Infrastructure
Malaysia’s AI Boom Puts Clean-Power Buyers To The Test
Malaysia’s AI boom is creating new challenges for clean power buyers: knowing when to move before larger users lock in the best options. As demand from large electricity users rises, the government is trying to make corporate renewable procurement more practical.
India’s AI Data Center Boom Is Running Ahead of the Grid
For operators scouting AI infrastructure destinations, the signals coming out of India are hard to ignore. Microsoft’s largest data center in India is on track to go live in Hyderabad by mid-2026. Google has committed $15 billion to build its first AI hub in the country, which includes gigawatt data center operations. Amaz…
Vietnam’s 5G Is Expanding Fast. Can Operators Trust the Stack It’s Built On?
Vietnam’s 5G network is expanding quickly. For operators building industrial operations in the country, the harder question is not whether the network will reach them—it almost certainly will—but whether the infrastructure underneath it can be trusted over time.
China’s Compute Surplus Won’t Be Your Compute Surplus
China may already have much of the AI infrastructure it needs. Data centers across the country are still underused, with many running at roughly 30% capacity according to Reuters, even as Beijing pushes a new AI-heavy plan.
Budget 2026 Puts AI Into Execution Mode. Operators Need To Fund Foundations Before Features
Singapore’s Budget 2026 elevates AI from emerging tech to a national priority. A new National AI Council, chaired by PM Lawrence Wong, will coordinate strategy, regulation, and resources.
Japan Wants To Revive Its Semiconductor Industry. Its Bet On Rapidus Is A Test Case On Subsidy Design
The first question governments must answer before writing billion-dollar checks for semiconductor fabrication plants is: Are we buying insurance or market share?
Why Smartphone Prices Could Rise in 2026
For the better part of a decade, the floor price for a usable smartphone generally trended down. However, in 2026, thanks to a tightening RAM market, smartphone pricing could hit a giant wall, with prices expected to rise across the board.
Why Japan’s Quantum Strategy Starts With Algorithms, Not Qubits
There is a good reason to look at Japan as a reference point for where quantum computing may actually go next. Players in the country are grappling with a question that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore as governments and tech giants race to build ever-larger quantum machines: will these systems ever do anything useful?
AI Boom Under the Sea: Hyperscalers Are Quietly Building Asia’s New Subsea Backbone
AI is changing how internet traffic moves across Asia. Instead of flowing mainly from users to servers, a growing share of traffic now moves data center-to-data center, as AI models are trained, updated, and run across distributed compute clusters. These machine-to-machine flows often run east–west across the region and demand high-capacity, low-latency…
When Fried Chicken and Beer Leads to a US$10 Billion Deal
There was a viral moment on the internet last week featuring three tech billionaires. Leaders of NVIDIA, Samsung, and Hyundai went for dinner at a fried-chicken restaurant in Seoul—they paid for everyone’s meal. It was a successful photo op, but one that overshadowed a more important reckoning: South Korea is turning into …
Can South Korea Replicate Its K-Pop Success in AI Chips?
For decades, South Korea’s global influence has been defined by its cultural exports—K-Pop, K-dramas, and K-beauty. Now, a new contender is rising: K-Chips, led by one fast-moving startup.
From Anime to Autos: How Cool Japan Fund Is Rewriting Soft Power in Southeast Asia
In the midst of a funding winter that has seen even the most ardent supporters of the region winding back their commitment, a Japanese fund is doubling down on its presence in Southeast Asia.
Hot Chips, Cool Solutions: Asia’s Race to Reinvent Data Center Cooling
In August, we asked if Southeast Asia was truly ready for an AI data center surge, given power shortages and rising costs. This week, we zoom in on one of the biggest bottlenecks: cooling, which can swallow a substantial chunk of a facility’s energy bill.
Can Nuclear Power Fuel Southeast Asia’s AI Boom?
Singapore’s data centres are approaching full capacity, and regulators warn that supply may soon fall behind. In Jakarta, proposals for hyperscale campuses are multiplying, even as utility planners warn of grid limitations. Across Southeast Asia, the AI boom is running headlong into a constraint that chips and GPU…
Invisible Arteries: Subsea Cables in the Age of AI
Every click, every call, every binge-watch. Even the fact that you are reading this article right now. All of it travels through subsea cables: bundles of fiber-optic glass threads, often no thicker than a garden hose, lying silently on the ocean floor. We don’t talk about them much, but they are the invisible arteries of the internet, carryin…
From Oil to Algorithms: The Middle East’s New Role in US–China Tech Rivalry
The Gulf’s oil giants, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are no longer content with being just energy superpowers. They are now betting big on technology and artificial intelligence, aiming to future-proof their economies and ease reliance on fossil fuels. Their new ambition: to become global AI hubs backed by billions of dollars in state investment.
Is Southeast Asia ready for an AI data center surge?
The AI boom isn’t coming, it’s already here. Behind the large language models (LLMs), image generators, and other machine learning tools are powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) and TPUs (Tensor Processing Units) to crunch vast amounts of data at incredible speed.
Can TikTok’s New Data Centers Buy Trust?
While TikTok reigns as the world's most popular short-video app, it continues to face many obstacles in the West due to concerns about its Chinese parentage.
China’s Bet on Domestic Tech: The Companies Poised to Gain Amid Rising Tariffs
Welcome to Asia Tech Lens, where we track Asia’s technology rise with perspective, without the hype, and free from rhetoric.