Know Asia's
Business changes,before it hits your market.

China's most viral AI stars are stuck. The government has banned the two Manus founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao from leaving the country after Meta acquired the startup for an estimated $2 to 2.5 billion.

China increasingly views the sale of AI elite technology to US giants as a threat to national security.

The ten-day deal

The numbers behind the acquisition are breathtakingly fast:

• In April 2025, Manus was still worth $500 million, Benchmark Capital led the Series A of $75 million.

• Eight months later, Meta closed the acquisition, negotiated in just ten days. For early investors Tencent and HongShan Capital (formerly Sequoia China): a 4x return.

• Manus had already reached $100 million in annual revenue by then, faster than any startup before.

Operation "Singapore-washing"

Manus was founded in China in 2022 (Beijing Butterfly Effect Technology), but relocated headquarters and team to Singapore in 2025 – shortly after a funding round from US VC Benchmark Capital.

The strategy is called "Singapore-washing" in the industry: Chinese founders, Chinese technology, but a Singapore mailbox address.

The NDRC charges:

• FDI violations: Manus allegedly failed to properly report ownership changes and Singapore relocation

• User data risks: Potential endangerment of Chinese user data

• "Selling young crops": Beijing fears other startups will follow this model

The extreme scenario: unwind the deal

An "insider" to the FT: "One extreme outcome would be to unwind the transaction." Problem: Meta has already integrated Manus AI agent software into its platform.

"The transaction complied fully with applicable law. We anticipate an appropriate resolution." Meta's statement

All Details & Data: Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance

Chemical giant BASF has officially opened its new Verbund site in Zhanjiang, southern China. At roughly 8.7 billion euros ($10.4 billion), it is the largest single project in the company's 160-year history.

The details

The site covers four square kilometers in Guangdong province, making it BASF's third-largest Verbund globally after Ludwigshafen and Antwerp.

At its core: a steam cracker with 1 million metric tons of ethylene capacity per year, operational since January 2026. It is the first cracker worldwide to run its main compressors on 100% renewable electricity.

Several downstream plants are already running: ethylene oxide, ethylene glycol, polyethylene. First production started in November 2025, months before today's official ceremony. 2,000 employees work at the site.

Revenue target by 2030: up to 1.2 billion euros from the Zhanjiang site alone.

Why Southern China:

BASF currently generates only 13% of its global revenue in China, despite the country accounting for over 50% of worldwide chemical demand. Between 2024 and 2035, BASF expects 75% of global chemical market growth to come from China.

• Asia board member Stephan Kothrade calls the company's China share simply "too low."

The bet behind it

Back in Ludwigshafen, BASF is simultaneously cutting billions in costs and slashing jobs. In Zhanjiang, the company is making the largest single-site investment in its history.

The contrast is deliberate: BASF is shifting its growth focus to Asia.

The company is knowingly accepting the geopolitical uncertainties that come with it. Whether the 8.7 billion euro bet pays off depends less on the technology in Zhanjiang and more on whether China actually delivers 75% of global chemical growth over the coming decade.

Sources: Handelsblatt, Der Aktionär, Chemie.de

LG Electronics is making 2026 a pivotal year for its transformation.

At the general meeting in Seoul, CEO Lyu announced the radical expansion of the B2B robotics business.

The key: LG doesn't just want to build finished robots, but become the world's most important supplier for their "muscles." For this, the group uses its decades of experience from household appliance production.

"We will designate this year as the beginning of full-scale implementation of the robot business."

Strategy: "Axium" – hardware dominance

The centerpiece of the new strategy is actuators (drive elements). These account for over 40% of a robot's production costs.

• Economies of scale: LG already produces 45 million motors annually for washing machines and refrigerators. This infrastructure is now being used for the new "Axium" actuator line.

• Goal: LG wants to establish itself as a key supplier for global robot manufacturers, while its own brand CLOiD goes into commercial testing in 2027.

The 4 pillars of the "Physical AI" vision 2026

LG is leaving the pure consumer market and focusing on high-margin B2B sectors:

Growth & efficiency: the AI transformation

CEO Lyu is planning a company-wide "AI transformation" to increase productivity by over 30% in the next three years.

• Design automation: AI is to shorten development cycles and reduce costs.

• Investor bonus: As a sign of confidence, LG increased the dividend by 35% to 1,350 won per share.

All details & data: Korea Times, The Korea Herald

The Asia-Pacific private equity market is moving at two speeds.

Fundraising dropped to $58 billion in 2025, a 12-year low and down 37% year-on-year. At the same time, exit values climbed 24% to $150 billion.

The details

Asia's share of global PE fundraising: just 5%, down from 12% in 2021. New fund count dropped 44%. LPs have become pickier, backing managers with proven track records over newcomers.

Bright spot Japan: $15 billion raised (+12%), the only major market with growth in both deal value and count.

Deal activity was mixed overall: value down 8%, but count up 6%. Average buyout size shrank to $438 million (from $630 million the year prior), a five-year low. Multiples, though, climbed to 13.4x EV/EBITDA (from 11.9x).

Exits tell the real story

IPO and open-market exits jumped over 70%, trade exits over 60%. Large exits above $1 billion roughly quadrupled. Net distributions to LPs turned positive for the first time since 2021.

Greater China reclaimed top spot as the largest exit market, with exit volume up 76% year-on-year. South Korea's exits rose 38% despite political turmoil.

• Sector shift: Tech fell to 25% of deal value, a 10-year low. Capital is flowing into advanced manufacturing (22%), energy (15%) and healthcare (14%) instead.

• Dry powder: $240 billion sitting uninvested, down from a $315 billion peak in 2023.

What 2026 Looks Like

2020 to 2022 was the peak: low rates, high valuations, plenty of FOMO. Many GPs overpaid. Now, three to five years later, exits are due, and the math isn't working out for over a third of those deals.

Funds that bring their 2020-2022 investments to a clean exit now will get the next fundraise.

And the pipeline points to recovery: KKR (Asia V, $15 billion), EQT BPEA ($12.5 billion) and Blackstone (Asia III, $10 billion) are in market with mega-funds. Combined, the largest funds are targeting $61 billion.

Sources: SCMP, BusinessTimes, Bain

Miles-long lines in front of gas stations in Beijing, Nanjing, Dongguan. On Sunday, China's oil giant Sinopec sent a message to millions of customers:

What followed was a nationwide rush to the pumps.

The price shock in numbers

Although the state planning commission (NDRC) intervened in an unprecedented step to avoid endangering social stability, the increase is the sharpest since the introduction of the current pricing system in 2013.

• The intervention: An increase of 2,205 yuan per ton was originally planned. The NDRC halved this value by emergency decree to 1,160 yuan ($168).

• At the pump: The price per gallon climbed on Tuesday from an average of $4.20 to $4.70 (planned was $5.10). That corresponds to a jump of about 20% since the war began.

Vanishing point: electric mobility

The crisis acts like an accelerant for China's already rapid shift to e-cars.

• While 300 million gasoline car drivers tremble, tips for cost avoidance are spreading on platforms like Rednote: "Charging after 10 PM costs less than 50 cents per kWh."

Nevertheless: For the remaining combustion engine fleet, which still handles the majority of commercial traffic, there is no escape.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son broke ground last week on the largest single-site energy project ever planned in the United States. 

At its core: a $33.3 billion gas-fired power plant designed to fuel a massive AI data center campus.

The details

The site: Piketon, Pike County, a 3,700-acre complex that produced weapons-grade uranium during the Cold War and has sat idle since 2001. It's now being transformed into the "PORTS Technology Campus."

Capacity: 9.2 GW of natural gas power generation plus 10 GW of data center capacity. That's the equivalent of nine nuclear reactors.

On top of the power plant, SB Energy (SoftBank's energy arm) is investing another $4.2 billion alongside U.S. utility AEP Ohio to upgrade the regional grid. Excess power feeds back into the public grid, and local ratepayers don't foot the bill - SoftBank does.

Lutnick: "the largest construction project in the country."

The consortium: 21 Japanese and American firms, including Japan's three megabanks and Goldman Sachs.

Son puts the long-term total investment at $500 billion, including AI semiconductors and infrastructure. The project is part of Japan's $550 billion investment pledge to the U.S., negotiated in exchange for lower trade tariffs.

Power vs. climate

Natural gas powering the next AI leap doesn't exactly fit the tech industry's clean energy narrative.

But the reality is straightforward: data centers at this scale can't run on renewables alone right now. Son chose speed over symbolism. Ohio may end up being the most expensive admission yet that AI's appetite for power and climate goals are heading in opposite directions.

Sources: JapanToday, Asia Financial, DOE

The race for the first listed "pure-play" company for humanoid robotics on the Chinese A-share market has been decided: Unitree Robotics has officially applied for its IPO on the STAR Market in Shanghai.

With a volume of around $580 million and impressive profitability figures, Unitree proves that the industry has definitively left the prototype phase behind.

The financial quantum leap

While skeptics often speak of a "robot bubble," the Unitree numbers deliver a hard reality:

• Revenue explosion: Over 1.7 billion RMB (~$235 million) in 2025 – an increase of 335% over the previous year.

• Profit surge: Net profit rose by 674% to over 600 million RMB (~$83 million).

• Throne change: For the first time, humanoid robots (H1, G1, H2) overtake the famous robot dogs. They now account for 51% of core business.

Strategic focus: brain & factory

Unitree is strategically deploying the fresh capital to close the "usage gaps" of AI:

1. Video-based world models: Almost half of the IPO proceeds (2.02 billion RMB) flow into the development of "embodied AI" to give robots genuine understanding of physical processes.

2. Gigantic scaling: A new factory is to increase capacity to 75,000 humanoids per year to massively reduce prices.

3. From kung fu to toiling: While the robots dominated the Chinese Spring Festival with martial arts performances last month, the focus is now on the "robot employee" for inspection and smart manufacturing.

That Unitree is taking this step now is no coincidence.

The company is considered a national champion. Recently, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited the headquarters in Hangzhou, underscoring global interest in Unitree's cost-effective high technology.

Unitree is a central building block of the Chinese strategy to cushion demographic change through automation.

ByteDance is parting ways with its gaming studio Moonton. The buyer is Savvy Games Group, the gaming arm of Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund PIF.

• Price tag: over $6 billion.

The details

ByteDance acquired Moonton in 2021 for roughly $4 billion. Back then, the studio and its flagship title Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) were supposed to be ByteDance's gateway into mobile gaming. Five years later, it's being sold - at a 50% premium.

• Valuation: $6 billion (+50% vs. 2021 purchase price)

• MLBB: Over 1.5 billion installs worldwide, top-10 mobile game in multiple markets.

• Management: CEO Zhang Yunfan stays on, HQ remains in Shanghai.

The retreat: ByteDance launched its gaming division Nuverse in 2019, but not a single title became a real blockbuster.

• In 2023 came the cull: jobs slashed, unreleased games shelved, full pivot to generative AI. ByteDance never managed to gain ground against Tencent in gaming.

Savvy Games - the shopping spree:

On the buyer's side, Moonton is just the latest piece. Savvy Games, a wholly owned subsidiary of the $1 trillion PIF, has been on an acquisition tear over the past three years:

• Scopely: $4.9 billion (2023)

• Niantic's Pokemon GO: $3.5 billion (2025)

• Moonton: $6 billion (2026)

On top of that, PIF holds stakes in Nintendo, Take-Two and Square Enix. In September, Electronic Arts agreed to a $55 billion buyout with PIF involvement - the largest leveraged buyout in history.

Why Saudi Arabia is the new heavyweight in gaming

Behind the Moonton deal lies Saudi Vision 2030. Gaming is one of the levers the kingdom is using to diversify its economy away from oil.

Moonton, with its massive user base in Southeast Asia, delivers exactly what Savvy has been missing: a mobile publisher with global reach and an established esports ecosystem.

For ByteDance, the exit is an admission that gaming was never part of the company's DNA. Saudi Arabia's PIF, meanwhile, is quietly building the world's largest gaming portfolio.

Sources: Bloomberg, Nikkei, DealStreet Asia

Asia is experiencing a historic reordering of the labor market in March 2026.

In China, thousands of laid-off tech workers are founding "one-person companies" (OPCs), and in Southeast Asia a symbolic milestone has been reached: tech salaries in Malaysia have overtaken the level in Japan for the first time.

Welcome to Asia's AI paradox: Three countries, one technology, three completely different realities.

China: "It feels like Squid Game"

Beijing is mobilizing the entire country for AI – but among workers, there's naked panic.

The state startup program:

• Suzhou: 1,000 one-person startups by 2028, 30 "OPC Communities"

• Shanghai Pudong: ¥300,000 ($44k) computing costs covered

• Wuhan: Special loans + default protection for solo entrepreneurs

The flip side: 85.5% of Chinese worry about AI impact on jobs (11,814 respondents). "It feels like Squid Game," says a respondent from Shanghai. "You can be eliminated at any time."

His employer fired 30% of the workforce in 2025. Those who "didn't adapt to AI fast enough."

Malaysia: the silent winner

Tech salaries in Malaysia have overtaken Japan for the first time:

• CTO Malaysia: ¥28 million ($176k), +27% YoY → Japan: ¥26 million, flat

• IT Director Malaysia: ¥28 million → Japan: ¥25 million

• R&D Director Malaysia: ¥18 million → Japan: ¥15 million

Grant Torrens, Hays Recruitment: "Malaysia's salary increase is structural, not cyclical." Reason: National Semiconductor Strategy (10-year plan), Penang chip hub, data center boom.

30% of Malaysian workers saw salary jumps >6% (highest rate in Asia). China firms + Western companies diversifying supply chains → talent war.

Japan: losing touch

The bitter irony: Japan has a skilled labor shortage but pays the worst.

56% of Japanese tech workers dissatisfied with salary (highest rate in Asia). 65% considering job change (also highest rate), main reason: "Limited career progression."

Asia is in AI fever, both in the positive and negative sense. The future will show which country can best exploit the opportunities and eliminate the risks.

All details & data: Nikkei Asia, Rest of World

Tencent released its 2025 annual results yesterday, offering one of the clearest signs yet that for China’s tech giants, AI is no longer just a future bet, but is already making real money today.

The numbers:

• Revenue: RMB 751.8 billion ($109 billion), +14%

• Non-IFRS Operating Profit: RMB 280.66 billion ($40.7 billion), +18%

The details

In 2025, Tencent invested RMB 18 billion ($2.6 billion) into its two biggest AI products: the Hunyuan language model and the Yuanbao chatbot. More than RMB 7 billion ($1 billion) was spent in the fourth quarter alone.

In 2026, that amount is expected to more than double, financed by rising profits from the core business. President Lau described the spending as upfront investment to build a foundation, not as ongoing operating costs.

• The RMB 18 billion also covers only Hunyuan and Yuanbao. AI initiatives in existing products and Tencent Cloud come on top of that.

AI push:

• Hunyuan: Former OpenAI researcher Yao Shunyu is now leading Hunyuan development. Version 3.0 is close to release.

• Yuanbao: RMB 1 billion advertising budget, 50 million daily users, 3.6 billion draws and 1 billion AI-generated tasks during Chinese New Year.

• NEW: The new “OpenClaw” package combines QClaw (consumer), Lighthouse (developers), and WorkBuddy (enterprise).

At the same time, Tencent is developing its own AI agent for WeChat that is meant to operate Mini Programs autonomously.

The foundation

WeChat: 1.418 billion monthly active users (+2%). Monetization is picking up: Video Accounts +20% usage time, Mini Programs +70% transaction value in H2, payments available in 78 countries and 36 currencies.

Gaming remains the cash engine: +18% domestically and +33% internationally, reaching RMB 241.6 billion in total. The advertising business grew 19% to RMB 145 billion, as AI-powered ad targeting pushed prices higher.

The math checks out

Tencent is spending record sums on AI and is still becoming more profitable. AI is acting as a lever on top of the existing ecosystem: better ads, more efficient cloud services, smarter recommendations.

CEO Pony Ma puts it clearly: “Our highly resilient core businesses provide us with the resources to fund our increasing investments in AI.”

The planned doubling in 2026 is reinvestment into a cycle that is already generating returns.

Sources: Yicai Global, Tencent IR, DealStreet Asia, BusinessTimes