Asia's AI power play
China and India are explicitly positioning themselves as AI leaders: Beijing’s new five‑year plan puts AI at the center of national strategy across sectors, while India’s Sarvam AI is lining up as much as $350 million in funding at a reported $1.5 billion valuation. That push is reshaping where founders and investors feel safe launching or selling AI ventures — recent high‑profile deals have left some Chinese entrepreneurs uneasy about cross‑border exits. (artificialintelligence-news.com) (bloomberg.com) (thinkchina.sg)
Beijing’s 2026 five‑year blueprint explicitly aims to weave artificial intelligence into nearly the whole economy, setting a target to integrate AI into about 90% of economic activity by 2030 and listing robotics, semiconductors and “embodied intelligence” as core strategic industries. (abc.net.au) (thediplomat.com) India’s Sarvam AI is raising between $300 million and $350 million at a reported valuation of $1.5–$1.55 billion, with Bessemer Venture Partners expected to lead and participants named as Nvidia, Amazon and Prosperity7; the company says its models work across 22 Indian languages and were showcased at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s AI summit in February. (bloomberg.com) What Beijing is building is a national stack of hardware and software: the plan funds a “compute” network — meaning large clusters of data centers and specialized supercomputers — and pushes for domestic AI chips, which are the dedicated processors (like graphics processing units and other accelerators) engineers use to run large AI models faster. (theaitrack.com) (weforum.org) That industrial push is colliding with a recent enforcement case that has shaken founders: Meta announced it would buy Manus, a Singapore‑based AI agent startup with Chinese origins, in late December 2025, and Chinese regulators have since reviewed the deal, summoned Manus executives to meetings with the National Development and Reform Commission and barred two co‑founders from leaving the country while the review continues. (techcrunch.com) (reuters.com) Regulators’ actions have specifically reviewed whether technology exports, cross‑border data transfers or outbound investment rules were violated, and Beijing has publicly said it supports lawful transnational deals while enforcing those rules; investors and some founders have responded by saying they are more often incorporating outside China from day one rather than relocating later. (thinkchina.sg) (reuters.com) (cnbc.com)
