AI
Why ByteDance’s AI Phone Hit a Wall: Security, Fair Play, and the Economics of Attention
A phone that can “do things for you” sounds like convenience. It also sounds, to many apps, like a bot with a user’s keys.
AI Is Accelerating Cybercrime—And Southeast Asia Is Where The Damage Shows Up
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping cybersecurity by compressing response time. It helps organizations sift through enormous volumes of signals and automate parts of defense, but it also gives attackers shortcuts, making it easier to craft convincing scams, probe systems at speed, and scale attacks with far less expertise than bef…
How AI Is Remaking K-Entertainment
On November 21 & 22, 2025, a “virtual” boy band pulled off the unthinkable: selling out Seoul’s Gocheok Sky Dome, K-pop’s arena pinnacle, for two nights straight. PLAVE drew 37,000 screaming fans, proving that pixels can pack arenas just like BTS.
Can India Build Quantum Computers That Matter Globally?
Quantum computing is a long-horizon, capital-intensive, physics-constrained race already being dominated by the hyperscalers—the likes of Google, IBM, and Microsoft. India is betting on a fledgling startup and a new ecosystem that is still underway. The ambition is real, but whether the country can escape catch-up mode is less clear.
Emerging Voices: The Security-Trained Founder Rebuilding Workflows for the Agent Era
Southeast Asia’s enterprises talk confidently about transformation, automation, and AI. But the moment a workflow moves from “assist” to “act” the enthusiasm slows. While agentic systems sound visionary in boardrooms, in practice they collide with long-standing habits and ways of doing business. Who signs off? Who supervises autonomy? Where is the data …
When Frontier AI Emerges from Outside Silicon Valley
Frontier AI used to be bound by geography and compute. Tokyo-based Sakana AI is challenging both.
AI for Global Equity Begins With Local Realities
Backed by new capital, global tech expansion, and growing government interest, artificial intelligence is advancing across Southeast Asia at a pace that is both exciting and uneven. The region’s adoption c…
A Quiet Alliance: The Hidden Layer Powering AI Adoption in Asia
AI adoption is often described in terms of chips, data centers, and model breakthroughs. But for most businesses in Asia, the decisive factor is something far less glamorous: the partners who translate global AI platforms into real deployments.
Superhexa’s Hardware-First Bet: Why China’s AI Glasses Race Might Be Backwards
China is in a full-blown rush to build the “next big thing” in AI hardware. More than a hundred companies—from Shenzhen gadget shops to billion-dollar manufacturers—are racing to launch AI glasses, AI pins, and every imaginable hands-free form factor.
When AI Speaks Your Language
Lost in the 250-million-strong tide at India’s Maha Kumbh? A Bhashini chatbot can now guide you to the nearest ghats, in Hindi, Tamil, or Bengali. Selling fried snacks on a street in Indonesia? GoPay’s voice assistant understands you perfectly.
Singapore’s Quantum Bet: Where AI Meets the Next Compute Revolution
News broke in September: Horizon Quantum Computing, a homegrown startup that turns classical code into quantum logic, plans a US$500 million SPAC. It signaled a bigger bet for Singapore — one that unites deep-tech ambition with national strategy.
Virtual Partners, Real Markets: The Rise of AI Companions in Asia
In Hangzhou, 28-year-old Xiao Gao wept over the loss of her AI boyfriend, calling herself a “cyberspace widow.” In Beijing, Liu Xue threw a drone-lit birthday party for Rafayel, her virtual lover from the hit game ‘Love and Deepspace’.
Ropet: The AI Pet Startup Redefining Companionship
Inside the vision of a startup that sees comfort not in talking robots, but in AI pets that feel alive and need your care
The AI Battleground: How Southeast Asia Is Forging a New Path Between Open and Closed Models
As artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) break into the mainstream, the global debate over open versus closed AI is intensifying.
Meet MiniMax: The Chinese Tech Company Touted by Jensen Huang That’s Headed for an IPO
Earlier this month, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang spotlighted China’s generative AI leaders - naming players like DeepSeek, Alibaba, Tencent, MiniMax, and miHoYo among the country’s world-class innovators. He was speaking at the third China International Supply Chain Expo (CISCE) in Beijing.
This 3rd-Gen Kuok Is Transforming the Family Empire With a $10B AI Bet
Kuok Meng Wei, a Stanford-educated engineer and grandson of Malaysia’s richest man, is betting big on Southeast Asia’s digital future by building data centers in Malaysia, Indonesia and beyond.
A Traditional Journalist, Some AI Tools, and the Future of Storytelling
A lot of you may not know this, but several of the team members behind Asia Tech Lens are actually traditional, mainstream broadcast journalists and producers. Folks who have spent decades in fast-paced newsrooms, chasing breaking news, reporting from the ground, and figuring out how to tell complex stories in under three …
Super AI Singapore: Through Our Eyes
Asia Tech Lens was on the ground this week at Marina Bay Sands for Super AI Singapore 2025, an event that pulled in over 7,000 attendees from more than 100 countries. While we knew it was going to be a well-attended event, the enormity only hit us when we arrived on site. What struck us most was the diversity of who showed up. You had the …
The AI Agent Era Has Begun, and Privacy Risks Are Rising
While generative AI like ChatGPT and DeepSeek has dominated headlines, a quieter revolution is gaining momentum: agentic AI. These tools don’t just chat or create — they act. They can make decisions and carry out tasks for you, and they’re starting to become part of daily life.
Plush, Playful, and Powered by AI: How China’s Toys are Evolving
What if your favorite toy could talk back, tell you stories or even help with your studies?
Alibaba's open source Qwen 3 redefines global access with 119 languages, beating ChatGPT and Gemini
The world has already witnessed China's "DeepSeek moment," a significant marker of its rapidly advancing artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, and the wave of innovation continues to surge.
Indonesia’s cloud and AI market is up for grabs, and Big Tech smells opportunity
Southeast Asia is in the midst of an AI gold rush, and Indonesia—the region’s largest market and the world’s fourth most populous nation—is right at the center of the action. Global tech giants like the Magnificent Seven, Chinese titans, and ambitious regional players are all investing hundreds of millions of dollars on the country’s …