Keep Up With The Asia Tech Nexus With Forbes Asia’s June Issue

Asia and technology have long enjoyed a special relationship with each other. Countries across the region boast vibrant tech sectors, often having at least one national champion that has grown from a small startup into a regional and even global giant, such as Australia’s Canva, China’s Alibaba, India’s Infosys, Indonesia’s GoTo, Malaysia’s Grab, Singapore’s Sea, South Korea’s Samsung, Taiwan’s TSMC and Vietnam’s VinFast.

This issue is chock full of examples of Asia’s relentless pursuit of tech innovations. The rise of AI has been fueled, in no small measure, by gear supplied by Asian firms, creating vast new wealth for its founders in the process.

Exhibit A is Taiwan’s 50 Richest list, where the total wealth rose about 12% from last year’s list to hit $174 billion, and where the lion’s share of gains were made by those in the tech sector. Barry Lam became the new No. 1 on the list when his fortune more than doubled to $11.7 billion as demand skyrocketed for AI servers and laptops made by his Quanta Computer firm. Morris Chang, founder of foundry TSMC, saw his net worth climb from $2.3 billion to $3.3 billion.

The AI boom also impacted Japan’s 50 Richest list, with big gains made by Masayoshi Son after his SoftBank Group took public its chip designer Arm Holdings on Nasdaq. Other beneficiaries were the Sekiya family, whose wealth expanded by nearly 150% to $7.4 billion, boosted by the nearly threefold rise in shares of their company Disco, a manufacturer of chipmaking equipment.

Asia’s youngest cohort, the 30 Under 30 Asia listees, grew up using digital devices. While AI features prominently as the marquee application in many of their innovations, they deploy an astounding array of technologies, such as an AI-powered smart glove that helps the blind to read Braille and a network of EV charging stations across India.

Over in Silicon Valley, tech titans are hotly debating how best to harness AI in an article that accompanies the annual Midas List, a global tally of who made the most from tech investments. In another nod to tech, there’s a profile of the duo based in Australia who run and own Stake.com, the world’s largest crypto casino, ranked by its $2.6 billion in annual revenue.

We close with a mention of a low-tech billionaire, Australia property tycoon Harry Triguboff. He is definitely old school, a man whose business is literally brick and mortar. After all, all those tech entrepreneurs and their hardware have to be housed somewhere. As always, all comments welcome at editor@forbesasia.com.