Latest news with #Tencent-backed
Korea Herald
19 hours ago
- Business
- Korea Herald
Kakao Bank wins approval for Thailand's first virtual bank
Korean lender sets sights on second-half 2026 launch under SCBX-led joint venture Kakao Bank, South Korea's leading internet-only lender, has secured final approval to establish Thailand's first digital bank, marking the official launch of its joint venture with Thai financial giant SCBX to roll out services next year. The Bank of Thailand on Thursday announced the winners of its long-awaited virtual banking licenses, selecting three applicants from five contenders. The SCBX-led consortium — whose members include Kakao Bank and Tencent-backed Chinese digital lender WeBank — was among those granted a license. The other winners were ACM Holding Company and a consortium led by state-run Krung Thai Bank. The licenses were issued following a review by Thailand's Ministry of Finance, based on central bank recommendations. Authorities assessed business models, digital capabilities and each group's potential to boost financial inclusion, particularly for underserved consumers and small businesses. Thailand's central bank said the digital lenders are expected to enhance customer experience, increase efficiency, and drive healthy competition through innovation and better pricing. Regulators also weighed the optimal number of new banks to foster healthy competition while maintaining financial system stability. The approved candidates are required to establish a corporate entity in the third quarter and commence operations within one year, setting the stage for operations to begin in the second half of 2026. The milestone comes two years after Kakao Bank, a subsidiary of Korea's IT giant Kakao, signed a memorandum of understanding with SCBX in June 2023 to collaborate on developing Thailand's first digital bank. SCBX is the holding company of major Thai lender Siam Commercial Bank. This marks Kakao Bank's second overseas venture after launching Superbank in Indonesia through a joint venture with Grab. It remains the only Korean internet-only bank with international operations. The move also signals a meaningful return of Korean banking to Thailand, nearly three decades after Korean lenders exited the market during the 1998 Asian financial crisis. 'Drawing on its experience in shaping Korea's digital banking landscape, Kakao Bank will play a leading role in building the new Thai digital bank, overseeing the development of its technology infrastructure and service design,' a company official told The Korea Herald. Once established, Kakao Bank will become the second-largest shareholder in the new online lender. In response to the approval, Kakao Bank CEO Yun Ho-young called the license "a stepping stone into a new market and a valuable opportunity to showcase the strength of Korea's digital finance technology," adding that the firm aims to serve as a bridgehead for Korean banks and companies seeking entry into the Thai market.
Business Recorder
10-06-2025
- Business
- Business Recorder
Tencent Music to buy Chinese audio platform Ximalaya for $2.4 billion
Chinese music platform Tencent Music Entertainment Group said on Tuesday it would buy long-form audio platform Ximalaya for about $2.4 billion in cash and stock, expanding its library of content to attract more paying users. U.S.-listed shares of Tencent rose 7% in premarket trading. The company will offer $1.26 billion in cash and Class A shares representing up to 5.20% of its total outstanding stock. It will also issue shares to Ximalaya's founder investors not exceeding 0.37% of its total share count. Tencent-backed China Ruyi raises $302 million in convertible bonds The stock component of the deal totals about $1.15 billion based on Tencent Music's last closing price on April 24, a day before Bloomberg News reported about the deal.
Forbes
14-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Creator Of Blockbuster Game ‘Goddess Of Victory: Nikke' Joins Ranks Of Korea's 50 Richest
Kim Hyung-tae (center), attends the company's listing ceremony at the Korea Exchange (KRX) in Seoul on July 11, 2024. This story is part of Forbes' coverage of Korea's Richest 2025. See the full list here. The $320 million IPO last July of online games developer Shift Up, Korea's second-largest listing of 2024, made its founder and chairman Kim Hyung-tae a billionaire. Though Tencent-backed Shift Up's shares have fallen more than a third since and Kim's net worth has shrunk to $725 million, that still earns him a debut spot in the ranks of the country's wealthiest. ss A former video game artist, Kim designed Blade & Soul, a top-selling game of fellow listee Kim Taek-jin's NCSoft, where he worked for eight years. He started Shift Up in 2013 and nine years later launched his own blockbuster title, Goddess of Victory: Nikke, a third-person shooter and role-playing game with anime-style graphics. Another global hit was Stellar Blade. Launched last year, it achieved the highest user score (9.2) for a Sony PlayStation 5 game on review aggregator Metacritic. In 2024, Shift Up's revenue rose by a third to 224 billion won ($152 million), while net income increased 39% to 148 billion won. Next up is a Chinese version of Goddess of Victory: Nikke, which has already garnered 5 million preregistrations.
Bloomberg
25-03-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Tencent-Backed Kuaishou Pledges AI Efforts as Sales Growth Slows
Kuaishou Technology said artificial intelligence is what will drive users to its video platform after posting its slowest quarterly sales growth since its 2021 listing. AI is the 'core engine that will drive our platform to create more value' for its commercial ecosystem while achieving traffic growth, the Tencent-backed internet company said in an exchange filing.
Ammon
13-02-2025
- Business
- Ammon
DeepSeek gives China's chipmakers leg up in race for cheaper AI
Ammon News - The rise of DeepSeek's artificial intelligence (AI) models is seen providing some Chinese chipmakers such as Huawei a better chance to compete in the domestic market against more powerful U.S. processors. Huawei and its Chinese peers have for years struggled to match Nvidia in building top-end chips that could compete with the U.S. firm's products for training models, a process where data is fed to algorithms to help them learn to make accurate decisions. However, DeepSeek's models, which focus on "inference," or when an AI model produces conclusions, optimise computational efficiency rather than relying solely on raw processing power. That is one reason why the model is expected to partly close the gap between what Chinese-made AI processors and their more powerful U.S. counterparts can do, analysts say. Huawei, and other Chinese AI chipmakers such as Hygon, Tencent-backed EnFlame, Tsingmicro and Moore Threads have in recent weeks issued statements claiming products will support DeepSeek models, although few details have been released. Huawei declined to comment. Moore Threads, Hygon EnFlame and Tsingmicro did not respond to Reuters queries seeking further comment. Industry executives are now predicting that DeepSeek's open-source nature and its low fees could boost adoption of AI and the development of real-life applications for the technology, helping Chinese firms overcome U.S. export curbs on their most powerful chips. Even before DeepSeek made headlines this year, products such as Huawei's Ascend 910B were seen by customers such as ByteDance as better suited for less computationally intensive "inference" tasks, the stage after training that involves trained AI models making predictions or performing tasks, such as through chatbots. From Elon Musk and Sam Altman butting heads to a gathering of big players in Paris, this is AI Weekly.
