News

Pencil Finance says its first $1 million student loan bundle completed an on-chain cycle, with principal and yield returned to funders.

Paydibs has launched a six-month merchant financing service in Malaysia with repayments linked to weekly payment settlements and transaction activity.

Nvidia has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, extending its reach into the global ecosystem for open AI models, datasets and developer tools.

TDCX has opened its sixth China center in Foshan with about 100 positions and AI-assisted customer experience services for Greater Bay Area clients.

OpenAI has released GPT-6 Astra, its first broadly deployed model rated Critical for cybersecurity capability, alongside a $1 billion defense initiative.

The United States-based investment firm KKR has agreed to buy a minority stake in Malaysia's Avisena Healthcare, a private hospital operator.

Southeast Asia’s blockchain technology sector has raised $6.2 billion in all-time equity funding across 1,323 funded companies year to date, including $680 million in 2026 year to date, Tracxn said on Thursday.

The Asia-Pacific Data Center Association (APDCA) has launched a new white paper titled Data centers as catalysts for infrastructure modernization in APAC, highlighting how data centers are helping to strengthen the energy and water systems needed to support Asia-Pacific’s future development.

Vietnam is calling for development of a home-grown fleet of 40 self-driving robots to sweep its city streets, the first project put out for tender by the national science fund Nafosted under a program to build strategic technologies.

Indonesia has the scale and resources to become a major beneficiary of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, but needs an urgent policy shift towards technology manufacturing, infrastructure and domestic supply chains to capture more of the value generated by the industry, the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Research Office (AMRO) said on Thursday.