The Wrap | 3 – 9 Jan 2026
Asia Tech Lens’ weekly digest of the signals, shifts, and stories shaping Asia’s tech future
Editor’s Note: This week’s mix shows Asia’s tech cycle splitting into two tracks: governance tightening on one side, and capacity building on the other. The Manus deal sits at the intersection, underscoring how cross-border AI ambition now collides with questions of regulatory jurisdiction, talent mobility, IP control, and political risk. In China and Indonesia, the focus is on guardrails, accountability, and what regulators will no longer tolerate. In India and Singapore, the emphasis is on scaling the underlying stack, from data-center buildout to AI tooling that can be sold as a business, not a demo.
Podcast Spotlight | Dr. Joleen Liang, Co-Founder, Squirrel Ai
In a candid conversation with Miro Lu, Dr. Joleen Liang, co-founder of Shanghai-based Squirrel Ai and CEO of SAI North America, explains how the company went from near wipeout to a relaunch, and what it takes to rebuild when the numbers are brutal. She recounts losing almost all revenue, then pushing through a disciplined turnaround that cleared the company’s debt within two years. Along the way, Liang makes a broader argument for adaptive AI as learning infrastructure, and challenges how we talk about “addiction” in education when engagement is often mistaken for harm. She also reflects on leadership dynamics under pressure, including what it meant to operate as the company’s only female executive.
Watch on YouTube | Listen on Spotify · Apple Podcasts
AI Agents | Singapore & China
Beijing Moves to Scrutinize Meta’s $2B Manus Buy
A week after Meta announced its acquisition of Manus, the deal is still in the news. Chinese officials have begun examining whether Meta’s more than $2 billion purchase of the AI startup breached Chinese regulations, a preliminary review that could complicate the transaction if authorities find violations.
The deal, announced in December, is being assessed for compliance with relevant laws and regulations, including potential national security considerations.
The case is drawing attention because Manus was founded in China but is now headquartered in Singapore, after shifting its base offshore over the past year. If regulators conclude the move or the sale triggered Chinese rules, the matter could escalate into a formal investigation, potentially leading to penalties or approval conditions before the deal can proceed.
Bottom Line: Manus is emerging as a stress test for how China applies export controls and national-security scrutiny in the AI era, and the outcome could shape how China-founded tech companies sell abroad.
AI | China
China’s LLM Challengers Hit Public Markets Before OpenAI
Two of China’s best-known large-model developers, Zhipu AI and MiniMax, went public in Hong Kong this week, debuting on January 8 and January 9 respectively. Zhipu is the first of China’s so-called “AI tigers,” startups building large language models to rival OpenAI and Anthropic, to go public. Zhipu’s shares gained in their Hong Kong debut after a US$558 million IPO. The stock rose 13.2% to close at HK$131.50 after the company sold 37.4 million shares at HK$116.20 each.
MiniMax raised about US$619 million (HK$4.82 billion) in its Hong Kong IPO and jumped as much as about 54% on debut, underscoring strong investor appetite for China’s model builders.
Bottom Line: This signals that China’s leading LLM startups are moving to public markets early to bankroll the compute-and-R&D arms race - much ahead of their western competitors.
E-commerce | China
Beijing Moves To Cool China’s E-commerce Price War
China has issued new rules aimed at curbing cutthroat online competition, including bans on coercing merchants into promotions and tighter requirements around consumer and data protection. A related set of measures also targets livestreaming and influencer marketing, prohibiting false or misleading claims.
The intervention follows months of subsidy-fueled battling across retail and delivery, with regulators repeatedly warning giants like Alibaba, JD.com and Meituan against tactics that squeeze smaller merchants and distort market order. The industry’s discount arms race has already hit profitability, with Meituan previously pointing to “irrational competition” as margins deteriorated.
Bottom Line: Beijing is stepping in because the e-commerce price war increasingly looks like market disorder, not healthy competition.
Data Centers | India
India’s Data-Center Buildout To Hit 1.7GW
India is projected to add about 220MW of data-center capacity in 2026, taking total installed capacity to roughly 1.7GW by year-end, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The market ended 2025 with around 1.5GW of installed colocation capacity across seven major cities, after adding about 228MW last year.
Policy and connectivity will drive the next leg: the draft National Data Centre Policy and India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act are expected to support investment, while new cable landing stations at Digha and additional sites in Mumbai and Chennai could accelerate growth.
Bottom Line: On the flip side, the report also flags a looming capacity gap, with land availability and reliable 24x7 power still key constraints.
Gaming | Singapore
Razer Bets $600m On “Untapped” AI Gaming Demand
Razer, the Singapore-founded gaming hardware and software company, says it will invest more than US$600 million into AI over the next couple of years and hire around 150 AI scientists as it reshapes the business. CEO Min-Liang Tan called AI a multibillion-dollar opportunity and argued the market for AI in gaming remains “completely untapped,” pointing to about 150 million users already on Razer’s software platform.
The push spans both consumer and developer offerings: new AI-driven hardware concepts and a growing software suite, including an AI tool for speeding up game testing (QA) and an open-source kit designed to help developers run large language models locally rather than in the cloud.
Bottom Line: Razer is trying to move from selling gear to selling AI-powered gaming workflows, and it is putting real capital behind the pivot.
Semiconductors | China
China Reportedly Asks Firms to Pause Nvidia H200 Purchases
Beijing has asked some Chinese tech firms to halt orders for Nvidia’s H200 AI chips, with regulators reportedly weighing whether, and under what conditions, companies should be allowed to buy the U.S.-made processors and whether to push them toward domestic alternatives.
The move underscores how Nvidia is being squeezed from both sides: Washington’s tightened export controls have already made access conditional, including a recent U.S. decision to allow H200 exports tied to a 25% revenue-sharing levy, while China is pushing to reduce reliance on U.S.-designed chips and prevent a last-minute stockpiling rush before any new rules land.
Bottom Line: Even “approved” chips are now subject to shifting political terms, and this pause signals China wants control over the timing and direction of demand.
Mobility | Taiwan
Taiwan Clears Uber’s Crown Taxi Acquisition
Taiwan’s Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has approved Uber’s acquisition of Crown Taxi, concluding the regulator’s review of a deal first announced in June 2025. The FTC said the two firms were already partners and that the transaction would not materially change market concentration in taxi dispatch services.
Regulators pointed to continued competition from players including Taiwan Taxi, Line GO, yoxi, and Bolt (which launched in Taiwan in 2025), and said its assessment did not find meaningful risks such as unilateral fare hikes, price-fixing, or barriers to entry.
Bottom Line: The regulator sees this as consolidation without dominance, with enough dispatch competitors left to keep pricing power in check.
Trust & Safety | Indonesia
Indonesia Threatens To Block Grok and X Over Deepfakes
Indonesia’s communications regulator has warned it could cut off access to Grok and X if the platforms fail to curb a viral wave of non-consensual sexualized deepfake-style edits, including content involving minors. Officials say the trend amounts to privacy violations and sexual exploitation and must be addressed under existing Indonesian law, including the country’s pornography restrictions.
A senior ministry official, Alexander Sabar, said initial findings suggest Grok lacks safeguards robust enough to prevent the generation and spread of content using personal images, and warned of both administrative and potential criminal consequences for those producing and distributing illegal material. Indonesia is also urging victims to report cases to authorities, framing the issue as both a platform-governance failure and a criminal matter.
Bottom Line: Indonesia is drawing a hard line: platforms that can’t police AI-enabled abuse may not be allowed to operate at scale.
Signals To Watch
Meta–Manus could set the compliance playbook for China-founded AI exits.
Track what triggers escalation from an initial review to a formal probe, what remedies might look like (conditions, licensing requirements, operational restrictions, IP ring-fencing or carve-outs), and whether this meaningfully chills offshore restructures and cross-border M&A involving China-origin AI companies.
China is shifting from “price war tolerance” to enforceable platform conduct rules.
Watch how aggressively regulators enforce the anti-coercion provisions, and whether penalties land on platforms, merchants, or both. Also watch for knock-on effects: fewer subsidies, tighter refund policies, and a rebalancing toward service quality and logistics rather than pure discounting.Razer is trying to turn AI into a services business, not just a feature list.
The key signal is whether Razer can translate its large software user base into paid AI workflows without diluting the core gaming brand.Taiwan’s taxi market is entering an integration phase, not a winner-take-all phase.
Watch whether Uber uses the Crown Taxi integration to deepen driver supply, improve dispatch performance, or change pricing dynamics. Also watch competitors’ responses (incentives, partnerships, feature differentiation), which will indicate whether the market stays multi-player.
Takeaway
Across these stories, Asia’s power centers are using the AI moment to renegotiate who holds leverage—from regulators over platforms, to capitals over chips and data, to incumbents over upstart talent—rather than simply adapting to imported technology trends.
Sources
Reuters: China to assess, investigate Meta’s acquisition of AI startup Manus
Bloomberg: China Targets Online Commerce Battles in Latest Regulatory Salvo
The Economic Times: India’s data centre capacity to reach 1.7 GW this year
Bloomberg: Razer Plans $600 Million Push to Capture ‘Untapped’ AI Gaming Demand
CNA: China asks tech firms to halt orders for Nvidia’s H200 chips: Report
Focus Taiwan: Fair Trade Commission approves Uber’s acquisition of Crown Taxi
Jakarta Globe: Indonesia Threatens to Ban Grok, X After ‘Remove Clothes’ Trend