Welcome back,
This week’s issue was delayed as I travelled home from Europe, but it turned out to be fortuitous timing as the seemingly never-ending story of Grab and GoTo got another twist.
Grab lobbed a grenade into the deal as it publicly denied talks are happening right now—and it proposed a sale to raise over $1 billion for activities that could include acquisitions.
Elsewhere this week, we look at why Apple Intelligence still hasn’t launched in China despite Alibaba coming on board as the partner; the rise of a $2 billion-valued insurance upstart based in Singapore; and the unclear saga of how a young grocery delivery company in India lost its code base and all data.
Have a great week,
Jon
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The power plays are out as Grab and GoTo continue to duke it out on whether the ride-hailing firms will finally unite over a deal.
It’s fairly established that the two fierce rivals have engaged in serious talks over a merger/Grab’s acquisition of GoTo, but you’d imagine terms will be the sticking point. GoTo has never been keen on being subsumed by Grab, but you can imagine Grab—which bought out Uber Southeast Asia previously—will want to conquer its rival.
On that basis, Grab just delivered a one-two punch when it publicly denied being in talks with GoTo “at this time” and announced plans to raise $1.25 billion through a convertible note sale. The money, Grab said, would go to general costs and “potential acquisitions.”
While the Grab-GoTo tie-up is reportedly around the $7 billion mark, if Grab can close this bond sale rapidly, the message is clear: it can access money with ease. That’s leverage.
I found these developments even more fascinating because they follow media speculation that Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund—Danantara—may join the deal.
One factor that has weighed heavily in preventing a Grab-GoTo deal over the years has been fear that GoTo would become a minority member of a combined deal. The coming together certainly makes sense, but GoTo—as Indonesia’s flag-carrying startup success story—would need to not only survive, but also thrive.
A cursory glance at the Tokopedia-TikTok Shop deal shows those concerns may not be entirely unfounded. Last week’s newsletter carried reports of TikTokShop downsizing its Indonesian team some 18 months after buying Tokopedia. Placing Gojek—the other part of GoTo—into foreign hands, would mean Indonesia loses control of the destiny of its top home-grown tech platforms.
Meanwhile: Grab is launching a licensed taxi service in Singapore for the first time and its insurance unit is poised to enter Singapore’s motor insurance market.
Apple still hasn’t launched AI services in China, and there’s no clear sign on when it finally will.
A new Financial Times report suggests that the US firm’s partnership with Alibaba, which will power the services, has stalled as China’s internet regulator continues to mull over the deal.
Or perhaps it’s delaying approval of the proposal, which was submitted earlier this year. Why would that be? Well, tech is a major part of the current US-China political tension and this is one situation where Beijing is in the driving seat, with America’s largest tech firm on the hook.
Bolttech, an ‘embedded finance’ business, closed nearly $50M in new financing from Japanese trading firm Sumitomo and European PE firm Iberis Capital. The deal is an extension of a $100M Series C investment that the Singapore-based business announced at the end of last year, and it comes with the same $2.1 billion valuation.
Embedded insurance is essentially B2B2C insurance which means holiday cover, device insurance and other specific offers can be presented to potential customers through third-parties at the point of sale. Bolttech claims to have over 700 distribution partners, includingApple, Samsung and Lazada, with over 230 insurance providers offering the policies.
It has been a rapid few years of growth for Bolttech since it was founded in 2020 by an insurance industry veteran. Given the profile of investors and its global focus, Bolttech isn’t a startup in the traditional sense of grinding from nothing to the big time. This is a bet on the finance and insurance industry on a new digital efficiency—that’s certainly valid, but not what comes to mind with terms like ‘startup’ and ‘unicorn.’
I’m quite curious about its plans for Japan. Beyond Sumitomo, Bolttech has numerous other connections in the country. Dragon Fund, which is co-run by Japanese bank and insurer firm MUFG, led the initial Series C and insurer Tokio Marine is a previous investor, too. Digital services are taking off in Japan and, even though Bolttech has a global presence, it may have the cash and connections to make an impact.
Grocery delivery is rapidly developing in India—not just the speed of service but the rapid funding these startups are raising. One rival, however, just crashed off the track after a hacker wiped all data from its servers.
KiranaPro, which is less than a year old and claims over 50k users, confirmed that an unauthorised party accessed its systems and destroyed data that included the code for its app, customer information, payment details and more. It’s all gone. But there are questions as to how it happened.
CEO Deepak Ravindran later raised the suggestion that the attack was from a former employee after he told TechCrunch that the startup hadn’t deactivated former staff’s GitHub accounts. That raised the possibility that there was no external breach and that, potentially, user data may not be in the hands of malicious actors. It subsequently emerged that employees were owed money, as a new funding round was due to be wired to the startup.
All in all, a big mess.
Alibaba has become the largest player in open-source AI, overtaking US companies, and now it has a new LLM for developers worldwide link
Chinese tech firms that are designing advanced chips in Taiwan face the brunt of new US curbs on software tools—those impacted include Xiaomi link
Temu’s daily users in the US fell by nearly 60% during May following Washington’s tariff changes and big cut in ad spend from the company link
DeepSeek may have used Google’s Gemini to train its latest model link
Widely-heralded AI startup Manus released a text-to-video service that will compete with OpenAI among others link — it has also made progress with AI agents link
Kuaishou’s Kling AI has become one of the most successful video generators, growing to $14M in monthly revenue just one year after launching link
Xiaohongshu’s valuation has jumped to $26B, according to financing documents, as it gains ground on TikTok in the US link
Chauffeur firm Webus is joining the crypto train after filing for a $300M treasury that would use Ripple’s XRP token link
Corporate investigators found that Chinese hackers breached a US telecom firm in mid-2023, earlier than previously known—malware was in its systems for seven months link
Huawei’s first flagship smartphone to ship with its HarmonyOS software—a foldable called Pura X—got a favourable review from Bloomberg link
Chinese self-sufficiency is a major topic every week here at ATR, Huawei is leading the charge in many areas but reports suggest it is having trouble convincing China’s top tech firms to ditch Nvidia tech for its own AI chip alternative link
Didi continued on its road to recovery as Q1 revenue rose 8.5%—net income came in at $334M up from a $195M loss one year ago link
President Trump is expected to once again extend TikTok’s deadline—the US-China battle has left any potential deal up in the air link
Russia’s security agency is using data from WeChat to track possible links to Chinese spies, reflecting growing unease in Moscow over Beijing’s influence despite their deepening ties link
PalmPay, a digital bank that’s closely aligned with Chinese handset firm Transsion, is raising up to $100M to cement its position and possibly chase new market expansions—it previously expanded to Bangladesh and is exploring more potential handset partnerships for distribution link
Nigeria jailed nine Chinese nationals that were found to be part of an international cyberfraud syndicate link
Tata Electronics is in talks to acquire a semiconductor fabrication or OSAT plant in Malaysia to build expertise ahead of its entry into semiconductor assembly and packaging in India link
In another development Apple will turn to Tata to handle iPhone and MacBook repairs in India—it is already assembling iPhones at three sites link
WazirX’s bid to recover from a $235M hack hit a wall after a restructuring plan was rejected because the company isn’t registered in India link
Krutrim, the AI arm of Ola, is reportedly struggling to make an impact with its LLMs and cloud products link
Flipkart became the first e-commerce firm to land a lending licence—it can now offer loans directly to customers and sellers link
Singapore-based Syfe raised $80M to expand its wealth management services in Hong Kong link
After writing down some dud investments, including crypto exchange FTX and Indonesia’s eFishery, Singapore sovereign fund Temasek is reducing its focus on early-stage investments—the fund has made plenty of impressive deals including Adyen and Alibaba but this change aligns with a general lul in early-stage deals worldwide link
Chinese cloud firms are gaining ground in Southeast Asia as evidenced by GoTo’s payment arm migrating to Alibaba Cloud—the group also works with Tencent Cloud, a reversal from its previous reliance on AWS and Google Cloud link
Singapore is cracking down on crypto exchanges that target overseas users from the country link
Malaysian home minister had his WhatsApp account hacked lin
Institutional investors and non-retail entities are now trading crypto in South Korea after a ban on their participation was lifted link
The operator of NunuTV, Korea’s largest pirate site, was sentenced to three years in prison after authorities closed the site and seized $1.9M in assets link
SoftBank and Intel are developing low-power memory for AI that could cut electricity use in half compared to current chips, aiming to boost Japan’s AI infrastructure link
TSMC says traffic—literal road traffic—is why the expansion of its Japanese base is taking longer than expected link
Taiwan is attracting record numbers of Filipino workers for semiconductor roles, but a new report shows many workers face harsh conditions that include long hours, low pay and unequal treatment compared to local colleagues link
