Critical technologies, globally
December 2024 report
Google’s quantum computing breakthrough; T-Mobile signs for Starlink satellite-to-mobile services; Micron Technology semiconductor maker opens in Taiwan; India’s moves into quantum communications technologies; Vietnam’s NVIDIA artificial intelligence R&D centre; and many more.
Google Cloud Security: Threat Horizons H1 2025 Report
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- Google unveils new ‘Willow’ quantum computing chip, claiming a major breakthrough with 5-minute computation near-impossible with current supercomputers / full item
- More on Ayar Labs, a photonics chip technologies firm backed recently in a $155M funding round with participants including AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, and NVIDIA / full item
- Ayar Labs raised $155M from backers including NVIDIA, AMD Ventures and Intel Capital with photonics for faster, more efficient chips / full item
- Musk’s xAI reportedly landed priority access to Foxconn-made NVIDIA GB200 AI servers with a $1.08 billion order, with delivery as soon as January 2025 / full item
“Now the chips that Advanced Micro Devices, known as AMD, and Amazon have created… are adding to signs that credible alternatives to NVIDIA are finally emerging.” / full item
- iGenius and NVIDIA partner for data center construction in southern Italy by mid-2025, set to feature around 80 NVIDIA servers, each containing 72 Blackwell chips / full item
- Tenstorrent AI chip firm competitor to NVIDIA reportedly gains backing from Amazon’s Bezos in a $700M fundraise led by South Korea’s AFW Partners and Samsung Securities / full item
- Vast Space, a commercial space station developer, inks deal with SpaceX for 2 private astronaut missions to the ISS, pending NASA approval / full item
- T-Mobile opens beta registration for Starlink satellite-to-smartphone service, enabling text messaging early 2025 on newer devices in most US cellular dead zones / full item
- SpaceX launched 30 satellites on December 21st, second in Bandwagon ‘rideshare’ series, delivering payloads from South Korea, Finland, the US and others / full item
SpaceX is petitioning Texas authorities to incorporate its Starbase launch site and HQ as a city / full item
- US Federal Comm’s Commission clears SpaceX for use of Starlink satellites to provide T-Mobile customers with direct-to-cell services, marking the first such approval / full item
- Musk’s xAI reportedly landed priority access to Foxconn-made NVIDIA GB200 AI servers with a $1.08 billion order, with delivery as soon as January 2025 / full item
- France’s Flamanville 3 nuclear reactor is now online and connected to the national grid, with electricity production set to develop in line with testing and safety protocols / full item
- A brief overview of the Indian Astronomical Observatory in Hanle, in the Himalayas, identified as the nation’s most suitable location for ground-to-sat quantum communications / full item
- Australia: Quantum Brilliance secures Au$13M equity investment for quantum diamond foundry for devices capable of room-temperature operation / full item
Accenture: AI – A Declaration of Autonomy
- South Korea: SDT quantum computer manufacturing specialist raised $14M in pre-IPO funding, building on global partnerships / full item
- Taiwan: US semicon giant, Micron Technology, inaugurated its recently-acquired office space in Taichung, accommodating 500 employees, looking at DRAM chip production / full item
- Taiwan: An overview of Taoyuan municipality’s moves towards becoming a new global innovation hub, building on 12000 factories and industrial output over $122BN / full item
- India: Mindgrove Technologies fabless semiconductor design firm raised $8M Series A, targeting sales of its first chip and following Secure IoT system-on-chip launch / full item
- Vietnam has emerged as a burgeoning hub for the semiconductor industry, now home to 174 foreign-invested projects with a total registered capital of nearly 11.6 billion USD… / full item
“India’s chip market is projected to grow 17% annually and reach approximately $80BN by 2028… lagging behind Taiwan, China and South Korea, but remarkable considering India’s starting point…” / full item
- Taiwan is to launch the ‘Chip Team Taiwan’ initiative for robotics, drones and space industry supply chains to decrease external supply chain dependencies / full item
- Vietnam: A brief look at what the country believes will come from its recent partnership with chips giant, NVIDIA / full item
‘Chinese firms have grown domestic market share, but new Huawei phone shows little sign of technology progress’ / full item
- Imports of solar-grade polysilicon, wafers, and tungsten products from China to the US face tariff increases of 25-50% from Ja 1st, 2025, in response to alleged unfair trade practices / full item
- India: Netrasemi semiconductor firm secured $1.8M pre-A with machine learning-focused system-on-chip designs, targeting enabling edge-AI computing / full item
- India: An overview of the Shakti semiconductor fabrication plant, a joint initiative between India’s Bharat Semi, 3rdiTech, and the US Space Force / full item
- Malaysia: ‘Penang Silicon Design @5km+’ initiative launches, a further move to advance Malaysia in global integrated circuits design, dovetailing with the Nat’l Semiconductor Strategy / full item
- Japan: About 90% of the world’s advanced chips are produced by [TSMC] whose model involves operating at massive scale… If Rapidus succeeds, it would challenge both the economics and geography of the industry’ / full item
- Vietnam: NVIDIA and Vietnam Gov’t ink agreement for joint development AI R&D centre, and AI-focused data centre / full item
- NVIDIA preps for mass production of Blackwell AI-focused chips by TSMC in early 2025, for the first time considering TSMC Arizona plant for production / full item
McKinsey: Geopolitics and the geometry of global trade
- Taiwan: TSMC may be considering 2nm production outside of Taiwan in response to tariff changes / full item
- Taiwan: TSMC has begun equipment installation at its 2-nanometer facility in Kaohsiung, preparing for trial production runs in H1 2025 / full item
- South Korea: DeepX chips firm preps to receive wafers from Samsung Electronics’ 5nm process, focusing on on-device AI semiconductors and following 87% yields / full item
- South Korea: Gov’t to roll out $10BN in low-interest loans in 2025 to support the chips industry, with advanced complex under construction in bid to attract firms / full item
- China beats 2024 space launch milestone with 68th 2024 launch, but Kinetica-1 solid rocket failed in later launch stage / full item
- China: Landspace secures $123 million in state investment to speed development of reusable, methane-liquid oxygen launch vehicles / full item
- China: Galactic Energy conducted 4th sea launch, adding to potential for a record-breaking 67 space launches in 2024 / full item
- SpaceX launched 30 satellites on December 21st, second in Bandwagon ‘rideshare’ series, delivering payloads from South Korea, Finland, the US and others / full item
- A brief overview of the recent 2024 Humans In Space Challenge, coordinated by South Korean pharma firm, Boryung, looking at health challenges, solutions and opportunities / full item
European Parliament: The Geopolitics of Technology
- Taiwan is in talks with Amazon around use of Project Kuiper satellite system for emergency communications; and potentially other providers as additional redundancy / full item
- Indian troops find Starlink-like satellite internet device alongside weaponry in Manipur, likely used to circumvent conventional ‘net restrictions with satellite communications / full item
- Australia: James Cook University instals Starlink on several remote sites, and student accommodation, in Queensland, providing reliable internet for education access / full item
- China: ‘Laser Diamond Constellation’ test satellites enter orbit, looking at inter-satellite communications most likely in the context of mega-constellation sat plans / full item
- Japan: United States Space Force activated its first unit in Yokota Air Base, Tokyo, in cooperation with Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force’s military space operations group / full item
“Indian police will seek details from… Starlink… to hunt down drug smugglers who used its satellite internet device to navigate deep seas and bring meth worth $4.25BN into Indian waters…” / full item
- New Zealand’s Zenno Astronautics gains backing from Mitsubishi Electric ME Innovation Fund with superconducting tech for space and satellite control applications / full item
- China: First Long March 12 rocket launches from new spaceport, Wenchang Commercial Space Launch Site / full item
- China: Beidou sat-nav roadmap to 2035 is unveiled, with test sats for 2027 launch, and next-gen sats in place circa 2029 / full item
- UN Agency for Digital Tech is partnering Int’l Telecommunication Union and Int’l Cable Protection Committee to create Int’l Advisory Body for Submarine Cable Resilience / full item
- GenAI in manufacturing & supply chains: “…by automating document generation, verifying completions before transit, and communicating with customers…” / full item
- Australia’s Country Liberal Party in the NT and Indonesia ink first-of-its-kind MOU on critical minerals development between an Australian jurisdiction and Indonesia / full item
- Imports of solar-grade polysilicon, wafers, and tungsten products from China to the US face tariff increases of 25-50% from Jan 1st, 2025, in response to alleged unfair trade practices / full item
- Bolivia inks $1BN deal with China’s CBC, a CATL subsidiary, to build 2 lithium carbonate production plants, with separate Citic Guoan Group contract under negotiation / full item
Submarine Cable Map from TeleGeography
- LambdaTest raised $38M with cloud-based platform that lets companies test their applications across more than 5000 browser and operating system combinations / full item
- China: Zuchongzhi3 quantum computer claims milestones including surpassing Google Sycamore processing benchmarks and equivalence to elements of Google’s Willow processing / full item
- South Korea: SDT quantum computer manufacturing specialist raised $14M in pre-IPO funding, building on global partnerships / full item
- Taiwan: US semicon giant, Micron Technology, inaugurated its recently-acquired office space in Taichung, accommodating 500 employees, looking at DRAM chip production / full item
- Taiwan: An overview of Taoyuan municipality’s moves towards becoming a new global innovation hub, building on 12000 factories and industrial output over $122BN / full item
- India: Mindgrove Technologies fabless semiconductor design firm raised $8M Series A, targeting sales of its first chip and following Secure IoT system-on-chip launch / full item
- Vietnam has emerged as a burgeoning hub for the semiconductor industry, now home to 174 foreign-invested projects with a total registered capital of nearly 11.6 billion USD… / full item
Japan: “About 90% of the world’s advanced chips are produced by [TSMC] whose model involves operating at massive scale… If Rapidus succeeds, it would challenge both the economics and geography of the industry…” / full item
- Vietnam: NVIDIA and VIetnam Gov’t ink agreement for joint development AI R&D centre, and AI-focused data centre / full item
- NVIDIA preps for mass production of Blackwell AI-focused chips by TSMC in early 2025, for the first time considering TSMC Arizona plant for production / full item
- China: 140 semiconductor industry firms added to US Chips Act ban, preventing receipt of exports of advanced chip-making equipment and direct chip purchases / full item
- Meta is reportedly planning a globe-spanning subsea cable network at least 40,000km in length and likely to cost $10 billion / full item
- Singapore: University-developed AQSolotl startup launches to commercialize quantum technologies that facilitate communications between traditional and quantum systems / full item
Chainalysis: Geography of Crypto Report 2024
- A brief look at the recent 2024 Innovation Leaders Summit in Tokyo, and the Australian tech firms and startups, including Quantum Brilliance and Novalith, that presented / full item
- Taiwan delegation meets with Oman representatives around support and participation in Oman’s 3+7 year semiconductor program / full item
- Malaysia: More detail on the Penang Silicon Design @5km+ initiative, creating an interconnected ecosystem for IC design and technology firms within 5km+ radius of the Bayan Lepas Industrial Park / full item
- Taiwan: Japan’s Tokyo Electron, Asia’s biggest semicon equipment supplier, launches $61.5M center in Tainan, looking to boost capacity to meet growing demand / full item
- Space Machines Co, an Australia-India in-space servicing firm, inks agreement with UK’s Lúnasa for space debris imaging systems, and satellite orbit and manoeuvring / full item
Indo-Pacific Insight: Tech, trade, supply, space, geopolitics…
Asia’s Tech News, Weekly in December
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