Chinese carmakers are increasingly designing their own smart-driving chips, turning custom silicon into a key weapon in the EV tech war. Li Auto's new Mach M100 AI chip, tailored for autonomous driving, highlights this trend.
Tencent is integrating WeChat with smartphone AI assistants from major Chinese phone makers like Huawei and Xiaomi. This move aims to keep its 1.4 billion users engaged by allowing voice commands for messaging and calls within the app, reversing past restrictions.
Singapore's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by a seasonally adjusted 1% in the first quarter of 2026, significantly surpassing the government's initial estimate of a 0.3% contraction and Bloomberg's median forecast of 0.2% expansion. The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) maintained its full-year GDP growth forecast at 2-4%.
China's AI start-ups saw funding jump 185% to over 110 billion yuan (US$16.2 billion) in Q1, driven by investor interest in LLMs and embodied AI. This surge boosted China's overall VC/PE market, despite a dip in yuan-denominated investments.
Singapore’s Grab reported first-quarter profit that exceeded analysts’ estimates, helped by resilient demand for ride hailing and delivery in a market rattled by economic and political challenges. Southeast Asia’s biggest ride-hailing and delivery firm has been trying to boost spending on its platform by incorporating artificial-intelligence features into its superapp and bundling its core ride-hailing, delivery and financial services. With oil and gas prices soaring due to the war in the Middle...
