Latest AI news: Asia becoming the next AI powerhouse

Top AI news: Asia

• 🇮🇳 🍎Apple Intelligence comes to India + 20% global iPhone production

• 🗺️👑AI for India 2030: Blueprint for Inclusive Growth and Global Leadership

• 🛒🤖Vietnam & Indonesia Lead SEA E-Commerce AI Race

• 💚🚗Grab Unveils AI features for users + Agentic AI for merchants & drivers

Top AI news: Global

• 🧠💸Ilya Sutskever’s SSI Snags $2 billion at $32 billion Valuation with an empty website

• 🧸🤳ChatGPT’s AI Action Figure Trend Turns Users into Collectible Toys

• ∞🦙Meta Launches Llama 4: Scout, Maverick, and Behemoth Usher in Multimodal AI Era

• 𓇲🚀Google Unveils Ironwood: 7th-Gen TPU Built for the Age of AI Inference

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🇮🇳 🍎 Apple Intelligence comes to India + 20% global iPhone production

Apple has rolled out its AI-powered Apple Intelligence features in India with the iOS 18.4 update, available on iPhone 16 series and iPhone 15 Pro models. Users get advanced writing tools, smart replies, photo clean-up, Genmoji, object recognition, and a more conversational Siri with ChatGPT integration—plus expanded support for Indian languages and smarter notifications

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Apple has sharply increased iPhone manufacturing in India, producing $22 billion worth in the year through March 2025—a 60% jump from last year. Now, 20% of all iPhones are made in India, with $17.4 billion exported, as Apple shifts supply chains away from China. This move is fueled by Indian government incentives and U.S. tariff changes, positioning India as a key global manufacturing hub for Apple.

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🗺️👑AI for India 2030: Blueprint for Inclusive Growth and Global Leadership

The "AI for India 2030" initiative, led by the Indian government, NASSCOM, and the World Economic Forum, aims to harness AI for $500 billion in economic growth by 2030, focusing on agriculture, healthcare, MSMEs, and urban development. It emphasizes ethical, inclusive, and context-specific AI, leveraging India’s digital public infrastructure. Key pillars include sectoral AI Playbooks and an AI Sandbox for testing solutions, with strong public-private partnerships to ensure scalable, responsible innovation and global AI leadership

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🛒🤖Vietnam & Indonesia Lead SEA E-Commerce AI Race

A Lazada/Kantar report shows Vietnam and Indonesia leading Southeast Asia in AI adoption among online sellers (42%), surpassing Singapore and Thailand (39%). While 89% see AI's productivity boost, 61% remain skeptical. Lazada is launching resources and GenAI tools to help sellers leverage AI for customer service, marketing, and operations.

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💚🚗Grab Unveils AI features for users + Agentic AI for merchants & drivers

Grab’s inaugural GrabX event unveiled AI-powered features for safety, convenience, and value, including “Grab for Family | Teens” with PIN and GenAI AudioProtect, “GrabFood for One” for solo meals, and “Shared Saver” for group orders. New travel tools like Advance Booking and Grab Travel Pass were launched. Grab also announced expanded partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic to fine-tune regional AI models, all under its “AI-First with Heart” approach.

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Grab has launched agentic AI tools—the AI Merchant Assistant and AI Driver Companion—to boost productivity for Southeast Asian merchants and drivers. Developed with OpenAI and Anthropic, these assistants offer business insights, task automation, ride demand predictions, and real-time road reporting. Integrated into Grab’s apps, the tools aim to level the playing field for small businesses and enhance driver efficiency.

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🧠💸Ilya Sutskever’s SSI Snags $2B at $32B Valuation with an empty website

Founded in June 2024 by Sutskever, Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy, SSI’s sole focus is building a “safe superintelligence.” The $2B round was led by Greenoaks, with Lightspeed and Andreessen Horowitz participating. SSI has now raised $3B in total, and remains highly secretive about its technology and plans. Clearly the bet is on the team and a secretive product roadmap that no one has access to. Their website is just a simple one-page text letter.

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🧸🤳ChatGPT’s AI Action Figure Trend Turns Users into Collectible Toys

A new viral trend lets users transform their photos into AI-generated action figures using ChatGPT’s image tools. By uploading a selfie and providing a detailed prompt (including accessories and packaging style), anyone can create a digital “blister pack” toy version of themselves. The trend has exploded across social media, with people sharing their personalized figures and brands joining in. While playful and creative, experts note concerns about AI’s energy use and data privacy as the trend grows.

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∞🦙Meta Launches Llama 4: Scout, Maverick, and Behemoth Usher in Multimodal AI Era

Meta has unveiled the Llama 4 family - Scout, Maverick, Behemoth - the first open-weight, natively multimodal models with mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture and unprecedented context length. Scout (17B parameters, 16 experts) and Maverick (17B parameters, 128 experts) support both text and vision, while the in-training Llama 4 Behemoth (288B parameters, 16 experts) outperforms top models on STEM benchmarks. Llama 4 models are available for download and integration across platforms, powering next-gen AI experiences.

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𓇲🚀Google Unveils Ironwood: 7th-Gen TPU Built for the Age of AI Inference

Google has launched Ironwood, its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), purpose-built for large-scale AI inference. Announced at Google Cloud Next 2025, Ironwood delivers up to 42.5 exaflops in a 9,216-chip pod—over 24 times the compute of the world’s largest supercomputer. It features 2x the power efficiency of its predecessor, 192GB high-bandwidth memory per chip, and advanced networking for massive AI models. Ironwood is central to Google’s AI Hypercomputer architecture, enabling faster, more efficient generative AI for cloud customers.

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