Welcome back,
I’m still recovering from an exhausting week in Singapore at Token2049, but the show goes on.
This week we take a closer look at YouTube’s partnership with Shopee in Southeast Asia, the early dispute between ByteDance and the US government over a potential ban, TSMC’s big deal for Apple’s US manufacturing, and much more.
In case you missed it, last week’s ATR original article covered how South Korea’s cryptocurrency market is recovering from the Terra-Luna collapse two years ago. Elaine Ramirez joined Korea Blockchain Week to find signs of recovery through regulation, institutional adoption, and of course developers.
That’s it for this week, the next original will be published in a few days.
The best,
John
Follow Asia Tech Review’s LinkedIn page to stay up to date with posts published here and other interesting news we find interesting. News lovers can get the latest news on ATR Telegram news feed and join the community chat here.
Nearly a year after TikTok Shop and Tokopedia merged to create Indonesia’s leading social commerce company, two major players are now taking aim. E-commerce company Sea and YouTube have partnered to allow content creators to promote, tag and sell products in their YouTube videos on Shopee.
The exact details of how this will come to fruition are unclear, and the partnership is not exclusive as Shopee is the first partner, but it does show how far the needle has moved when it comes to social commerce.
We’ve seen Shopee, Lazada and others experiment with live video and multimedia in Southeast Asia, but this could take it to the next level. The question may be whether YouTube can do this, given the speed at which Google moves (or doesn’t). It’s also questionable whether YouTube can be a shopping destination. The reason users open TikTok is quite different from YouTube. YouTube has experimented with short-form video with YouTube Shorts, but it remains to be seen whether it can build a strong commerce use case. TikTok is very unique in that respect.
But it’s good to see Southeast Asia at the forefront of YouTube’s new features: the test will begin in Indonesia before expanding to Thailand and Vietnam, with no announcement yet about other markets.
Here’s a scoop from a journalist at Substack: former Bloomberg columnist and friend of Asia Tech Review Tim Culpan reports that TSMC has started producing its first chips at its Arizona factory, with Apple leading the way by using the 5nm process to manufacture its mobile processors.
Tim’s newsletter is free, so be sure to subscribe.
This is a crazy story. TSMC Arizona is the flagship project of the US government’s $39 billion CHIPS for America fund under the CHIPS Act. Six months ago, I thought Apple might choose Arizona for a less critical chip like the H-series used in AirPods. I was surprised to hear it was the A16. The fact that they chose the most advanced chip they could manage in the US, both technology-wise and quantity-wise, shows that Apple and TSMC want to get off to a big start.
Tim’s writing style is entertaining, but these are important topics. Chip technology isn’t sexy, but it powers the world we live in and many of the businesses that support it. Please subscribe.
TikTok’s future in the US is unclear, with less than six months left until a deadline for it to be banned or sold in the country. Last week, a court heard arguments on whether a ban is possible, and The New York Times reported the main findings.
The hearing at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit lasted about two hours.
The three-judge panel grilled both TikTok and the government about April legislation that said ByteDance must sell TikTok to a non-Chinese company by Jan. 19 or it would be banned in the United States.
Lawyers have asked the judge to rule by December 6, and legal experts expect the losing side to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Two of the justices expressed skepticism of TikTok’s arguments that Congress lacks the authority to pass such a law and its defense that it is being unfairly targeted.
One of the judges, Neomi Rao, said the company’s legal position relied on a “very strange framework for thinking about” Parliament’s power.
ByteDance claims that if it is forced to withdraw from the US, it will have “devastating” consequences for freedom of speech. More practically, it seems difficult to separate and sell the US part of the service. Still, there are some eye-catching stories. Forbes’ Emily Baker White (who is writing a book on TikTok) reports that a former ByteDance employee said in a court affidavit that Chinese police kidnapped and threatened his father in retaliation for giving an interview to a Western media outlet about TikTok’s censorship. Link
Combining politics and technology is never easy.
Asian tech companies aren’t getting enough attention, so here are three insightful profiles published this week that are worth reading.
Whether China can advance technologically and overtake the United States depends on SMIC, the partly state-owned company that is China’s only advanced chipmaker and the de facto domestic semiconductor champion. SMIC churns out millions of chips each month for other companies that design them, including Huawei, a Chinese technology company under U.S. sanctions, and U.S. companies such as Qualcomm.
Transsion now holds roughly half of the smartphone market in Africa and an even larger share of feature phones. It has also successfully expanded into parts of Asia and the Middle East, and now derives most of its revenue from outside Africa, highlighting the global potential of the Transsion model. In India, for example, its low-cost 5G smartphones have proven popular, and the company is investing heavily in local manufacturing and marketing. Meanwhile, Spotify-like music service Boomplay has more than 90 million monthly active listeners globally and also offers news and payment apps.
The FT has run a detailed article (available to subscribers) that covers the company’s business model, the need to distance itself from China, and how Shein is different from Temu and other companies.
I also recommend two books that give an inside look at SoftBank and its founder, Masayoshi Son.
The FBI has gained control of a botnet of hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices, including cameras and routers, run by a group of Chinese government hackers known as Flax Typhoon.
ByteDance is reportedly fast-tracking the development of its own AI chips to gain an advantage in China’s AI chatbot market, and has partnered with TSMC to aim to mass-produce two chips by 2026 (ByteDance denies the reports).
China has announced a breakthrough in domestically produced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, with state-owned companies being encouraged to use new laser-based immersion lithography tools with resolutions of 65 nanometers or better, an improvement over previous 90-nm tools.
China’s YMTC is working to replace foreign semiconductor manufacturing technology with domestic alternatives.
However, China has been hit hard by new export restrictions on semiconductor manufacturing equipment from Dutch company ASML.
A Chinese security conference may have turned a typical hacking contest into a covert espionage operation, using participants to gather intelligence from unknown targets, according to two Western researchers who have looked into the event’s unusual competitive structure.
The U.S. Department of Commerce is expected to announce rules banning Chinese and Russian hardware and software in connected cars.
PhysicsWallar raised $210 million at a $2.8 billion valuation despite a lack of funding in edtech.
The Indian government is investigating business practices at Netflix’s local operations, including alleged visa violations and racial discrimination, according to government emails sent to former executives.
Indian government authorities want to understand the ownership structure of quick commerce companies and their dark stores as foreign direct investment rules do not allow foreign-owned online marketplaces to own inventory or control sellers on their platforms.
The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has asked for financial statements from Amazon and Flipkart as the antitrust case against the two companies nears its conclusion, people familiar with the matter said.
Now, online fashion platform Myntra is betting on four-hour delivery amid India’s rapid commerce boom.
European fintech company Revolut has just received approval from India’s central bank for its prepaid cards and wallet and plans to launch its services in India next year.
Lenovo has begun manufacturing AI servers in South India.
Everest Fleet, a fleet operator with over 18,000 vehicles, has raised $50 million, including $30 million led by ride-hailing giant Uber’s India arm.
IPO on the horizon? As part of its US expansion plans, OYO has acquired Motel 6, one of America’s top lodging brands, for $525 million.
Ikea-backed home furnishings startup Livspace is relocating its headquarters from Singapore to India early next year as it prepares for an IPO.
Amazon has appointed longtime executive Sameer Kumar as the new head of its India consumer business.
Vahan.ai, an AI-driven recruiter for gig workers, raised $10 million led by Khosla Ventures.
Bank SaaS provider M2P Fintech raises $80 million at valuation of $850-900 million
Financial services startup Kaleidofin raises $13.8 million
Netflix is doubling down on its bet on Southeast Asia as Amazon and Disney reduce their production focus in the region.
GoTo signed a five-year contract with Alibaba to use the company’s cloud services in exchange for not selling any shares. Alibaba’s ownership has fallen from 9% to 7.5% following the recent divestiture that saw GoTo’s shares fall.
The United States is reportedly urging Vietnam to avoid Chinese companies such as HMN Technologies in its plans to build 10 new undersea cables by 2030.
Ninja Van has suspended operations at its Vietnamese subsidiary due to late payments of salaries and social insurance contributions to its Vietnamese employees.
Indonesia’s tax authorities are investigating an alleged data leak affecting six million taxpayers after their tax ID numbers were allegedly being sold on forums.
Crypto platform BingX loses $44 million after hack
TerraForm Labs has received court approval to wind down its operations through bankruptcy after agreeing to settle a lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Nvidia-backed AI startup Sakana is now valued at $1.5 billion after raising funding from Japanese investor Iink.
Opinion: While the world’s eyes are on Singapore, don’t ignore Japan in Web3 links
Taiwanese semiconductor industry suppliers set sail for Japan’s “Silicon Island” link
TSMC’s new semiconductor fab in southern Kyushu has sparked Japan’s fastest land price rise for two consecutive years, showing the project’s economic impact.
Gogoro, a Taiwanese electric scooter maker and battery replacement leader, announced that its CEO and chairman, Horace Luke, has resigned following allegations of subsidy fraud.
Gogoro is accused of using Chinese-made parts in its electric scooters to cut manufacturing costs, despite reporting it was using domestically produced parts to qualify for government subsidies. Gogoro said in the filing that an internal investigation uncovered “certain irregularities” in its supply chain that led to the “incorrect incorporation of certain imported parts into some of our vehicles.”
Kazakhstan is looking to boost production of metals needed for EV batteries and has issued hundreds of new exploration licenses to attract new investment in the sector.
It’s a reminder that Bhutan, a Himalayan nation of less than one million people, has amassed more than $780 million from Bitcoin mining, nearly a third of its GDP.