The Wrap | 13 – 19 Dec 2025
Asia Tech Lens’ weekly digest of the signals, shifts, and stories shaping Asia’s tech future
Editor’s Note: Asia woke up to a major news in the TikTok saga: the platform signed a deal on Thursday that sees its U.S. assets sold to a group of American investors. The deal ensures the social media platform can continue operating in the United States. For the rest of Asia, the takeaway is less about one blockbuster deal and more about the quiet machinery underneath. China’s L3 permits, Google’s India credit card push, and Crypto.com’s DBS tie-up are not flashy product launches, but they are signs that regulators, banks, and platforms are stitching new capabilities into everyday systems that people already use.
At the same time, Google’s solar PPA in Malaysia and Pyxis’ vessel-and-charging expansion show how quickly tech ambition runs into physical constraints like clean power and charging coverage. Nvidia’s reported Israel data center move fits the same pattern.
Podcast Spotlight | Rob Schimek, Group CEO, bolttech
In this episode, we sit down with Rob Schimek, Group CEO of bolttech, to unpack one of Asia’s most ambitious insurtech scale-up stories—and why the world’s protection gap is now a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity hiding in plain sight.
We dig into the big structural questions: Why is insurance still so underpenetrated across Asia? How do you build trust with regulators, distribution partners, and millions of customers? And what does it take to create a digital insurance exchange across markets with wildly different rules, expectations, and levels of financial maturity?
This conversation goes deep into leadership, ecosystem design, and the future of embedded protection worldwide.
Watch on YouTube | Listen on Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Consumer Tech | US-China
TikTok Reaches Deal to Sell U.S. Entity to American Investors
In a move that ends years of legal and political limbo, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told employees the company has signed binding agreements to form a TikTok U.S. joint venture with a consortium of American investors. The new structure is designed to meet U.S. national security requirements around data and foreign influence, and is expected to close on January 22, 2026.
Half of the new TikTok U.S. joint venture will be owned by a group of investors—among them Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX, who will each hold a 15% share. 19.9% of the new app will be held by ByteDance itself, and another 30.1% will be held by affiliates of existing ByteDance investors.
Bottom Line: This is U.S.-China tech competition moving from ownership headlines to operational control: who runs the servers, who controls moderation, and how the recommendation engine is governed becomes the real lever.
Autonomous Vehicles | China
China Clears First “Hands-Off, Eyes-On” Cars for Public Roads
China has issued its first permits allowing two passenger EV models to use Level 3 (L3) self-driving features on public roads in Beijing and Chongqing, moving beyond closed testing. The approved cars are Changan’s Deepal SL03 and BAIC BluePark’s Arcfox Alpha S (with Huawei’s driving system).
L3 autonomous driving means a vehicle can drive itself in specific situations, and the human driver does not need to constantly steer, brake, or monitor every second - although a human must remain in the driver’s seat and be ready to take over as needed.
Bottom Line: China is shifting from “testing autonomy” to “operating autonomy,” putting real-world pressure on automakers to prove safety, data controls, and a business model that can scale.
Fintech | India
Google Rolls Out Digital Credit Card in India
Google is doubling down on India, where fewer than 50 million people have a credit card. The tech giant has launched ‘Flex by Google Pay’, a co-branded credit card issued digitally inside the Google Pay app in partnership with Axis Bank. The card is designed for online and in-store use, with in-app controls for spending tracking, billing, card security, and repayment. Google is positioning the product as a way to bring more users into formal credit in a market where UPI is ubiquitous but credit card penetration remains relatively low.
Bottom Line: The move seems less about competing with banks on lending and more about making Google Pay the interface where Indians borrow, spend, and repay.
Digital Asset & Blockchain | Thailand
Tencent Cloud Bolsters Bitkub’s Crypto Operations
Thailand’s Bitkub Group has announced Tencent Cloud as its strategic cloud partner to improve performance, security, and reliability for its digital asset platform. The partnership centers around Bitkub’s use of Tencent Cloud’s global network and storage systems. These tools are designed to support faster and more stable user access during high traffic periods and protect sensitive data. Tencent Cloud will also provide cloud-native tools like its Kubernetes Engine, allowing Bitkub to scale quickly during market volatility.
Bottom Line: The partnership reflects Tencent Cloud’s broader ambitions in the Web3 space. By supporting Bitkub’s operations, Tencent Cloud aims to establish itself as a critical infrastructure provider for crypto businesses in Asia.
Fintech | Singapore
Crypto.com Partners With DBS for Faster SGD and USD Transfers
Crypto.com has partnered with southeast Asia’s largest bank, DBS to improve how users move Singapore dollars and U.S. dollars in and out of its app. Customers can now deposit and withdraw SGD and USD via DBS, and the bank will also support client money accounts to make transfers smoother.
Crypto.com says the deal adds to its existing banking setup with Standard Chartered and is part of a broader effort to widen fiat channels as it scales from Singapore, where it is headquartered. The company received a Major Payment Institution (MPI) licence for Digital Payment Token (DPT) services license in Singapore in 2023 to provide end-to-end cryptocurrency payment services for businesses.
Bottom Line: For crypto platforms, the competitive edge increasingly sits in compliant, reliable fiat rails and DBS gives Crypto.com more credibility and capacity at its Singapore base.
Green Tech | Malaysia
Google Signs Solar Power Deal in Malaysia
Google has signed a solar power purchase agreement in Malaysia, as it tries to secure more clean electricity for its global operations and reduce the footprint of energy-intensive workloads like data centers. Under the deal, Google will buy power from a 30-megawatt solar farm in Kedah, developed by a consortium led by a local unit of Japan’s Shizen Energy, with operations expected to start in 2027.
The agreement sits within Malaysia’s push to supply green power to corporates, including via the Corporate Green Power Programme, as the country targets 70% renewables in installed capacity by 2050.
Bottom Line: Long-term clean power contracts are becoming the practical route for tech firms to decarbonize in Asia, but deals like this also show how tightly AI and data center growth is now tied to the region’s renewable build-out and regulatory pathways.
Maritime Tech | Singapore
Singapore Startup Pyxis Raises $10M to Electrify Asia’s Workboats
Singapore-based maritime electrification startup Pyxis has raised S$13 million ($10 million) in the first close of a S$18 million growth round, backed by climate-tech investors and maritime strategics. Pyxis also secured green debt financing from OCBC to support vessel deployment and charging build-out.
The timing tracks a bigger regional transition: Asia operates 70,000+ coastal and in-port vessels, while Singapore expects around 1,600 harbor crafts to shift to electric or low-carbon alternatives under national targets.
Bottom Line: Electrifying short-haul maritime is becoming a scale market, and Pyxis is betting that winning will require both sides of the stack, vessels plus charging.
Data Centers | Israel
Nvidia Eyes a $1.5B Israeli Server Farm as the Compute Race Spreads
Nvidia is reportedly planning what would be Israel’s largest server farm investment. Media reports say the company is in advanced talks to lease a large data center under construction near Yokneam in northern Israel, a project estimated at about $1.5 billion including equipment. The facility would complement Nvidia’s existing $500 million server farm in Ramot Menashe and further expand AI compute capacity in the country.
The move would deepen Nvidia’s footprint in Israel, one of its largest R&D hubs outside the US, as it scales infrastructure to support rising AI workloads.
Bottom Line: This underscores how the AI boom is turning into a location race, with countries competing to offer the mix of talent, power, and infrastructure that global players like Nvidia need to anchor next-generation compute.
Signals to Watch
Will TikTok become the template?
Watch for how durable the model is, and whether other Chinese platforms and entities will face similar “re-architecture” demands in the U.S. and beyond.China is moving autonomy from “testing” to regulated public-road operation.
The first conditional L3 operating permits in Beijing and Chongqing are a clear regulatory step-up. Watch for how fast MIIT expands approvals to additional models, and how liability, insurance, OTA feature expansion, and data governance are handled once L3 features are used outside test-only regimes.In India, the payments super-app is becoming a credit interface.
Watch for consumer protection scrutiny, and whether UPI-linked credit becomes a mainstream on-ramp for first-time credit users.Asia’s crypto market is professionalizing its rails, not just adding tokens.
Crypto.com’s DBS tie-up is about faster SGD and USD movement and client money structures. In parallel, Bitkub moving deeper onto Tencent Cloud underscores that exchanges are now competing on uptime, security, and scalable infrastructure as much as liquidity.Energy procurement is becoming the gating factor for data center growth in Southeast Asia.
Google’s Malaysia solar PPA with a Shizen-led project shows hyperscalers increasingly locking in renewable supply via long-term contracts. Watch how fast Malaysia’s corporate green power pathways scale, and whether clean power availability becomes a de facto constraint on new AI workloads.The AI compute race is turning into a location race.
Nvidia’s reported Israel data center lease talks point to a broader trend: countries competing on talent, power, and build-ready infrastructure to attract long-duration AI compute investment. Watch for spillovers into local ecosystems, and for how geopolitics affects capacity decisions.
The Takeaway
This week reinforced a simple pattern: leverage is consolidating in the underlying systems, not the apps on top. TikTok’s U.S. joint venture deal shows the same shift at the geopolitical layer, where market access is increasingly conditioned on who controls ownership, data custody, and platform governance. China is operationalizing higher autonomy under permit regimes. Google is pushing deeper into credit and clean power procurement to support payments growth and data center demand. Crypto firms are strengthening bank-grade fiat rails and cloud backbone to compete on reliability and compliance. Meanwhile, electrifying ports is becoming an infrastructure build, with vessels plus charging emerging as the decisive stack.
Sources:
AP News: TikTok signs deal to form new US unit with investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake
YiCai Global: China Grants First Open Road Permits to Two L3 Self-Driving EVs
Tech Crunch: Google deepens consumer credit push in India with UPI-linked card
The Edge: Thailand’s Bitkub turns to Tencent Cloud to strengthen digital asset services
The Edge: Crypto.com boosts payment services via partnership with DBS
Bloomberg: Google Signs Solar Power Pact in Malaysia With Shizen Energy
Deal Street Asia: Crypto.com boosts payment services via partnership with DBS
eWeek: Nvidia Plans $1.5B Investment in Israeli Data Center Facility