Tech stocks surge and Big Tech lines up for piece of Saudi wealth - Asian Tech Roundup

Plus: China’s Moonshot releases US-model-beating LLM, and Meta issues two-week warning to Australian teens

Welcome to Computing's weekly roundup of tech news in Asia. This time we look at Nvidia’s rocket fuel for the tech stock gravy train, Big Tech and Donald Trump’s courting of Saudi wealth, Moonshot AI’s new LLM and why Meta is pulling the plug on their platforms for Australian teens ahead of schedule.

Asian semiconductor stocks rallied this week after Nvidia reported stronger-than-expected quarterly results, helping to assuage (or at least delay) concerns that the AI bubble is about to pop. Nvidia is the centrifugal force at the centre of the AI bubble, and the 62% rise in year-on-year profits, to $57 billion, lifted major technology indexes across the region.

Some of those profits are being driven from the Middle East. Elon Musk, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and executives from Google, IBM, Salesforce, Palantir, Cisco and Adobe met with Saudi officials during this week’s big visit from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington. Any concern about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in 2018 has been buried in the rush for a slice of Gulf state wealth.

Meanwhile, in a further indication that restricting AI chip exports to China is only driving the country to innovate faster, a Chinese AI company has launched an LLM that outperformed Open AI’s GPT-5 and Anthropics’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 on multiple industry benchmarks. Moonshot AI’s KIMI K2 also outperformed Chinese rival DeepSeek’s models.

Finally, Meta has been sending emails and text messages to under-16s in Australia that it will cut off access to their apps from 4^th December, even though the law banning social media for children doesn't kick in until 10^th December. Teenagers were served the two-week warning "due to laws in Australia."

The law will also apply to TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, X, Reddit and Kick, but Meta is first to send these messages – perhaps in the vain hope that distraught teenagers will somehow persuade the Australian government to change course at the last minute. More likely, the company hopes to avoid large fines for missing the deadline.

Australia

Meta has sent thousands of Australian under-16s a two-week warning that they will be denied access to Instagram, Threads and Facebook and that users should download their digital histories and delete their accounts. Source
Cisco has found that Australia lags behind other nations in AI adoption, blaming a lack of governance readiness. Source
Australia, the UK and the US announced sanctions on against Russia-based web company Media Land, accusing it of supporting ransomware operations. Source

China

Another Chinese LLM is quietly outperforming its US rivals. Moonshot AI’s newly released Kimi K2 Thinking beat GPT-5 and Claude Sonnet 4.5 on multiple industry benchmarks. Source
Baidu's Ernie 5.0 AI model failed to impress investors, its shares dropping 9.8% after its reveal. Source
There are signs that Chinese investors are moving away from AI chipmakers over concerns about over-valuation of stocks. Source
Chinese cybersecurity firm Knownsec suffered a data breach that exposed over 12,000 classified government documents. Source
The Dutch government has paused its plan to take over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia after reprisals threatened the European car industry. Vincent Karremans, Dutch minister of economic affairs, called the move a gesture of diplomatic goodwill. Source
Super app WeChat has become a surveillance and policing tool, with Chinese police increasingly using the app as part of their own infrastructure. Source

India

Gaming companies Gameskraft and WinZO have been raided by the authorities under suspicion of rigging their algorithms for financial advantage. Source
The new Digital Personal Data Protection Rules (DPDP) allow for real-time location tracking of children without verifiable parental consent, raising questions about the impact of surveillance on children. Source
Cyber criminals have hacked into and sold footage from cameras at a maternity hospital in Gujarat. Police say they have uncovered a larger operation involving footage from “at least” 50,000 cameras being stolen and sold. Source
Indian AI startups are building data sets supporting languages like Tulu and Bodo, counting on local relevance to go against big tech platforms. Source
US chipmaker Marvell Technology plans grow its 1,700-strong workforce in India by 15% annually over the next three years, according to its country head. Source
India's Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and private equity firm TPG will form a joint combined 180-million-rupee ($2.03 billion) venture to develop AI data centres. TCS will hold a 51% stake. Source

Japan

Japan's new guidelines for the appropriate use of AI will urge companies to be transparent with their AI usage and avoid deploying deepfakes, while calling on users to build AI literacy. Source
Startup Sakana AI, which makes Japan-oriented GenAI models, has closed a ¥20 billion ($135 million) Series B funding round. Sakana says it sees strong global demand for sovereign AI solutions that reflect “national cultures and values.” Source

South Korea

South Korean anti-corruption police raided telecoms provider KT’s offices in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province as part of an investigation into a recent data breach. The raid took place after reports that KT had tried to hide the breach. Source
South Korea's antitrust regulator is investigating the Seoul offices of Arm Holdings as part of an investigation into the company's licensing practices, a source told Reuters. Source
Samsung has hiked the prices of some memory modules in the face of ongoing shortages. Source

Taiwan

Google opened a new AI infrastructure hardware engineering centre in Taipiei, its biggest outside of the US. Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said the new centre showed confidence in Taiwan as a trustworthy partner. Source

Elsewhere in Asia

North Korea: The US Justice Department has announced a crackdown on North Korean cyber criminals and their assistants in the US, including the arrest of several people and the seizure of assets. Source
Singapore: Singapore’s location has made it a prime choice for criminals, including operators of forced-labour scam factories in Myanmar and Cambodia, to launder their ill-gotten gains, the FT reports. Source
UAE & Saudi Arabia: The US Commerce Department has approved the export of advanced AI chips to G42 and Human which are in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia respectively. The authorisation covers the equivalent of up to 35,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips. The approval was timed to coincide with the visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the United States. Source