Asia

Laters.com announced a $1.5 million seed round led by XBO Ventures, the investment arm of XBO.com, the global digital-asset platform, and the completion of its rebrand.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and data-center expansion can double Asia-Pacific data-center capacity by 2030, from 32 GW to 57 GW, and can pressure power grids worldwide, in a "generational shift" in electricity demand.

Tencent Cloud, the cloud unit of Chinese technology giant Tencent, will provide cloud infrastructure to Bookme, a Pakistan-born travel and e-ticketing platform, to support its expansion across the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Cathay Pacific and Google are expanding AI-powered contrail-avoidance trials across Asian and trans-Pacific routes after an initial operational test.

Emerging markets could be the next major driver of growth for the data center industry, with a development pipeline that is almost two times larger than current global operating capacity, S&P Globa Ratings said in a report on last Friday.

Google DeepMind, the AI arm of Google, has selected 16 startups, nonprofits and research teams across the Asia-Pacific for the first cohort of an accelerator supporting environmental projects that use AI.

Ping An Digital Bank has launched receivables-backed financing of up to $5 million for eligible cross-border e-commerce merchants.

Tencent has open-sourced Hy4 preview, a 770-billion-parameter model with 49 billion active parameters and a one-million-token context window.

Ngee Ann Polytechnic has launched SH1F+, a workforce transformation center working with EY on job redesign, capability building and workplace learning.

XTransfer has secured in-principle approval for a UAE retail payment services license, subject to completing the central bank's pre-issuance conditions.