Some people wake up to an alarm. We wake up to funding rounds.
Big capital, bigger bets. Southeast Asia's AI infrastructure buildout hit a new scale today with Zankore's $3.1 billion loan, reportedly the region's largest syndicated AI financing yet, while Malaysia doubled down on its own AI ambitions with a fresh national plan. Elsewhere, a Vietnam exit, a Singapore fare cap and a quantum computing bet
On to the raises.
M&A
Nissha is exiting its stake in Vietnam's USM Healthcare, just months after acquiring 60% of the medical device maker, after uncovering irregular accounting tied to circular transactions predating the deal. Read more here.
Business Updates
Zankore secured a senior term loan of up to $3.1 billion, backed by Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, Ooredoo, Nokia and Nvidia, to fund an initial 100MW Nvidia GPU build out in Indonesia, reportedly APAC's largest syndicated AI infrastructure financing to date. Read more here.
Malaysia is targeting MYR20 billion ($4.7 billion) a year in AI driven GDP gains by 2030 under its new National AI Action Plan, with communications minister Fahmi Fadzil stressing economic value over raw compute capacity. Read more here.
Gojek Singapore rolled out GoCar Nearby, capping fares at S$9.90 ($7.80) for short trips in the city's east as phase one of a staged rollout. Read more here.
Universal Quantum picked Singapore for its first R&D centre outside Europe, with EDBI, the investment arm of Singapore's Economic Development Board, coming in as a strategic investor at an undisclosed amount. Read more here.
Tools Worth Checking
YCGlobe by VCLense maps YC Companies from around the globe. Check it out here.
Explee is an AI outreach agent that finds high-intent prospects, writes personalised emails and books demos without the need for SDRs or complex email infrastructure. Check it out here.
Apify is a platform for building and running web scraping and data extraction tools. Check it out here.
Around The World
OpenAI’s roughly 10,000 AI agents found a solution to the Navier Stokes existence and smoothness problem, one of the Millennium Prize Problems. One of the deepest questions addressed by the Millennium Prize Problems is whether smooth three dimensional fluid motion can break down. OpenAI used an internal model that was significantly more capable than GPT 6 Astra to show that the dynamics of the Navier Stokes equations for fluid motion can develop a singularity in finite time. Read the full report here.
Meta launched Muse, a personal AI agent that can autonomously handle tasks such as sending emails, booking travel and making purchases across connected apps. Read more here.
Founder lesson of the day
As founders, your ownership is diluted only when a SAFE round converts into equity, typically at the next priced round.
Thanks for reading! Catch you tomorrow.
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