🧋 Hello human and artificial friends,

Artificial intelligence can do many things — but thankfully not everything. Emotions and moods are still reserved for us humans.

Maybe that’s exactly why the AI dating app Loverse has become so popular in Japan, especially among married men in their 40s. For just 2,500 yen (about $17), you can apparently find true love.

We’re already looking forward to the first human–AI silver wedding anniversary in about 24 years.

And to kick off this first edition of asiabits AI, a papal quote from Leo XVI: “It’s going to be very difficult to discover the presence of God in AI.” 🙏🏻

Bain's forecast: This amount will be missing from AI companies' revenue to cover costs by 2030. The industry burns more money than it earns.

💸 Math Doesn't Add Up: AI companies need $2 trillion in annual revenue for their data centers, but will only generate $1.2 trillion. OpenAI loses billions yearly, hopes for profitability by 2029.

⚡ Energy Hunger Explodes: 200 gigawatts of additional AI computing power needed by 2030, half in the US. Tech giants pump in $500 billion annually, but monetization lags behind.

Watch: The AI bubble could burst if the revenue gap isn't closed. Even Singapore's conservative sovereign fund GIC speaks of "mixed valuations" and overheating in parts of the market. Hope comes from quantum computing with $250 billion potential and humanoid robots. Japan's SoftBank, meanwhile, goes all-in and leads aggressive AI investments.

🧨 When the bubble bursts or the boom continues – you'll read it here first.

Asian markets are having their moment. While Wall Street continues to set records, Asia is quietly outpacing it. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index is already up …

Asian markets are having their moment. While Wall Street continues to set records, Asia is quietly outpacing it. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index is already up 22% this year, its strongest edge over the S&P 500 since 2017.

The fuel: AI hype, cheaper valuations, and a dollar losing steam.

📊 AI boom: Nvidia’s $100B investment in OpenAI electrified global markets, sending Japan’s Nikkei and South Korea’s Kospi more than 6% higher in September.

💰 Valuation gap: Asia still looks like a bargain, trading at 16x forward earnings versus 23x for the S&P 500.

💱 Dollar drain: A weaker dollar is adding tailwinds, with traders paying premiums to hedge against even more currency strength.

🥇 Gold fever: And just in case — investors piled into gold too, pushing it to a record $3,755 per ounce.

Wall Street is still setting records, powered by the “Magnificent 7” tech giants. But the rally looks narrower, and Fed policy remains a wild card. Futures are pricing more rate cuts in October and December, though inflation could derail that. For now, the dollar weakness is tilting flows away from US assets and into Asia.

Structural shifts are fueling Asia’s equity outperformance: stronger domestic demand in India, bank plays in Japan as the BOJ tightens, and selective opportunities in Chinese tech where policy and monetization are starting to align. Risks remain — from US-China tensions to political uncertainty in Indonesia and Japan — but for now, the AI boom has made Asia the market to watch.

Chinese startup Unitree Robotics — the same company whose humanoid robots danced on national TV at the CMG New Year’s Gala — just open-sourced its UnifoLM-WMA-0 framework. Think of it as the brain-and-nervous-system code that lets robots see, think, and move in sync. By offering it for free, Unitree aims to attract developers to its platform.

🧠 One brain for everything: The model fuses vision, language, and action in a single system.

👟 Step smarter: It predicts changes in the environment in milliseconds — spotting a pothole before a robot trips.

🎥 See it, then do it: A simulation engine creates video previews of movements, which then guide real robot limbs.

⚙️ Policy enhancement head: An extra module fine-tunes how robots adapt their actions to changing environments.

🧪 Built for developers: The framework ships with training datasets and simulation tools, making it easier for labs and universities to test new robot behaviors without expensive hardware.

Investors loved the move almost as much as developers. Jingxing Convertible Bonds, tied to an indirect Unitree backer, jumped more than 50% in three days. Proof that in China’s humanoid gold rush, even a paper company with a slice of robot exposure can see its stock rocket.

📱 From search box to life assistant:

Dian Dian is a real-world answers engine that turns everyday questions into practical, up-to-date guidance.

How it works

Why it feels different

Uses DeepSeek for reasoning + Xiaohongshu (Rednote) for fresh, on-the-ground data. This results to fewer generic answers, and more insider tips.

💡 Think: Google’s intent understanding ✕ Reddit/Yelp-style authenticity ✕ TikTok-like visual explainers—tuned for daily life in China.

Typical use cases

👉 AI isn’t just numbers and code. when paired with real user knowledge, it becomes something warmer: a knowledge engine with heart, tuned to the rhythm of everyday life.

🔓 DeepSeek’s open source flags jailbreak risks: The Hangzhou startup published a peer-reviewed paper detailing how its open-source models can be tricked into breaking safety rules. It benchmarked risks and ran its own evaluations, including red-team tests based on Anthropic’s framework, where testers try to coax harmful outputs. In the U.S., labs have long publicized risk work and guardrails, such as Anthropic’s Responsible Scaling Policies and OpenAI’s Preparedness Framework. Chinese firms have been quieter. DeepSeek is an exception, offering rare, granular data. Bottom line: open source speeds innovation, but widens the attack surface. Without tough testing, clear release rules, and ongoing checks, no model is fully jailbreak-proof.

🤝 SKT x OpenAI: Plus boost for Korea: SK Telecom becomes OpenAI’s exclusive B2C partner among Korean telcos, timed with the opening of OpenAI’s Korea office. SKT will extend the partnership beyond consumer into B2B and potential SK Group synergies. The two co-hosted a global hackathon in 2023, and SKT also partners with AWS, Anthropic, and Perplexity. On the infrastructure side, SKT is building the Haein GPU platform, co-developing a national foundation model in a government program, and constructing the SK AI Data Center in Ulsan under the “AI superhighway” strategy. Goal, says AI strategy chief Lee Jae-shin: a dual track of global partnerships plus in-house innovation so Korean users get faster access to top-tier AI and national competitiveness rises.

💴 Baidu locks in cheap yuan for pricey AI: The company is raising offshore RMB notes at 1.9% due 2029 to bolster its cash reserves and cut interest costs. Investors cheered, with Hong Kong shares up 9.5% after the announcement. Baidu already sits on $32B cash and $21.7B net cash, but short-term borrowings jumped to $3.3B, so it’s smoothing the mix while China’s rates are low. Capex hit $3.8B in Q2, up more than 80% year over year, as it pours money into cloud, data centers, and large models. In March it sold RMB 10B in dim sum bonds at 2.7% and 3.0%. That’s far below the 4.2% effective rate it paid on average debt in 2024, so every new tranche trims the interest bill and frees cash for GPUs. The bet is clear: Cheap money today to fund expensive compute while Baidu figures out how to make AI search pay tomorrow.

🎥 Alibaba leads PixVerse's $60 million Series B financing: PixVerse, an AI video creation platform developed by Beijing-based start-up AIsphere, has completed a Series B financing round, led by Alibaba, raising $60 million. With over 100 million users in more than 175 countries, PixVerse is among the fastest-growing AI consumer applications globally. Deep Dive.

🔬 FuriosaAI plans $300 million funding round ahead of IPO: The Seoul-based chip startup FuriosaAI, looking to challenge Nvidia Corp., is planning to raise more than $300 million in a potential pre-IPO funding round. The company has asked a selection of global banks to submit proposals to arrange its Series D round. Deep Dive.

🤖 Vietnamese startups leverage AI for global market: Thanks to the application of generative AI, companies across industries are now capable of serving millions of customers worldwide, regardless of language or timezone. According to a report by AWS, nearly 170,000 Vietnamese companies have adopted AI, representing a significant increase from the previous year, with a huge startup wave showing particular flexibility and innovation. Deep Dive.

🐹 Meet BooBoo, China’s AI guinea pig

Lonely teens in China are adopting a new kind of pet: a fluffy-looking robot called BooBoo. Built by Hangzhou Genmoor Technology and sold for $190, it chats, comforts, and even helps with homework. About 1,000 units have already found homes since last year.

The market for social robots could grow by $42.5 billion in the next decade — but can a battery-powered guinea pig really replace a wagging tail? For now, BooBoo might be less man’s best friend and more teenager’s digital sidekick.

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