US tech giant Qualcomm opens AI R&D centre in Vietnam
The US giant wants to develop the new facility as its third-largest R&D centre, behind those in India and Ireland, noted Jilei Hou, vice-president of engineering at Qualcomm Technologies, as he spoke with Vietnam's Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Chi Dung earlier in April.
The company has already operated an R&D centre in Hanoi since 2020, among a network of its multiple R&D operations outside of its headquarters in San Diego, California.
The new centre aims to capitalise on the South-east Asian country's extensive talent pool to develop generative AI (GenAI) and agentic AI solutions applied to various sectors, including smartphones, personal computers, extended reality (XR) technologies, automobiles and Internet of Things (IoT).
'This also serves as a vivid testament to the deepening comprehensive strategic partnership between Vietnam and the US,' said Le Xuan Dinh, Vietnam's Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, during his appearance at the event on Tuesday morning.
In April, Qualcomm finalised its acquisition of MovianAI, a GenAI subsidiary of Vietnam's private conglomerate Vingroup, for an undisclosed amount. Established in 2024, MovianAI is a former division of VinAI – another firm in the Vingroup ecosystem.
A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU
Friday, 8.30 am Asean Business
Business insights centering on South-east Asia's fast-growing economies.
Sign Up
Sign Up
Last December, US chipmaker Nvidia also announced its acquisition of Vingroup's affiliate firm VinBrain as well as its plan to open an R&D centre in Vietnam to bolster AI development, without providing details.
These moves align with Vietnam's strategy to attract global giants to establish high-tech facilities and projects in the country. Its Investment Support Fund offers government subsidies covering up to 50 per cent of initial investment costs for the establishment of R&D centres focused on semiconductors and AI in Vietnam.
Domestic conglomerates are also fuelling the AI race through the establishment of various new tech hubs.
In March, Vietnam's home-grown tech champion, FPT Group, launched its R&D centre at the newly opened Software Park No 2 in the central city of Da Nang, with a focus on AI and semiconductors. The hub gathers 500 technology experts and aims to develop at least 10 new products each year for the software and telecommunications giant.
On Jun 1, FPT's archrival, CMC Corporation, also broke ground on the CMC Creative Space in Hanoi – the second location in the chain after the first one in Ho Chi Minh City. The new US$300 million office complex is designed to become an open AI centre, encompassing a data centre, R&D space, training area and startup incubation zone for more than 5,000 technology engineers.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Business Times
4 hours ago
- Business Times
Trump aims to shut trade loopholes China uses to evade tariffs
[WASHINGTON] US President Donald Trump's two-tiered trade deal with Vietnam aims squarely at practices China has long used to skirt US tariffs: The widespread legal shifting of production to South-east Asian factories and the murkier and illegal 'origin washing' of exports through their ports. The agreement slaps a 20 per cent tariff on Vietnamese exports to the US and a 40 per cent levy on goods deemed to be transshipped through the country. With details still scarce, economists said much will hinge on the framework Washington establishes to determine what it sees as 'Made in Vietnam' and what it sees as transshipments. Complicating matters is the fact that Chinese businesses have rushed to set up shop across South-east Asia since Trump launched his first trade war back in 2018. The lion's share of Vietnam's exports to the US are goods like Airpods, phones or other products assembled with Chinese components in a factory in Vietnam and then shipped to America. That's not illegal. 'A lot will depend on how the 40 per cent tariffs are applied. If the Trump administration keeps it targeted, it should be manageable,' said Roland Rajah, lead economist at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. 'If the approach is too broad and blunt, then it could be quite damaging' for China, Vietnam and for the US, which will have to pay higher import prices, he said. The think tank estimates that 28 per cent of Vietnamese exports to the US were made up of Chinese content in 2022, up from 9 per cent in 2018. Pham Luu Hung, chief economist at SSI Securities in Hanoi, said a 40 per cent levy on transshipped goods would have limited impact on Vietnam's economy because they are not of Vietnamese origin in the first place. Re-routed exports accounted for just 16.5 per cent of Vietnam's shipments to the US in 2021, a share that's likely declined over the past couple of years amid stronger enforcement actions by both governments, Hung said. A NEWSLETTER FOR YOU Friday, 8.30 am Asean Business Business insights centering on South-east Asia's fast-growing economies. Sign Up Sign Up 'An important caveat is that the rules of origin remain under negotiation,' Hung said. 'In practice, these rules may have a greater impact than the tariff rates themselves.' Devil in details Duncan Wrigley, chief China economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said he's sceptical the latest deal will be effective in stamping out Chinese exports via Vietnam to the US. 'The devil is in the details, but I think China's exports will either go via other markets to the US, or some value-added will be done in Vietnam so the product counts as made in Vietnam, rather than a transshipment,' he said. As officials across Asia rushed to negotiate lower US tariff levels with their US counterparts this year, Chinese businesses have been just as quick to ramp up their exports through alternative channels in order to skirt punitive US levies. Shipments from China to South-east Asia have reached record highs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam this year. And there's been a 'significant increase in correlation' to the region's increase in exports to the US during the same period, Citigroup economists said in a recent report. Much of that is likely due to the shifting of legitimate production across the region. Goods destined for the US market may be sent from their factories in South-east Asia, and what they make in their factories in China will be sent to the rest of the world, said Derrick Kam, Asia economist at Morgan Stanley. 'If you try to represent that in the trade data, it will look exactly like rerouting, but it's not,' Kam said. 'It's essentially the supply chain working itself out.' But it's transshipment that's been a major concern for Trump's top trade advisers including Peter Navarro, who described Vietnam as 'essentially a colony of communist China' during an April interview with Fox News. And it has not just been happening in Vietnam. Not long after Trump unveiled his 'Liberation Day' tariffs on Apr 2, garment makers in Indonesia started receiving offers from Chinese companies to be 'partners in transshipment,' said Redma Gita Wirawasta, chairman of the Indonesian Filament Yarn and Fiber Producers Association. Chinese products would be rerouted to Indonesia, undergo minimal processing like repacking or relabelling, then secure a certification that they were made in the South-east Asian country, Wirawasta said. When the goods are then exported to the US, they'd be subject to the 10 per cent universal levy that Trump has imposed on nearly all countries, instead of the tariff for China that still equates to an effective level of over 50 per cent, even after a recent 'deal' that lowered levies from a peak of 145 per cent. With the huge scope for arbitrage, coupled with little policing, that process will prove tough to stamp out. 'Chinese exporters and their affiliates and partners in South-east Asia are highly skilled at adapting to changing rules, identifying loopholes, and sometimes overstating the extent of value-add by non-China countries,' said Gabriel Wildau, managing director at advisory firm Teneo Holdings in New York. Some final assembly or transshipment may shift to rival South-east Asian transshipment hubs like Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore, or farther afield to Turkey, Hungary or Poland, Wildau said. 'Another possibility is that the definitions and enforcement mechanisms are fuzzy, rendering the latest deal cosmetic and toothless,' he said. 'Rigorous enforcement would also require a significant boost of resources to enable US customs to verify compliance with the tougher rules of origin.' There have been efforts across the region to at least be seen to be making an effort to curb the practice. Indeed, Vietnam has made a big deal about cracking down on trade fraud and illegal activity in recent months. In April, South Korea said it seized more than US$20 million worth of goods with falsified origin labels – the majority of which were destined for the US. The Airfreight Forwarders Association of Malaysia issued a warning in May as Chinese brokers promoted illegal rerouting services on social media. Malaysia has centralised the issuance of certificates of origin with its Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry, while tapping its customs agency to help curb transshipment. Thailand has expanded its watch list for high-risk products, including solar panels, cars and parts, and is mulling stricter penalties for violators. Red tape Casey Barnett, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Cambodia, is already seeing the changes in action. One factory that exports to major US retailers, including Walmart, Home Depot and Lowe's, said that customs officials were very carefully reviewing their products before being sent to the US, he said. 'It's creating some additional paperwork and a little bit of red tape here,' Barnett said. A senior manager at a logistics company in Cambodia, who asked not to be identified because the matter is sensitive, said export processing time has now stretched to as much as 14 working days – double what it was before. But in Indonesia, getting a certificate of origin is fairly quick and painless when goods are marked for export, often just requiring a product list and a letter to the provincial trade office, according to Wirawasta. Authorities prioritise checking products that enter the country to ensure they pay the right duties and comply with regulations, he explained. It's rare for them to inspect factories where an export good was supposedly made. So much so that sometimes, Chinese companies don't even need to muster up some local processing. 'The T-shirt could be finished in China, with a 'Made in Indonesia' label already sewn on,' Wirawasta said. 'Some traders won't even bother to unload the goods from the shipping container,' he added. 'Unloading costs money.' BLOOMBERG
Straits Times
5 hours ago
- Straits Times
Hong Kong-listed Chinese pharma sets sights on SGX for secondary listing
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox The proposed listing will not involve issuing new shares, and China Medical System will continue to be primarily traded in Hong Kong. SINGAPORE – A Hong Kong-listed pharmaceutical company is aiming to launch a secondary listing on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) later this month. China Medical System (CMS) filed its preliminary prospectus with the Monetary Authority of Singapore on June 27. The proposed listing will not involve issuing new shares, and CMS will continue to be primarily traded in Hong Kong, where it listed in 2010. CMS said Singapore is the 'ideal launch place' for its high-value innovations given the country's highly developed economy, robust IP protections, skilled talent pool and trade agreements. It will use Singapore as a base to expand across South-east Asia and the Middle East, while employing the listing here to attract funds. 'The SGX listing marks a strategic step to deepen our regional footprint, boost visibility among South-east Asian stakeholders, and reinforce our reputation as a high-quality, innovation-led pharmaceutical player,' the company said. It added that its regional expansion is being driven by the need to bolster supply chains. CMS, which was set up in 1992, produces around 40 products that focus on three areas of healthcare: Cardio-cerebrovascular and gastroenterology; dermatology and medical aesthetics; and ophthalmology. Its financial performance in 2023 and 2024 was impacted by a new policy in China that centralised bidding and consolidated procurement processes in order to lower drug and medical device costs for public hospitals. Three of CMS's drugs fell under the new regulations but revenue rebounded in the second half of last year, allowing the firm to post profits of 1.61 billion yuan (S$290 million) in 2024. The company highlighted four key platforms to boost its presence across Asia-Pacific, including its research and development arm and PharmaGend, the firm's development and manufacturing platform for regional manufacturing and supply. In December 2023, PharmaGend acquired a manufacturing facility in Tuas, which is expected to ship its first productions for the US market in the second half of this year. CMS said it plans to add to its 200-strong workforce here, and will also outlay US$200 million to double capacity at the Tuas plant, a project that is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2028. The firm stated that the Singapore facility, which can produce one billion tablets a year, eases supply chain risks by localising production for regional and Middle East markets. 'This aligns with Asean's push for self-sufficiency in essential medicines and positions CMS as a reliable partner in regional health security,' it added. South-east Asia's pharmaceutical market is projected to hit a volume of US$18.28 billion by 2030, with an annual growth of 4.9 per cent. The CMS listing will be the second on the mainboard this year, after the initial public offering of local firm Info-Tech Systems, which begins trading on July 4. Last week, Japan's telco giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone filed its preliminary prospectus for a data centre Reit, which could mark SGX's largest Reit listing since 2013.
Business Times
9 hours ago
- Business Times
Beijing braces for US trade deals that aim to shut out China
[BEIJING] The trade truce between Washington and Beijing may be holding for now, but China is increasingly wary about what's happening elsewhere: US efforts to forge deals that could isolate Chinese firms from global supply chains. Ahead of a Jul 9 deadline, US officials are deep in talks with major trading partners in Asia and Europe, pushing for new agreements that would include restrictions on Chinese content, or secure commitments to counter what Washington sees as China's unfair trade practices. In the first such deal, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday (Jul 2) announced a tiered tariff agreement with Vietnam. Exports to the US from the South-east Asian nation will be charged a 20 per cent rate, Trump said in a social-media post, with 40 per cent levied on any goods deemed to be transshipped through the country. That will hit products with components from China and possibly other nations, which are routed through Vietnam or subject to only minimal final assembly before being exported to the US. The approach mirrors provisions in an existing US trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. India, another nation seen as close to a deal, has also been negotiating over 'rules of origin'. Washington wants at least 60 per cent of a product's value added locally to qualify as 'Made in India' and benefit from the deal, Bloomberg News previously reported. India has pushed to bring that down to around 35 per cent, according to the report. 'Asia's dilemma when it comes to Trump's trade war is all about dependence on US final demand while relying heavily on China's value added in domestic production,' Alicia Garcia Herrero, Asia-Pacific chief economist at Natixis, said in a recent report, adding that Vietnam, Cambodia and Taiwan were among the most exposed. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up China, a larger trade partner than the US for most Asian economies, has warned of consequences if its interests are threatened, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi is likely to raise that again on his visit to Europe this week for talks in Brussels, Germany and France. 'China firmly opposes any party reaching a deal at the expense of Chinese interests in exchange for so-called tariff reductions,' the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement on Saturday, repeating earlier warnings. 'If this happens, China will never accept it and will resolutely counter it to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.' Trump's 90-day pause on what he called 'reciprocal' tariffs on dozens of America's trading partners ends on Jul 9. Unless those countries reach trade deals with the US, they could potentially face much higher tariffs. Some governments are making moves to stay on the right side of Washington. Vietnam, Thailand and South Korea have all put in place measures to stop goods from being rerouted through their countries to the US since Trump's tariffs were unveiled in April. South Korean customs announced a crackdown on transshipments, citing a rise in the practice. Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te also flagged the issue and followed up with new rules requiring all US-bound exports to carry a legal declaration that they were made on the island. Export controls Another concern for Beijing is whether the US could convince others to impose or tighten export controls on high-tech equipment, which would further hamper Chinese efforts to buy the tools it needs to produce advanced semiconductors. Taiwan in June added Huawei Technologies and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation to its so-called entity list, barring Taiwanese firms from doing business with them without government approval. The pressure is not limited to Asia. Europe, too, finds itself in a delicate position. The EU is China's largest export destination for electric vehicles (EVs), and investment from Chinese firms into the bloc, plus the UK, hit 10 billion euros (S$15 billion) last year, according to recent research from Rhodium Group. Yet trade tensions are rising. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen recently accused Beijing of 'weaponising' rare earths and magnets and warned of the risks posed by Chinese overcapacity. Beijing is particularly concerned that the EU might sign up to provisions similar to those in the UK's deal with the US, which included commitments around supply chain security, export controls, and ownership rules in sectors such as steel, aluminium and pharmaceuticals. While the language did not name China, Beijing criticised the agreement in a rare public statement, interpreting it as a direct challenge, the Financial Times reported. 'China is clearly worried that the EU will accept the same wording as the UK did on export controls,' said Joerg Wuttke, a partner at the Albright Stonebridge Group in Washington and former president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China. 'They are pushing the EU not to do this, and the US is pushing the EU to do it.' Brussels and Washington are aiming to reach some form of an agreement before Jul 9, when Washington is set to impose a 50 per cent tariff on nearly all EU products. With European exports to the US worth more than double the amount to China, the bloc sees Washington as the more important partner, giving the US leverage in the talks. China's weekend statement is 'obviously aimed entirely at Brussels', said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy in Brussels, who was recently in Beijing for meetings ahead of an EU-China summit this month. 'China is concerned about what the EU might agree with the US.' The long-term risk for Beijing is that these efforts coalesce into a broader shift, not just a US-led campaign to curb Chinese exports, but a reshaping of global trade around 'trusted' supply chains, with China increasingly on the outside. In a visit to South-east Asia earlier this year, President Xi Jinping urged the region to stand together as an 'Asian family', warning against trade fragmentation. Beijing has often responded to actions it opposes with targeted trade measures. When the EU imposed tariffs on Chinese EVs last year, China launched anti-dumping probes into European brandy, dairy and pork. It halted Japanese seafood imports in 2023 after Group of Seven meetings in Japan were seen as critical of China. A spat with Australia in 2020 led to trade restrictions on billions of US dollars' worth of goods, including lobsters, wine and barley. 'If some agreements explicitly list China as a target and show that some countries are cooperating or collaborating with the US to 'contain China', then China will definitely respond,' said Tu Xinquan, dean of the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing and a former adviser to the Chinese Commerce Ministry. BLOOMBERG
