Category: Asia Focus

Humanoid robots shared the catwalk with human models in Seoul as Galaxy Corporation turned a fashion show into a test of how artificial intelligence, entertainment and daily life may begin to overlap.

The Mach33 Physical AI Fashion Show, staged on May 28 at Galaxy Robot Park in Gangdong District, placed robots in coordinated outfits beside models wearing matching designs. The display was built around a simple proposition from the company: if robots are moving into public spaces, homes, workplaces and entertainment

Phuket’s private-island hospitality market has gained a sharper luxury edge as The Naka Island, a Luxury Collection Resort & Spa, Phuket, rolls out upgraded villas, refreshed dining venues, expanded wellness facilities and a Michelin One Key distinction that places the property among Thailand’s recognised high-end stays.

The resort, located on Naka Yai Island off Phuket’s east coast, has completed a series of enhancements designed to strengthen its appeal to affluent leisure travellers seeking privacy, wellness and destination-led experiences. The upgrades cover

Binance has opened a supervised route back into the Philippines through a partnership with BlockShoals Technologies Inc., placing the world’s largest crypto exchange inside the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission’s Strategic Sandbox after two years of regulatory tension over unlicensed offshore platforms.

The arrangement makes BlockShoals the approved local intermediary under the SEC’s StratBox framework, while Binance supplies technology, security systems, operational support and compliance expertise developed across regulated markets. The sandbox phase is expected to begin in the second half

China’s e-commerce industry expanded steadily in the first four months of 2026, reinforcing its role as a major support for consumption even as the broader economy showed signs of uneven demand and weaker momentum in traditional retail channels.

Online retail sales of goods and services rose 6.6 per cent year on year in January-April, reaching about 6.53 trillion yuan, as digital platforms continued to draw shoppers through discounts, livestreaming, faster delivery and wider service offerings. Online retail sales of goods contributed

China’s artificial intelligence market is entering a faster and more expensive phase, with enterprise spending forecasts pointing to a surge that could reshape global competition in cloud computing, semiconductors, robotics and industrial automation.

Global enterprise AI expenditure is expected to reach about $940 billion in 2026 and climb to roughly $2.1 trillion by 2029, reflecting a shift from experimental deployments to large-scale use across manufacturing, finance, logistics, health care, energy and public services. China is emerging as one of the fastest-expanding

Hong Kong’s artificial intelligence market gained a locally built workplace automation product on Tuesday as Sentimento Technologies launched MonoClaw, a Mac-based AI secretary aimed at professionals and small and medium-sized businesses seeking tighter control over data, costs and daily administrative work.

The product, built around a personal AI assistant called Mona, is being positioned as a “local-first” alternative to cloud-based generative AI tools. Rather than routing most tasks through remote servers, MonoClaw runs large language models on a user’s own Apple

Chinese retail investors are scrambling to keep access to overseas equities after Beijing imposed its toughest enforcement action yet against cross-border stock trading channels used to buy shares in Hong Kong, New York and other offshore markets.

Regulators have moved against Futu Securities International, Tiger Brokers and Longbridge Securities, accusing them of operating securities businesses on the mainland without approval, soliciting domestic clients and processing offshore trading orders in breach of securities, fund and futures rules. The action has disrupted a

Jensen Huang’s arrival in Taipei ahead of Computex has put Nvidia’s next AI platform at the centre of a widening test for Taiwan’s semiconductor supply chain, as the company seeks more production capacity for Vera Rubin while riding record demand for data-centre chips.

Huang is expected to meet Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company chairman and chief executive C. C. Wei as Nvidia prepares a second-half production ramp for Vera Rubin, the next-generation platform that combines new Vera CPUs, Rubin GPUs, advanced memory

SoftBank Group shares rose to a record high as investors priced in the prospect of major gains from potential public listings of OpenAI and SB Energy, reinforcing Masayoshi Son’s return to the centre of the global artificial intelligence trade.

The Tokyo-listed investment group has become one of the most closely watched proxies for AI demand after committing tens of billions of dollars to OpenAI and building exposure across chips, power infrastructure, robotics and data-centre supply chains. The latest rally extended a

Qatar has stepped up its investment campaign in China with high-level business meetings in Shanghai and Hangzhou aimed at turning long-standing trade links into deeper industrial, technology and financial partnerships.

Invest Qatar’s delegation, led by its chief executive Sheikh Ali bin Alwaleed Al-Thani, held executive-level meetings, site visits and closed-door business discussions with Chinese companies across advanced manufacturing, life sciences, industrial technologies and digital platforms. The engagements included WuXi Biologics, Shanghai SUS Environment, Cainiao Group and Ant International, placing the tour

Hong Kong’s competitive weekend dining market is getting a sharper culinary edge as Lobster Bar & Grill at Island Shangri-La turns its Sunday roast brunch into a guest-chef platform linking hotel dining with some of the city’s most recognisable restaurant names.

The 2026 Sunday Roast Guest Chef Series runs across selected Sundays from February to October, with further dates expected for November and December. Priced at HK$898 per guest, plus a 10 per cent service charge, the programme gives each participating

AMD has committed more than $10 billion to Taiwan’s semiconductor ecosystem, targeting advanced packaging and manufacturing capacity as demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure intensifies across global data centres.

The investment is designed to strengthen the chipmaker’s partnerships with foundries, packaging houses, substrate suppliers and server manufacturers that are central to its next generation of AI systems. The programme places Taiwan at the centre of AMD’s effort to scale production of high-performance processors, accelerators and rack-level systems built for increasingly complex AI

Polymarket has appointed a representative in Japan and is preparing to press policymakers for a route to authorise prediction markets, marking a significant step in its effort to turn a crypto-native trading platform into a regulated global financial venue.

The New York-founded company, led by Shayne Coplan, is seeking to open discussions around whether event-based contracts can be permitted under Japan’s financial and digital-asset framework rather than treated purely as gambling. The move comes as prediction markets draw heavier institutional interest,

Japan’s government bond market has become the centre of a global debt selloff as higher oil prices, stubborn inflation and expectations of tighter monetary policy push borrowing costs across major economies to levels not seen for years.

The sharpest pressure has fallen on long-dated Japanese government bonds, where the 30-year yield has climbed above 4 per cent, reaching a record since the maturity was introduced in 1999. The 10-year yield has also risen to around 2.8 per cent, its highest level

China’s market regulator has set 34 priorities for 2026 aimed at strengthening private sector growth, placing fair competition, legal safeguards and more efficient supervision at the centre of Beijing’s effort to restore business confidence.

State Administration for Market Regulation said the agenda would focus on removing market barriers, promoting a unified national market, improving law enforcement practices and curbing destructive price wars that have weighed on corporate margins. The measures form part of a broader policy push to reassure entrepreneurs after

Sri Lanka has imposed a temporary 50 per cent surcharge on customs import duty for imported vehicles, aiming to slow demand for foreign exchange as higher oil prices and Middle East tensions put pressure on the rupee.

The measure, effective from 16 May for three months, applies to selected motor vehicles including passenger cars, jeeps, vans, buses, goods transport vehicles, ambulances, electric vehicles and hybrids. Vehicles for which letters of credit were opened on or before 15 May are exempt, limiting

Seoul’s benchmark Kospi crossed 8,000 for the first time on Friday, powered by a surge in artificial intelligence-linked shares that has turned South Korea into one of the world’s strongest equity markets this year.

The Korea Composite Stock Price Index touched 8,001.40 in early trade at about 9.15am, extending a rally that has accelerated since early May as investors crowded into semiconductor, memory-chip and data-centre supply chain stocks. The move marked another symbolic milestone for a market that only passed 7,000

Votee AI and its Toronto-based research lab Beever AI have open-sourced Beever Atlas, a software platform designed to convert workplace conversations across Telegram, Discord, Mattermost, Microsoft Teams and Slack into a searchable, self-updating knowledge base.

The release places the Hong Kong-headquartered enterprise AI company in a fast-growing contest to solve one of the most persistent problems in digital workplaces: valuable decisions, project updates and technical context disappearing inside chat threads. Beever Atlas is being offered in an Apache 2.0 Open Source

Singapore Airlines’ annual net profit fell sharply as Air India’s widening losses and the absence of a one-off accounting gain outweighed stronger operating performance at the group, while the Iran war added fresh uncertainty through higher jet-fuel costs and airspace disruption.

The Singapore flag carrier reported net profit of S$1.18 billion for the year ended March 31, down 57.4 per cent from the previous year. Operating profit, by contrast, rose 39 per cent to S$2.38 billion, helped by robust passenger

Seoul apartment prices accelerated at their fastest weekly pace in more than three months, sharpening the policy dilemma facing the Bank of Korea as stronger housing demand, firm rental costs and hotter inflation narrow the case for near-term monetary easing.

Apartment prices in the capital rose 0.28 per cent in the week through May 11, up from 0.15 per cent a week earlier, marking the steepest gain since late January. The increase extended Seoul’s run of weekly advances to 67 weeks,

CapBridge Pte Ltd has teamed up with Sun Life Singapore to distribute SunBrilliance insurance solutions to high-net-worth individuals and family offices, strengthening its push beyond private-market investments into wealth protection and succession planning.

The collaboration gives CapBridge clients access to Sun Life Singapore’s SunBrilliance Indexed Universal Life II, a permanent life insurance product designed for families seeking cross-border wealth transfer, estate liquidity and long-term legacy planning. The product is targeted at global high-net-worth clients

Tesla’s China-made electric vehicle sales rose sharply in April, extending a rebound that has strengthened the Shanghai plant’s role as the company’s key export and volume hub.

Deliveries of Model 3 and Model Y vehicles built at Tesla’s Shanghai factory reached 79,478 units in April, including exports to Europe and other overseas markets. The figure was 36% higher than a year earlier, marking a sixth straight month of year-on-year growth, though it was 7.2% lower than March as the market moved

China’s push into humanoid robots is emerging as a new test of its ability to convert industrial policy, supply-chain depth and scale manufacturing into export power, with Morgan Stanley research arguing that the sector could help lift the country’s share of global manufacturing by the end of the decade.

Economists led by Chetan Ahya have drawn a parallel with electric vehicles, where early policy support, component localisation and aggressive production expansion turned China from a fast follower into the world’s dominant