China reportedly tells local AI buyers to ignore Nvidia

Plus: Google, Oracle, spend $9.5 billion on Asia datacenters; Philippines to tax clouds; Vietnam infosec praised; and more

In Brief Chinese authorities have reportedly let local orgs know they should satisfy their need for AI accelerators by shopping locally – not from Nvidia.

A South China Morning Post report cites two anonymous sources indicating officials have let buyers know that they should put Huawei at the top of their shopping lists for AI accelerators, but have stopped short of issuing a formal ban on Nvidia kit.

Huawei, and other Chinese firms, are not known to have developed products capable of matching Nvidia's current accelerators – never mind the Blackwell product due to start appearing any week now.

China Telecom recently proclaimed it trained a large language model using only home-grown compute infrastructure, perhaps using Huawei servers.

– Simon Sharwood

Big Tech announces $9.5 billion APAC datacenter spend

Tech giants last week announced a collective $10.5 billion investment in datacenters across Asia.

Goole staged a groundbreaking ceremony for a $2 billion datacenter and cloud region in Malaysia, before announcing a $1 billion build for cloud and datacenter infrastructure in Bangkok.

Oracle then broke out the big bucks with the announcement of a $6.5 billion effort to open a public cloud region in Malaysia.

"The planned public cloud region will help organizations in Malaysia modernize their applications, migrate all types of workloads to the cloud, and innovate with data, analytics, and AI," stated Oracle.

Vietnam a 'significant player' in cyber security

Singapore-based Southeast Asia research organization ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute has examined Vietnam's cyber security and deemed it … pretty good actually.

According to the institute, "Vietnam has emerged as a significant player in the realm of cyber security and has been impressive in its digital transformation."

Vietnam's status flows from the desire of its ruling Communist Party to protect itself and to counter anti-government sentiments. National defense is another reason for the country's prowess – particularly in the context of territorial disputes with China, while protecting socio-economic development is also high on the government's agenda.

Vietnam has set a goal of becoming an upper-middle income economy by 2030 – on the way to transitioning to a high-income developed country by 2045 – and realizes digital infrastructure is essential for its digital transformation, according to the report.

This has led to heavy investments in broadband telecommunications networks and submarine cables, as well as datacenters and cloud computing services.

India launches GenAI in regional languages

India last week announced BharatGen – an initiative to make generative AI available in multiple local languages.

The government-funded multimodal large language model (LLM) project is expected to be completed in two years, explained India's Ministry of Science and Technology.

"BharatGen will deliver generative AI models and their applications as a public good by prioritizing India's socio-cultural and linguistic diversity," said the Ministry, adding that its emphasis on data sovereignty "strengthens India's control over its digital resources and narrative."

Philippines enacts digital services tax

Philippines president Ferdinand R Marcos Jr last week signed a law that enforces payment of a 12 percent value-added tax (VAT) on digital services – meaning cloud services, online marketplaces, streaming platforms, and other services will have to add the tax to revenue raised in the nation .

The new VAT is expected to generate PhP 105 billion ($1.85 billion) in additional government revenues over its first five years. Those proceeds are promised to fund the construction of 42,000 classrooms, 6,000 rural health units, and 7,000 kilometers of farm-to-market roads.

President Marcos emphasized that the law is not a new tax but instead strengthens the Bureau of Internal Revenue's (BIR) ability to raise revenue.

Non-resident providers of digital services with annual sales that exceed PHP 3 million ($53,000) must register with BIR and appoint an in-country tax representative - or face the potential suspension of operations.

APAC Dealbook

Recent alliances and deals spotted by The Register across the region last week include:

• Toyota Motor Corporation announced a $500 million investment in California electric air taxi company Joby Aviation, to support the certification and commercial production of Joby's commercial passenger service vehicle. It brings Toyota's total investment in Joby to $894 million over the course of almost seven years.
• Fujitsu Learning Media, the human resource development arm of the Japanese tech behemoth, revealed it partnered with LinkedIn to provide human resource development "in the age of AI."
• Imperial College London AI accelerator spinout Heronic Technologies entered strategic discussions with Japanese semiconductor giant ROHM on the development of power semiconductor materials and exploration of next-generation technologies like AI, photonics, spintronics and quantum solutions.

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