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Singapore’s Circulate Capital announces final close of $73M climate tech fund

Circulate Capital, a Singapore-based environmental impact investor advancing the circular economy for plastics in high-growth markets, announced Tuesday the final close of the Circulate Capital Ocean Fund I-B (CCOF I-B), bringing the fund’s total asset under management (AUM) to $73 million and the firm’s total AUM to $255 million.

Bursa Carbon Exchange inks deal with Gold Standard to grow Malaysia’s voluntary carbon market

Bursa Carbon Exchange (BCX), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bursa Malaysia Berhad, and Gold Standard, a leading impact standards, have on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the aim to further develop and grow the voluntary carbon market landscape in Malaysia.

Climate tech venture builder Wavemaker Impact closes first fund at $60M

Wavemaker Impact (WMI), a Southeast Asia’s climate tech venture builder, has announced the final close of its debut fund dedicated to driving large-scale decarbonization efforts in the region. The first fund hit its $60 million hard cap, surpassing its initial $25 million target by 2.5 times.

Malaysian Stock Exchange to launch platform for mandatory ESG reporting

Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad (Bursa Malaysia) is set to unveil the Bursa Malaysia ESG Reporting Platform on Monday. This platform will act as a repository for disclosures conforming to the prescribed format mandated under Bursa Malaysia’s enhanced sustainability reporting requirements within the main market listing requirements and ACE market listing…

Malaysia Science Ministry to present full framework for AI code of ethics in 1Q 2024 – report

Minister Chang Lih Kang said the presentation aimed at detailing the guidelines and regulations that stakeholders in all sectors need to adhere to.

Malaysian Central Bank, World Bank announce initiatives to enable financial sector to support nature-positive outcomes

Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) and the World Bank have announced two key initiatives to enable the financial sector to support nature-positive outcomes. The two initiatives are financial risks assessment guide for Malaysian financial institutions and businesses to assess nature-related risks and impacts; as well as private capital mobilization for nature-based…

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ACP, IFC, MAS and Temasek establish green investments partnership in Asia

Allied Climate Partners (ACP), International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Temasek announced today the intent to establish a green investments partnership to address climate finance gaps and increase the bankability of green and sustainable projects in Asia, with an initial focus on Southeast Asia.

Alibaba Cloud open-sources more LLMs with diverse sizes and multimodal features

Alibaba Cloud has open-sourced two large language models (LLM), Qwen-72B and Qwen-1.8B, the 72-billion-parameter and 1.8-billion-parameter versions of its proprietary foundation model Tongyi Qianwen, on its artificial intelligence (AI) model community ModelScope, and the collaborative AI platform Hugging Face.

Malaysian agritech startup Qarbotech lands $700,000 seed funding

Qarbotech, a Malaysia-based agritech startup, announced Monday that it has raised $700,000 in seed funding and grants. The round was led by multi-stage venture capital firm, 500 Global, and includes innovation grants from the Temasek Foundation for winning the Climate Impact Innovations Challenge 2023, and Khazanah Nasional’s Dana Impak for winning the…

MAS launches world’s first multi-sector transition taxonomy

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has on Monday launched the Singapore-Asia Taxonomy for Sustainable Finance (Singapore-Asia Taxonomy) – which sets out detailed thresholds and criteria for defining green and transition activities that contribute to climate change mitigation across eight focus sectors.