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Hello, and welcome to the HORIZON weekly newsletter. Particularly warm greetings to our many new subscribers - please do forward this on to colleagues and connections in your network who would also enjoy the insights.
Below you will find some hand-picked fresh thought-leadership content, giving you an overview of recent developments, topical innovations, and what we're seeing and hearing out there towards the digital frontier.
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Recent articles
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Lunar New Year: a time for introspection and renewal.
Much of Asia will effectively hit the PAUSE button for as much as 15 days from Wed 29th Jan.
Countries in the region celebrating include China, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Thailand.
As the year of the Wood Snake begins, it's prudent to be mindful not only of respecting customs and historical tradition(s), but also actively making plans for what may come next.
Relying solely on past experience to navigate new periods of dynamic and rapid change such as those of today can hinder progress and impede innovation.
Though experience is valuable, it can limit individuals and organisations from embracing fresh ideas or alternative approaches due to the entrenchment of outdated beliefs - inhibiting the necessary focus on what will work now.
Hence why it is so valuable to regularly expose your business to critical outside-in strategic analysis by independent, objective and impartial expertise to challenge conventional thinking and dispel dogma.
This quote from businessman and philanthropist J. Paul Getty serves as a reminder to not merely maintain the status quo, but to stay flexible and adaptable in order to thrive in an ever-changing environment.
To those that are celebrating we pass good wishes of prosperity, luck, wealth, health, and fortune: Gong Xi Fa Cai!
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Runner versus robot: the race is, literally, on.
The first man versus machine head-to-head contest in an official event is scheduled to take place in China this coming April.
This unprecedented race reflects China’s ambitious push to become a global leader in robotics.
It will be a half-marathon (~21km) in the Daxing district of Beijing.
It's estimated that dozens of robots from around twenty companies may participate...along with some 12,000 mammals.
The robots must possess a human-like appearance, requiring a mechanical structure that allows them to perform movements such as walking or running on two legs; no wheels allowed.
The bots must also be between 0.5 meters and 2 meters tall.
Remote-controlled and fully autonomous robots are eligible, and low batteries may be replaced during the race.
The top three finishers - whether organic or mechanical - will receive prizes according to organiser the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area.
China views humanoid robots as a strategic sector for its economic growth and technological independence - plus address issues around an aging population and a declining workforce.
Running bots were also seen at a similar event late last year, but in a different capacity.
In November 2024 the Beijing Yizhuang Half Marathon saw the "Tiangong" robot serve as a "closing rabbit" (a pacer who encourages and motivates runners to keep going), crossed the finish line alongside participants.
This is part of a wider trend for more robot-based competitions in China.
From 2014 to the third quarter of 2024, there were 176 investment and financing events involving humanoid robot companies in China.
This represents 40% of the global total, with total investment and financing amount exceeded $5.5 billion.
In 2023, China installed about 276,300 robots - accounting for 51% of global installations.
The nation's robotics industry is projected to grow to 400 billion yuan (~US$54.6 billion) by 2030.
In August 2025 Beijing is hosting the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Sports Games.
Events to demonstrate motion control will include major categories such as track and field and football (soccer).
China isn't alone in this competition: in 2024 a four-legged robot resembling a dog successfully completed a full marathon in South Korea.
Named "RAIBO2", it completed the 42.195km in a little over four hours - on a single battery charge.
Robots, progressively more complex, capable, and able to operate autonomously, will increasingly be part of our future lives: both in work and at play.
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DeepSeek AI - why it has rocked global markets.
Almost from nowhere, DeepSeek has become front-page news.
In the last few days it released "DeepSeek-R1"; a new Large Language Model (LLM) that performs reasoning similar to the latest - and priciest - offering from Western leader OpenAI.
Silicon Valley mogul and tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen wrote on X: "Deepseek R1 is AI's Sputnik moment".
The reason why it has caused such a stir is that it is available at no cost; it was released fully open-source.
Coders around the world are rapidly experimenting with DeepSeek’s software, evaluating its capabilities, and looking to build tools with it.
This has caused it to become one of the most active models and downloaded apps globally.
A direct effect has been a significant global sell-off in many of the blue-chip tech stocks that have enjoyed such a bull-run on the back of AI hype and promise, malleting market caps.
Equities have been spooked by the potential that much-vaunted Generative AI use cases may be achievable without all the enormous spend with chip makers, data centre providers, and algorithm eggheads.
It also poses a much wider and long-overdue question: can the West take domination in AI for granted?
For those of us in the Asia tech ecosystem, the answer has for a extended time of course been a firm "No"; the competition is very much on.
DeepSeek is a subsidiary of quant firm High-Flyer Capital Management.
As its assistant addresses the prompt or written query of a user, it shows its work and reasoning - increasing transparency.
Popularity can have its downsides; DeepSeek may not yet have the infrastructure required to support such a surge in support, as it has experienced several service outages in the last few days.
The restriction of Western tech for Chinese companies has, seemingly, made some of them more ingenious; having to be resourceful has translated to increased efficiency, managing to do more with less advanced hardware.
DeepSeek-R1 has scored as high as or higher on a variety of third-party benchmarks (tests to measure AI performance at answering questions on various subjects) than leading Western models.
Unrelated, another Chinese model ("Doubao-1.5-pro" from Bytedance) has been released with performance matching OpenAI’s non-reasoning GPT-4o model on 3rd-party benchmarks...but at 1/50th the cost.
Depending on how it eventually plays out long-term, increased Chinese engineering efficiency could result in a profound change in the balance of the Western AI premise...and associated inflated valuation(s).
If your emerging tech horizon only spans as far as what the likes of Musk, Altman, Huang, and Zuckerberg state - you're missing a trick.
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Thank-you for reading and being part of our community - we trust you find these original pieces on emerging technology and digital innovation useful, valuable, and thought-provoking as we bridge the gap between today and what future tech might bring tomorrow in Plain English.
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