Singapore

Singapore will continue to strengthen safeguards for artificial intelligence (AI) as the technology becomes more capable, with Communications and Information Minister Josephine Teo saying safety measures must develop alongside adoption.

JTC Corporation, Singapore’s industrial land and infrastructure agency, and Kajima Corporation, Japan’s construction company, have launched the first pilot project to explore the use of autonomous heavy construction equipment in Singapore.

Partior and LSEG DiSH are developing a multi-settlement-bank liquidity framework for round-the-clock cross-border payments, with production targeted from Q1 2027.

HitPay has launched CFO Stack, starting with Virtual Accounts for B2B collections in Singapore and the Philippines, with supplier payments and other finance tools planned.

Tencent Cloud and AI Singapore have launched a Singapore hackathon with DBS, Keppel, Aspire, Ryde and NTU LKCMedicine providing real-world agentic AI challenges.

Anthropic will open a Singapore office in October, its first in Southeast Asia and fifth in APAC, with local hiring planned across several functions.

Alphabet's self-driving unit Waymo will launch a fully autonomous, all-electric ride-hailing service in Singapore by 2028, its first market in Southeast Asia.

France's energy giant Schneider Electric will invest S$25 million ($19.6 million) in upgrading it smart automation and digital capabilities at its Hub Asia Distribution Center in Tuas, Singapore.

Chile, New Zealand, Singapore and the Republic of Korea, Parties to the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA), have welcomed Costa Rica as the DEPA’s fifth Party, and the second member to accede to the agreement.

Anew Labs, ByteDance’s AI drug-discovery spin-off, has raised $290 million in its first external round at a valuation of about $1.5 billion.