’s production of older-model semiconductors, in response to fears that a growing dependence on these products could pose a US security threat—any action would ultimately be down to Trump, however link
The Biden government is also investigating the US unit of China Telecom over concerns that it may pass US data from its cloud and internet business to Beijing link
Preeti Lobana, formerly a VP of advertising tech, is Google’s new head of India link
Smart manufacturing startup Haber raised $44M, which included $6M in debt link
Accel India has secured $650 million for its eighth fund, while its global growth fund has raised $1.35 billion. A portion of this will be invested in pre-IPO rounds of Indian startups, bringing Accel’s total India commitments to nearly $3 billion link
A non-profit startup is using AI to fight TB in India, where there were 2.5M cases recorded in 2023 link
Wadhwani AI has developed a suite of AI-powered tools to assist health workers detect undiagnosed cases, decide on treatment plans, and prevent people from dropping out of treatment. Working with the Indian government and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the organization is currently piloting these tools across the country. And Wadhwani’s director of solutions, Nakul Jain, says 2025 could see several incorporated into India’s national TB patient management system, Nikshay.
Brazilian digital bank Nubank invested $150M in Singapore-based Tyme Group, a Tencent-backed digital bank with 15M customers in South Africa and the Philippines. Tyme’s $250M Series D round, which includes $50M from M&G Catalyst Fund, raised its valuation to $1.5B—the funds will support its Southeast Asia expansion and a planned 2028 listing link
Singapore has pushed ahead of Hong Kong as Asia’s top digital asset hub based on new licenses issued—Singapore gave out 13 licenses this year while Hong Kong’s own licensing regime has struggled link
Telegram and Tencent’s WeChat are among the internet platforms working to secure licenses to operate in Malaysia, the government has claimed link
A team in the Philippines is creating a ChatGPT rival that speaks Filipino and Taglish—it will launch next year and be deployed among government agency websites and services link
Malaysia’s Securities Commission (SC) has taken action against crypto exchange Bybit and its CEO, Ben Zhou, for operating an unregistered crypto trading platform link
Alibaba and local platform E-Mart have completed an e-commerce merger worth $4B link
Samsung has become the largest shareholder in Korea-based Rainbow Robotics following a $181M investment in the startup, which Samsung had previously backed as an investor link
South Korea’s government sanctioned 15 North Koreans and one entity for illicit cyber activities, including cryptocurrency theft link
Crunchyroll, the anime streaming platform bought by Sony for $1.2B in 2021, is struggling to compete with Netflix, Disney, Amazon and co as licensing costs increase while forays into e-commerce and gaming are struggling to bear fruit—Crunchyroll initially tripled subscribers to 15M but employees are losing faith, according to Bloomberg link
SoftBank has pledged to invest $100B in the US economy and create over 100,000 jobs ahead of Trump resuming the Presidency—Trump noted CEO Masayoshi Son was the first tech leader to visit him after his 2016 election win link
Japan will be the location for Waymo’s first pilot of autonomous taxis outside of the US when it commences its service in Tokyo in early 2025—taxi-hailing app GO and taxi company Nihon Kotsu are its partners link
Japan Airlines has resumed operations after a cyberattack forced a delay to scheduled flights link
Google has been accused of breaching monopoly laws by the Japanese FTC for forcing Android smartphone makers to pre-install its Search App to enable the Google Play Store link
The New York Times looks at how Taiwanese workers who moved to Arizona to build and run TSMC’s factory have settled into the era and even imported their culture, despite some teething problems and uncertainty as Trump assumes office link
TSMC has started mass-producing chips at its new fab in Kumamoto, Japan, as part of a joint venture with Sony and auto part firm Denso link
Third time may be the charm for fixing Pakistan’s woeful transport options as BusCaro aims to build on the failures of venture-backed mobility startups Airlift and Swvl link
Meanwhile, ride-hailing unicorn inDrive invested in Pakistan-based grocery delivery startup Krave Mart through a $100M VC arm announced last year link
North Korea’s Lazarus hacker group is showing alarming signs of more sophisticated tools according to researchers who analyzed recent efforts to get inside companies working in the nuclear industry link
Uzbekistan’s mobile-exclusive bank, TBC Bank Uzbekistan, raised $37M to develop new AI and tech products link
