🧋 Hello human and artificial friends,

We say it again and again: Asia is where AI moves fastest. And we want you to benefit from it.

That’s why, starting now, we’re bringing you even more insights that you won’t find anywhere else—with a video podcast that really packs a punch.

We’re bringing investors, founders, and thought leaders from Asia to the microphone to deliver stories and learnings from the center of disruption.

Here is the link to the first episode:

👀 Watch it on YouTube in 4K. 

🎧 Or listen on your favorite podcast app. All links can be found here.

Looking forward to your feedback! 🧡

Asia is where AI moves fastest. New products, new habits, new ways of using tech show up every week. Most disappear, but some quietly change how people shop, learn, travel, or create. We pick those ideas so you can study them and build your own version.

A $1 app with a brutally honest name is currently crushing the Chinese App Store charts:

It’s called "Si Le Me" (死了么), which literally translates to "Are you dead?".

It was built by three 20-somethings for just USD$250 to solve a fear shared by 90 million solo dwellers: disappearing without anyone noticing — that easily yields into a huge ROI.

It doesn't have a complex interface or even a login screen. It has one button: "Check-in." If a user fails to press it for two consecutive days, the app automatically emails their emergency contact.

✅ Brutal Honesty in Branding: While Western safety apps use soft names like "SafeGuardian" or "Life360," this app went viral by saying exactly what people are afraid of. It turned a taboo topic (dying alone) into a shared social conversation.

✅ Zero-Friction MVP: It proves that a "Safety-as-a-Service" product doesn't need to be complex. It just provides one specific result: the certainty that an alarm will sound if you stop moving.

The current viral app is manual (you have to remember to click). The true "Steal This Idea" opportunity is moving from Manual Check-ins to Passive AI Behavioral Pulses.

💡 The "Passive Pulse" AI: Build a background AI that monitors non-intrusive metadata (e.g., Is the phone being moved? Is the morning alarm being dismissed?). If the "Pulse" stops for X hours, the AI initiates a verification call.

💡 The AI "Verification Agent": Instead of a cold email to a relative, an AI agent calls the user first. Using natural language, it asks a simple question: "Hey, just checking in, you've been quiet today. Everything okay?" If the AI detects distress or gets no response, it handles the emergency escalation with the context of the user's last known status.

The success of "Si Le Me" proves there is a massive, global market for Existence Security.

For decades, the tech industry focused on Life Enhancement (making us faster, smarter, more productive). But as global populations age and solo living becomes the default for millions, Life Confirmation could be the next big thing.

Connect your email, and you’ll instantly get a CRM with enriched customer insights and a platform that grows with your business.

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📈 Shanghai’s AI boom hits IPO season: Five AI companies from the city have gone public within a single month, signaling that Shanghai’s long-built AI ecosystem is entering its payoff phase. From GPU designers like Biren, MetaX and Iluvatar CoreX to AI drug discovery firm Insilico Medicine, listings span the full stack from compute to applications. Backed by a deep chip supply chain, strong policy support and a talent pool of roughly 250,000 AI professionals, Shanghai’s large AI firms lifted profits 11% and revenues nearly 40% in the first three quarters of 2025.

🎯 Asia takes the lead in the global AI race: Asian tech stocks kicked off 2026 with strong gains, outperforming US peers as investors rotate toward cheaper valuations, faster earnings growth, and the region’s central role in the semiconductor supply chain. Heavyweights like Samsung, TSMC, and SK Hynix are surging on AI-driven demand, while strategists at Goldman Sachs and Citi say Asia now offers the better risk-reward. With earnings growth in Korea and Taiwan set to far outpace the Nasdaq.

🇰🇷 Why South Korea wants to regulate AI first: Seoul is weeks away from enforcing the world’s first unified AI law, betting that early action will let it shape global norms while the US stalls and the EU moves slowly. The AI Framework Act combines an innovation-first approach with hard rules for “high-impact AI” in sensitive areas like healthcare and energy, plus mandatory labeling of AI-generated content. Critics warn the rush leaves companies confused about compliance, but the government argues first-mover advantage beats waiting on the sidelines.

Fluent chat isn’t enough anymore. After headline flops, such as fabricated outputs and failed pilots, buyers want accuracy, provenance, and control.

Chat ≠ delivery. Free-form answers are fine for ideation and drafts. For real work (contracts, audits, KYC, RFPs), you need fields, sources, and an audit trail—every time.

➕ Agents as your backbone = chatbot + tools + steps + checks. Use them behind the extraction pipeline to fetch data, run checks, and assemble packets.

That’s how many young people India aims to train in AI skills within just one year.

🤖 AI over anxiety: India is rolling out a nationwide upskilling drive to position AI not as a job killer, but as a productivity multiplier — especially for youth and small businesses.

📈 Talent edge, reinforced: India already leads global AI talent hiring with an annual rate of about 33%, according to the Stanford AI Index. At the same time, roughly USD 70 billion is being invested in AI data centers.

Watch: India is betting on the “democratization of AI.” With fewer white-collar jobs than Western economies, the focus is on reskilling the IT and STEM workforce early, turning AI into a career upgrade rather than a displacement shock.

🎥 Kling AI is the most widely used AI video tool in the world.
Its edge: massive global adoption with 60M users, longer video outputs and fine-grained editing controls, plus aggressive pricing that makes high-end AI video accessible for both creators and businesses.

🎬 PixVerse is an Alibaba-backed AI video platform pushing generation into real-time.
Its edge: real-time controllable video generation, strong social distribution built in, and a clear path toward interactive shows and infinite, AI-driven games rather than static clips.

🎭 Viggle AI is a character animation platform focused on motion-first video creation.
Its edge: a strong motion engine built on 3D and physics modeling, text-to-motion workflows, and a creator-driven ecosystem that makes character animation fast, repeatable, and highly social-media native.

🕶️ China’s RayNeo to push AR glasses mainstream: The Shenzhen-based smart-glasses maker raised ~RMB 1B ($143M) from investors including China Mobile, China Unicom, and CITIC, to double down on AR optics, spatial computing, and AI—as it chases what it calls China’s coming “iPhone moment” for smart glasses.

🤖 X Square Robot about to push embodied AI workers: The Chinese embodied-AI startup raised a $143M A++ round backed by ByteDance, Meituan, and Alibaba to deploy general-purpose robots across factories, logistics, and elderly care, betting on low-cost, real-world-trained models to push robots into mass use.

🏥 Singapore’s Zeya Health raises $575K to turn clinic admin into autopilot: Led by Antler, the pre-seed backs Zeya’s AI “front desk” that plugs into a clinic’s EMR + WhatsApp to automate reminders, rescheduling, and follow-ups—so staff spend less time chasing bookings and more time with patients.

✅ Eat only AI generated foods for a day.
✅ Take the quiz and see if you can spot what’s real and what’s fake.
✅ Convince Chat GPT that you spell strawberry with 3 r’s.
✅ Feel inspired and listen to why Michael moved to China.
✅ Get ready for your next China adventure with the asiabits China Guide.*

_{*Buy now and receive 30% discount with the code: Asiabits88. Thanks :)}

Could you beat this dance performance? 💃