The Wrap | 24 – 30 Jan 2026
Asia Tech Lens’ weekly digest of the signals, shifts, and stories shaping Asia’s tech future
Editor’s Note: CNY AI race is heating up, and this year the holiday rush is doubling as a stress test for China’s consumer AI apps: can they earn a place in daily routines once the fireworks fade. At the same time, the week made one thing clearer across the region: AI momentum is now being set by infrastructure decisions. From chip approvals and memory bottlenecks, to new fabs and research spending, the competitive edge is shifting to whoever can secure supply, talent, and staying power.
Podcast Spotlight | Guo Jun, Superhexa
Why Superhexa Is Rethinking AI Glasses
In this episode of Asia Tech Lens: Founder Stories, Miro sits down with Guo Jun, Co-Founder and CMO of Beijing-based Superhexa – one of the most contrarian players in China’s AI hardware boom. While more than 100 Chinese companies rushed out feature-heavy AI glasses, Superhexa spent years obsessing over comfort, weight, thermals, audio, and true all-day battery life before adding any AI.
Guo unpacks what it takes to build hardware in China’s most unforgiving consumer arena: navigating Xiaomi’s ecosystem, surviving ODM economics, dealing with creator-driven demand, and competing with giants like OPPO, Vivo, and Huawei. The conversation also digs into domestic LLMs vs. ChatGPT, why phones still win many AI scenarios, and how a startup survives when one bad product cycle can kill the company.
Watch on YouTube | Listen on Spotify · Apple Podcasts
Consumer Tech | China
Tencent Revives The Red-envelope Playbook To Push Yuanbao Into The AI Mainstream
Tencent is reviving China’s Lunar New Year “red envelope” battle with a RMB 1 billion cash giveaway tied to its Yuanbao AI assistant app. Pony Ma described the campaign as an attempt to recreate WeChat’s breakout red-envelope moment from 2015.
That 2015 push helped link more than 200 million bank cards and became a turning point in how digital payments are scaled in China.
Rivals are moving too. Baidu announced a RMB 500 million giveaway on Jan 26, signaling renewed escalation after a quieter 2023 when major tech firms largely skipped Spring Festival Gala sponsorships. Separately, Pony Ma reportedly told staff that Tencent is beta testing an AI-powered social feature inside Yuanbao and urged employees to try and help debug it.
Bottom Line: China’s holiday marketing fight is back, and the biggest platforms are using cash giveaways and new features to compete for attention around AI assistant apps.
Robotics | China
Unitree Locks In A Third Spring Festival Gala Slot As Robot Firms Crowd The Stage
Unitree Robotics says it has been named a robot partner for China Media Group’s 2026 Spring Festival Gala, marking its third collaboration with the country’s biggest annual broadcast. Unitree first appeared in 2021 with its robotic ox Benben, and returned in 2025 when its humanoid robots featured in “Yang BOT,” directed by filmmaker Zhang Yimou.
The Gala is increasingly becoming a showcase for “embodied intelligence” branding: Galbot said on Jan 25 it was named the designated embodied large-model robot partner for the 2026 event, and MagicLab announced on Jan 23 it was the strategic intelligent robot partner for the Year of the Horse edition.
Bottom Line: China’s robotics firms are using the Spring Festival Gala as a high-visibility proving ground, as competition for attention and partnerships intensifies ahead of 2026.
Semiconductors | China
Beijing Greenlights H200 Buys For ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent
China has approved ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent to purchase 400,000+ Nvidia H200 AI chips in total, according to Reuters sources, a shift after weeks of uncertainty over whether Beijing would allow imports.
The approvals reportedly come with conditions that are still being finalized, and at least one source said the licenses are restrictive enough that some customers have not yet converted approvals into purchase orders.
The nods were granted during Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s China visit, and land after it was reported earlier this month that customs agents had been told H200 chips were not permitted to enter China, even though the U.S. had cleared exports.
Bottom Line: Beijing is selectively reopening the door to top-tier Nvidia compute for its biggest platforms, while keeping leverage to steer demand toward domestic chips.
AI | Singapore
Singapore Commits S$1b+ To AI Research Over 5 Years
Singapore will invest more than S$1 billion (US$794 million) over five years (2025 to 2030) in its National AI Research and Development Plan, doubling down on “public AI” as the country fights for talent, compute, and credibility in a scale-dominated global race.
The plan targets three levers: fundamental research, applied research, and talent, including new AI Centers of Excellence to tackle hard, long-horizon problems such as responsible AI and cutting AI’s resource intensity - a direct nod to AI’s energy and water footprint in a data-center-heavy city.
It plugs into Singapore’s broader National AI Strategy 2.0 push to scale capability and workforce, while keeping research tied to real-world deployment in industry.
Bottom Line: Singapore is spending big to turn public AI research into deployable capability, but the payoff hinges on execution, not the headline number.
AI | Singapore
Micron’s US$24b Singapore Bet Puts AI Memory In The Fast Lane
Micron will invest US$24 billion (S$30.5 billion) to build a new NAND flash memory wafer fabrication facility in Singapore. The new plant, inside Micron’s existing manufacturing campus, is expected to come online in 2H 2028, adding 65,000 sq m of cleanroom space and creating roughly 1,600 jobs across engineering and operations.
The company’s CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said AI-driven demand for memory is “unprecedented,” with Micron expecting tight supply to extend beyond 2026. The expansion also deepens Singapore’s role as Micron’s key NAND production base: NAND generated US$2.7 billion, around 20% of Micron’s revenue in Q1 FY2026, while the group’s cumulative investment in Singapore since 1998 now tops US$60 billion.
Bottom Line: Micron’s US$24b wager anchors Singapore more firmly in the AI-era memory stack.
Semiconductors | Taiwan
Nvidia Gets Taiwan Approval For A New Taipei HQ
Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs has approved Nvidia’s plan to remit NT$3.3 billion (US$105 million) into Taiwan to raise capital at Nvidia Iconic Taiwan, funding development of a new Taiwan headquarters in Beitou Shilin Tech Park.
The approval landed just ahead of Jensen Huang’s Taipei visit, where he is scheduled to attend a year-end company banquet (held before Chinese New Year) and to meet Taiwanese tech leaders, including TSMC chairman C.C. Wei.
Taipei’s city government has also moved to make the site workable, including combining two land parcels by removing a road between them and reclassifying the land for tech development.
Bottom Line: Nvidia is tightening its Taiwan footprint at the center of the world’s AI supply chain, and Taipei is reshaping land and policy to keep it anchored there.
Tech | South Korea
Samsung Hits Record $65.7b Q4 Revenue
Samsung Electronics said Q4 2025 operating profit more than tripled to 20.07 trillion won (US$13.9b), as higher memory prices and stronger sales of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) lifted its semiconductor-heavy Device Solutions division. Revenue rose 23.8% YoY to 93.83 trillion won, while net profit climbed to 19.64 trillion won.
Samsung also flagged that the AI boom is tightening supply across memory products, with executives warning an acute shortage is likely to persist and that any expansion in supply could remain limited through 2026 and 2027. The same price surge that is lifting chips is also raising input costs for Samsung’s other businesses, creating headwinds for smartphones and displays.
Bottom Line: Samsung’s results underline the same message across the AI supply chain: the cycle is being driven by data-center memory, and HBM is doing the heavy lifting.
Crypto | UAE
UAE Approves Its First USD-backed Stablecoin
The UAE central bank has approved USDU, the country’s first U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin under its payments token rules.
USDU is issued by Universal Digital, regulated in Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), with reserves held 1:1 in safeguarded onshore accounts at Emirates NBD, Mashreq and Mbank.
Universal also named Aquanow as a distribution partner to support institutional access outside the UAE where permitted.
Bottom Line: The UAE is trying to industrialize stablecoins by putting them inside a central-bank payments rulebook, and USDU is the first live test of that model.
Signals To Watch
Who wins the CNY AI race: the platform that turns giveaways into habit. Tencent’s RMB 1b Yuanbao push and Baidu’s RMB 500m response show the contest has shifted from payments to AI assistants. The edge will come from converting holiday reach into repeat use through sticky product surfaces, including social or group features.
China’s AI buildout is being rationed, not just funded.
The reported H200 approvals for ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent, with conditions still being finalized, point to compute access being managed through approvals and constraints even when exports are technically permitted.
Memory is the constraint layer, not an afterthought.
Samsung’s expectation of tight supply into 2026–27 and Micron’s long-dated NAND expansion underline that AI scale is being set by HBM and storage availability, not only GPU procurement.
Singapore is placing a dual bet: public research depth plus manufacturing relevance.
The S$1b+ national AI research plan and Micron’s US$24b investment position Singapore as both a capability builder and an AI hardware node, with talent and execution determining whether the strategy compounds.
Takeaway
The loudest moments this week were consumer-facing, but the more meaningful moves were quieter. They showed up in approvals, capital spending, headquarters expansion, and multi year build timelines. It’s also becoming clear that the next phase will favor companies and countries that can deliver at scale while controlling cost and capacity pressures.
Sources
SCMP: Chinese tech giants Tencent and Baidu join fight for Spring Festival spotlight
Technode: Unitree named robot partner for 2026 Spring Festival Gala
Reuters: China gives nod to ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent to buy Nvidia’s H200 chips - sources
CNA: Singapore to invest more than S$1 billion in national AI research plan over 5 years
Straits Times: Micron to invest $30.5 billion in Singapore to boost chip production, creating 1,600 jobs
Taipei Times: MOEA approves Nvidia investment on eve of Jensen Huang visit
Korea JoongAng Daily: Samsung Electronics reports record operating profit due to memory demand
Coindesk: UAE’s central bank has approved a USD-backed stablecoin