🧋 Hello human and artificial friends,

three coffees in the morning, one bubble tea in the afternoon, and Chinese green tea for the rest of the day.

That combo builds up quite a bit of pressure on our bladders. Luckily, Shanghai has more toilets than Starbucks.

The real question is: can the AI industry handle its pressure? CNBC already warns, “The bubble in people searching for ‘AI bubble’ has burst.”

🍵 We are watching calmly and curiously with a cup of green tea in hand, and we will keep you posted on who survives the shake-out.

Asia is where AI moves fastest. Every day, new tools drop. Most vanish overnight, but a few redefine how people live and work. We find those gems so you can watch, learn, and build your own.

Today’s idea

Asia is where AI moves fastest. Every day, new tools drop. Most vanish overnight, but a few redefine how people live and work. We find those gems so you can watch, learn, and build your own.

Today’s idea

Tencent’s Yuanbao is not another chatbot. It’s an AI assistant that lives inside WeChat, the app 1.4 billion people use daily. You can literally add it as a “friend” and chat like you would with anyone else. It reads your PDFs, summarizes posts, understands pictures, and even answers voice messages — powered by Tencent’s own Hunyuan model and DeepSeek integration.

✅ Zero friction adoption. It meets users inside the app they already open all day.
✅ Feels like a person. Typing bubbles, quick replies, voice notes. Trust grows.
✅ Model choice. Users pick the engine for speed, reasoning, or long text.
✅ Super app leverage. One chat to use the entire WeChat ecosystem to rule daily tasks.

📱 Platform dependence. If your agent relies on one super app, policy shifts or product changes can cap growth.

🔒 Privacy and data rights. Deep file and link access must ship with clear controls and default-safe settings.

🤖 Quality control at scale. Pulling from social feeds and public links risks hallucinations and low-quality sources.

🌍 Local magic may not translate abroad. “AI as a friend” hits differently in the West.

Tencent is turning chat into an operating system. Soon, you’ll ask Yuanbao to book tickets, order food, or summarize your inbox. If it works in China, expect Meta or WhatsApp to follow.

👥 The Companion Economy: AI as Therapist, Lover, Pastor

⚖️ Gen Z is turning chatbots into 24/7 confidants, with therapy-style prompts spreading across social apps; the appeal is instant structure and nonjudgmental support, while the risks are privacy leaks and unvetted advice that can misfire.

🛋️ The same pull is surging in China, where clinician shortages and stigma make AI therapy tools like DeepSeek attractive for low-cost, always-on counseling; regulators demand safety, yet experts warn heavy reliance can deepen isolation.

😏 Commercialization pushes the trend further as AI companions go NSFW, with Kuaishou’s FantaSay and peers monetizing parasocial intimacy for overseas users; emotional support blurs into paid companionship, shifting care into a consumer product.

⛪️ And the frontier reaches faith, where “Text With Jesus” and similar apps offer on-demand spiritual guidance; the throughline is clear: when human time is scarce or costly, AI fills the gap.

🎨 Hunyuan tops the board: Tencent’s open-source image model, Hunyuan Image 3.0, now leads LMArena’s text-to-image rankings, overtaking Google DeepMind’s “Nano Banana” (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image). Hunyuan has about 80B parameters—the largest open-source image generator so far—and Tencent says it matches flagship closed models. “Nano Banana” had stood out for precise image editing and 3D-figurine generation. The leaderboard shift suggests China’s open-source push is raising the bar as well as the compute budgets.

🛠️ From months to a day: AlignBase turns messy enterprise data into a working digital twin. It ingests ERP, MES, and supply chain data, isolates production factors, and assembles node by node workflows. A reinforcement learning loop then stress tests decisions and generates task apps. In one rollout, a full plant map was produced in about 24 hours and cleared a client audit with no mapping errors. Pilots in steel, energy, and logistics use the twin to choose cheaper schedules, shift power loads, and reroute inventory. This helps cutting unit costs and lifting equipment uptime. Why it works in China: China’s tightly integrated, multi-step supply chains create many levers for fast, measurable savings—ideal for pay-for-outcomes pricing.

🏗️ Korea’s chip muscle meets OpenAI’s “Stargate.”: Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are set to supply the DRAM and HBM memory behind OpenAI’s mega compute plans, while two new 20 MW data centers are planned in Korea. Orders could approach 900,000 wafers per year by 2029, with deal value estimated above 100 trillion won (70 billion USD). The bet aligns with Seoul’s push to be an AI hub after OpenAI opened a local office in 2025. Korea climbed to No. 2 for paying ChatGPT users. The playbook is simple: lock in high-bandwidth memory at scale, put data centers close to supply, and turn Korea’s manufacturing depth into a compute advantage.

🇭🇰 Hong Kong: The city plans to install tens of thousands of surveillance cameras with AI-powered facial recognition. More on that.

🇯🇵 Japan: Fujitsu and Nvidia to develop energy-efficient AI chips by 2030 for Japan's data centers and robotics. More on that.

🇮🇳 India: Pahal Solar to double capacity in 2026 with AI aiding inspections. More on that.

That’s the share of South Koreans who feel anxious about falling behind in using AI to help with investment decisions.

🤖 AI FOMO in finance: The worry peaks among people in their 30s — 64.5% fear missing the trend and want to use AI tools for financial decisions.

📈 Digital unease: 67.2% worry about not building AI skills at work, while 54.9% are skeptical of the current AI education boom.

Watch: Experts caution against blindly trusting chatbot outputs — responses can vary by model, bias, and even pricing tier. Smarter investing now means stronger AI literacy and cross-checking sources.

Kimi PPT助手 is an AI presentation tool that turns a topic, outline, or uploaded docs (Word/PDF) into a logically structured, editable PPT in minutes.
Its edge: up to ~85% faster creation, zero learning curve, high-quality copy/layout, and multi-file synthesis.

猫箱APP is an AI social/companion & interactive storytelling platform by ByteDance where you chat via text/voice with diverse, personality-rich AI characters, co-create branching stories, and even build your own avatars.
Its edge: immersive narrative + 24/7 emotional companionship + full character customization for play, role-play, and creative expression.

Z.ai is an AI model playground/portal by Zhipu AI that lets you try multiple GLM models in real time. One for coding/web output, one for logic/reasoning, and another one for “search-analyze-verify” deep thinking.
It’s edge: multi-model switching + live render previews + free access, making it ideal for coding, research, design, education, and business tasks.

💡 South Korea’s AI chip start-up Rebellions just joined the billion-dollar club: It raised 250 million USD from Arm and Samsung Ventures, pushing its valuation to 1.4 billion USD. Its new chip, REBEL-Quad, runs on a chiplet design that promises faster, cheaper, and greener AI inference — the kind of hardware every data center suddenly wants. Already powering AI systems in Japan, Saudi Arabia, and the US, Rebellions now wants to go global.

💰 Urban Company aims at air conditioners: GreyLabs AI, a voice recognition-based AI platform, has raised 85 Crore Rupees (approximately $9.6 million) in a Series A financing round - led by Elevation Capital. Meanwhile, Urban Company is in talks with component manufacturers to assemble and market air conditioners under its own brand "Native".

🤖 Japan’s AI SaaS startup LayerX just scored 100 million USD to automate the corporate paper chase: Led by TCV — the U.S. fund behind Airbnb and ByteDance — the Series B round also brought in Mitsubishi UFJ and Jafco Group. LayerX’s software uses AI to handle invoices, reimbursements, and even tokenized real estate data. Founded by serial entrepreneur Yoshinori Fukushima, the company is now doubling down on engineers and sales as Japan’s offices finally go digital.

🌏 Mastercard: Manager, Business Development, Digital Partnerships, Shanghai

🌏 Microsoft: Gaming China Business Development Lead, Shanghai

🌏 GLG: Junior Marketing Manager (B2B) – Korean & Mandarin speaker, Shanghai

🌏 GenAI Fund: Associate (Internship), Ho-Chi-Minh-City

🌏 Notion: Startup Market Developer, Seoul

🌏 Google: Strategy and Operations Analyst, GTM Business, Singapore

🌏 Nvidia: Business Development Manager, Global Public Sector, Hanoi

🌏 IBM: Event & Experience Marketing Professional, Tokyo

🌏 Meta: Creative Strategist, Greater China, Hong Kong

🌏 Alibaba: Business Development Manager (AI Automotive), Shenzhen

🤖 In China, even robots are learning self-care.

A company in Shenzhen just unveiled a humanoid robot that literally swaps its own batteries — no charging cable, no human needed. The “Walker S2” strolls up to a dock, pops out its dead battery, grabs a new one, and gets right back to work.

It’s basically the Tesla of robots — minus the drama.

The idea: machines that never sleep, never stop, and maybe one day… never need us.