Latest news and trends about tech

New U.S. Section 301 tariffs took effect on Friday (July 24) across 60 economies, hitting seven Southeast Asian nations: Malaysia, Cambodia, and Indonesia with a 10 percent additional duty, while Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore face the higher rate of 12.5 percent.

US payments company Visa and China's Lianlian DigiTech have completed their first live business-to-business agentic transaction using LoopXPay, Lianlian's AI agent, in which the agent sourced a product sample from a supplier and completed the purchase within a single automated workflow.

Huawei has joined Thai government agencies, telecom carriers, large language model developers, AI associations, and universities to launch the Thailand AI Ecosystem Initiative, in order to push Thailand as a hub for AI innovation in Southeast Asia.

Vietnam's VinFast loaded more than 5,000 electric vehicles onto two cargo vessels at Hai Phong Port on July 20 and 21, marking the company's 37th and 38th dedicated export shipments in less than four years since its first international delivery of 999 vehicles in late 2022.

Japan's JCB International and Malaysia's Fiuu, a payment processing platform formerly known as Razer Merchant Services, have entered into a direct acquiring partnership covering Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, enabling JCB card payments across online and offline merchant channels in the three markets.

Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC portfolio achieved an annualized USD nominal rate of return of 5.6 percent over the 20-year period that ended on March 31, 2026.

Huawei Cloud has announced its Agentic Infrastructure for Thailand and launched an open beta of its CodeArts Agent coding platform at the Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026, the Chinese giant said in a statement on Friday.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on cybersecurity cooperation and digital fraud protection.

ADM Capital announced Wednesday the final close of the ADM Capital Asia Climate-smart Landscapes Fund LP (ACLF) at $48 million, marking an important milestone for ADM Capital’s first impact fund dedicated to climate-smart land-use financing in Indonesia.

Singapore's Ant International has added Hong Kong's Hang Seng Bank to its Alipay+ payment network as the gateway's first banking partner in Hong Kong, allowing Hang Seng Mobile App users to make QR code payments at more than 100 million merchants across more than 55 countries and regions.