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The Real Bottleneck in the Age of AI Agents Isn’t the Model — It’s the Data

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Singdata Closes Series B at over USD $100M, Launches in Hong Kong with a Bet on “AI-Native Data Infrastructure” — Aligned with the HKSAR Government’s HKD 3 Billion “AI+” Strategy

HONG KONG, June 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Enterprises worldwide are racing to deploy AI Agents. Yet according to 2026 reports from Deloitte and Google Cloud, only 31% have reached production. 46% of organizations cite systems integration as the top barrier, and 42% point to data access and quality. The bottleneck is no longer the model — it is whether the underlying data is AI-Ready.

Singdata (Yunqi Tech), an AI-native data infrastructure company, today announced from Hong Kong the close of its Series B funding round, bringing total funding to over USD $100 million. The milestone marks an inflection point for the Asia-Pacific “Data + AI” infrastructure category — a category where the international comparable, Databricks, has seen its valuation grow 3.1x in the past 18 months to USD $134 billion.

Why Hong Kong, Why Now — After Compute, Data Is the Next Battlefield

The HKSAR Government is driving a HKD 3 billion “AI+” strategy: a HKD 1 billion Hong Kong AI Research and Development Institute (HKAIRDI), the Sandy Ridge supercomputing centre breaking ground in 2026, and citywide compute capacity expanding 36-fold by 2032. Hong Kong is positioning itself as a dual data hub between mainland China and the international market.

“Once compute becomes abundant, the next bottleneck is the data layer that powers AI applications.” Singdata’s Hong Kong launch is a direct response to that thesis — when enterprises already have compute and mature models, what determines whether AI works in production is a paradigm upgrade in data infrastructure. Singdata’s recently published technical thesis, Five Design Principles of an AI-Native Data Platform, sets out the technical path and design principles behind this paradigm shift in full.

Solving Two Structural Bottlenecks for Enterprise AI

Singdata’s core innovations — Generic Incremental Compute (GIC) and a Lakehouse architecture — address the two structural pain points of enterprise AI deployment:

AI-Ready data: Native support for documents, audio, video, chat logs and other unstructured “dark data” that constitutes over 80% of enterprise data — automatically parsed, vectorized, and aligned with LLM inference.Real-time, low-cost retrieval: GIC processes only the data that changes, decisively breaking the cost-and-latency ceiling of traditional Lambda architectures’ “full-rerun” approach, and supporting the high-frequency, millisecond-level vector search that AI Agents require.

Singdata’s AI Lakehouse is compatible with all major cloud platforms, and Singdata is a major contributor to the Apache Iceberg open standard, ensuring customers retain 100% sovereignty and portability over their own data — strategically significant in an Asia-Pacific market where data sovereignty is fast becoming a board-level concern.

Customers: Cross-Industry, Cross-Geography Enterprise Validation

Singdata’s customer base spans Asia’s leading enterprises:

Internet: AntGroup, Rednote, KuaishouAutomotive: Changan Auto, Great Wall Motor, Toyota, VolkswagenLogistics & Commerce: Ninja Van, Synagie, Atlas

The breadth of industries and geographies served is, in itself, the most direct proof that Singdata’s architecture adapts to highly differentiated enterprise environments.

Team: Alibaba “Apsara” Veterans, Combining Global Vision with Asia-Pacific Execution

Singdata’s founding team draws on senior alumni from Microsoft, Oracle, Alibaba Cloud, and ByteDance’s Volcano Engine — and was central to building Alibaba Cloud’s “Apsara” data platform, one of the largest cloud-native data systems globally. The team combines deep familiarity with global technical frontiers and large-scale Asia-Pacific operational experience.

Founder Statement

“The data stack enterprises built over the past two decades was designed for human analysts reading T+1 dashboards. An AI Agent can fire ten thousand queries a second. Run that workload on the old architecture and every Agent thought triggers an expensive full table scan — that is the real reason enterprise AI is failing to scale. What Singdata is rebuilding isn’t just the engine — it’s the paradigm: a data platform designed for Agents, not only for analysts.”

— Yu Sicheng, CEO, Singdata (Yunqi Tech)

This funding round will be fully invested in continued R&D of Singdata’s AI-native data platform, accelerating its trajectory to become the platform of choice for Data + AI infrastructure across Asia-Pacific, with Hong Kong serving as its strategic gateway to international markets.

About Singdata (Yunqi Tech)

Founded in 2022, Singdata is an enterprise AI-native data infrastructure company. Its proprietary AI Lakehouse, powered by Generic Incremental Compute (GIC), bridges the last mile between enterprise data and AI — already trusted by leading organizations across Asia-Pacific including Rednote, Kuaishou, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Ninja Van. Singdata is a core contributor to the Apache Iceberg open standard and is committed to becoming the leading Data + AI infrastructure platform for Asia-Pacific.

Further Reading | Full Technical Thesis

Five Design Principles of an AI-Native Data Platform — Singdata’s systematic thesis on the paradigm shift in data infrastructure for the AI era, covering unified Lakehouse storage, AI as a native compute engine, the Medallion Architecture with incremental compute, Agent-friendly development paradigms, and enterprise-grade governance:
https://www.yunqi.tech/resource/blogs/ai-native-data-platform

Product demo & consultation: https://www.yunqi.tech/reservation

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GAC Wins 8 Awards, Including 4 First Prizes, Showcasing Technological Innovation Strength

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SUZHOU, China, Oct. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On October 28, GAC won 8 awards at the 2026 China-SAE Science and Technology Award ceremony in Suzhou, Jiangsu. In the fields of automotive chips, electric drive, vehicle safety, intelligent driving governance and body design, four first prizes were awarded to two GAC-led projects and two GAC-participated projects, and one GAC-led project won second prize.

In chips, GAC’s led project built a full-chain path from vehicle definition to scale application, working with 105 partners to apply nearly 400 chip models and over 1,000 domestic chips. The HYPTEC GT Special Edition, China’s first ICV with 100% domestically designed chips, has been launched.

In electric drive, GAC pioneered mass production of amorphous alloy stators and carbon-fiber high-speed rotors, becoming the world’s only company to mass-produce amorphous alloy automotive motors. Its amorphous ribbon is just 0.025 mm thick. The motor reaches 99.03% peak efficiency, 17.29 kW/kg power density (@1000V)—nearly three times the industry mainstream—and 30,000 rpm maximum speed; system CLTC efficiency reaches 94.184%. For users, energy consumption drops 4%, and range rises 30-50 km with the same battery capacity. It has been applied to HYPTEC, AION and AISTALAND models and promoted to other automakers. The related precision manufacturing technology won the Gold Medal with Congratulations of the Jury at the 51st International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva.

In safety, the GAC-led project with Tsinghua University won second prize. It developed China’s first ASIL-D fully domestic safety controller, real-time risk quantification, active-suspension side-impact mitigation, a rear-window airbag and an “automaker-traffic police-hospital” integrated rescue model. It has been applied to 20 models with cumulative sales of 1.446 million units.

In addition, GAC’s participated L2-L4 safety governance project helped establish a full-lifecycle system covering pre-admission, in-process supervision and post-event traceability. Its participated BIW project features an AI-based body design system that generates concept schemes within 5 hours, with over 95% stiffness prediction accuracy and over 30% higher design efficiency; it has been applied to the second-generation GAC GS8, GAC ES9 and GAC All-new S7.

Looking ahead, GAC will uphold innovation-driven development, advance core technology breakthroughs and commercialization, and support high-quality development of China’s auto industry.

For further information about GAC, please visit: https://www.gacgroup.com/en or follow us on social.

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ScienceOra Demonstrates AI-Assisted Hydrogen-Production Catalyst Design Workflow at Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit

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The workflow spans literature analysis, candidate design, experimental planning and industrial decision support, extending AI4S into materials research

SHENZHEN, China, Oct. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Wenge AI demonstrated an AI-assisted hydrogen-production catalyst design workflow supported by ScienceOra at the 2026 Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit. The demonstration showed how AI for Science (AI4S) can connect literature analysis, catalyst candidate design, experimental planning and industrial decision support, helping materials researchers translate scientific evidence into actionable research plans.

ScienceOra is Wenge AI’s intelligent research decision platform, built on the ScienceOne Scientific Foundation Model. For specialist research tasks such as materials development, the platform brings together scientific models, professional literature, research data and tools to support information access, research-plan development and scientific decision-making.

From literature analysis to catalyst candidate design

The demonstration focused on the design of a high-entropy alloy catalyst for the alkaline hydrogen evolution reaction. To address the need for high activity and durability, ScienceOra searched professional literature and drew on published research methods and elemental properties to support the development of candidate designs. It also cross-checked optimization proposals against relevant literature, providing researchers with references that could be reviewed and verified.

Rather than simply generating material formulations, the workflow connects documentary evidence, materials knowledge and specific design objectives to support more targeted analysis of candidate solutions. Researchers remain responsible for assessing scientific validity and determining subsequent research directions.

From experimental planning to industrial decision support

For experimental planning, ScienceOra can assist in developing research protocols around candidate designs, helping researchers organize experimental variables and producing testing standard operating procedures (SOPs) and related reference information for subsequent validation.

For industrial applications, the platform can also support comparative analysis across dimensions such as the feasibility of scaled hydrogen production, performance at industrially relevant current densities, durability, raw-material availability and compatibility with mass-production synthesis processes. It can then assist in establishing decision priorities, screening criteria and process-improvement recommendations.

Candidate designs, experimental plans, process recommendations and references can be consolidated into a structured research report, helping R&D teams assess scientific evidence alongside engineering constraints. AI provides analytical and decision support, while experimental testing and scientific validation remain essential parts of materials research.

Previously disclosed collaboration reports design efficiency and activity improvements

In a previously disclosed industry–research collaboration on hydrogen-production catalyst design, ScienceOra supported literature analysis and research-plan development. The collaboration reported a 38% improvement in catalyst activity and reduced the design stage from several months to 30 minutes. The case illustrates the potential of domain-specific AI to connect scientific literature, research design and engineering requirements.

ScienceOra was recently made available on Tencent WorkBuddy, with an initial offering of more than 30 research expert agents and skills covering literature analysis, research hypotheses, plan design, modeling and simulation, validation analysis and research communication. The conference demonstration further illustrated how ScienceOra can be applied to specialist materials research, as AI4S moves beyond general information processing toward support for research workflows and industrial R&D decision-making.

For more information, visit https://www.scienceone.ai/portal/.

About Wenge AI

Wenge AI (1956.HK) is a provider of artificial intelligence technology and service platform products for enterprises. With self-developed large models as its core, the company helps enterprises build practical intelligent platforms and applications. Founded by a team of AI scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wenge AI has deep technological expertise in large models, cognitive intelligence and complex-system modeling, and is committed to advancing AI from technological capabilities to enterprise-level applications.

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Cake Digital Bank Wins Gold at Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2026

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ROME, Oct. 31, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Cake Digital Bank, a digital-only bank from Vietnam, has won Gold at the Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards 2026 for its initiative, “Reinventing Financial Experiences Through an AI-First Banking Model.” Cake was the only financial institution from Vietnam recognized at this year’s awards.

The winners were celebrated in Rome, Italy, during Infosys Finacle Conclave 2026. The 13th edition of the awards attracted 538 submissions from 206 financial institutions across 68 countries, with 37 institutions recognized across ten award categories. The selection process combined voting by industry peers with evaluation by an expert jury of 81 senior banking executives.

The award-winning institutions included leading international banking names such as Santander, Commonwealth Bank, DBS, Maybank, and CaixaBank, reflecting the global scope and competitive landscape of the awards.

John Berry, Chairman of Qorus, observed that the banking industry is entering a new era in which AI is becoming integral to innovation, transforming initiatives and expanding the possibilities of financial services.

Building an AI-First Banking Model from the Ground Up

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly central to banking innovation, financial institutions face a growing challenge: translating technological capabilities into better customer experiences, greater operational efficiency, and sustainable business performance.

Cake’s AI-first approach reflects this industry shift while taking a different starting point. Rather than integrating AI into established banking processes, Cake was built as a digital-only bank from the outset, embedding AI, data, and automation into its technology architecture, operating model, and customer journeys.

This greenfield foundation has enabled Cake to develop an integrated AI-first banking model, where technology supports how the bank makes decisions, manages operations, and delivers financial services at scale.

Supported by its independently developed core banking and card management systems, Cake applies AI across the banking value chain, from customer onboarding, credit assessment, and fraud prevention to risk management, customer service, and personalized financial recommendations.

Beyond operational efficiency, Cake has also invested in localized AI capabilities designed specifically for Vietnamese users, enabling more accessible, responsive, and personalized financial experiences.

Scaling Growth with Efficiency and Sustainable Business Performance

Nearly six years since its launch, Cake has grown to serve more than 8 million customers, demonstrating the scalability of its branchless digital banking model.

Cake achieved positive EBITDA in Q3 2024, just 3.5 years after launch, marking a significant milestone in demonstrating the viability of its digital-only banking model. The bank subsequently recorded 173% year-on-year revenue growth in 2025, followed by a further 121% growth in 2026, reflecting sustained business momentum as it continues to scale. Meanwhile, average revenue per user (ARPU) increased from USD 12 in 2024 to USD 44 in 2026, highlighting Cake’s ability to generate greater value from its growing customer base.

Beyond customer acquisition, Cake’s growth strategy increasingly focuses on deepening customer relationships and expanding the range of financial needs served through its platform and partner ecosystems. This approach reflects the bank’s evolution toward a mature digital banking model, where scale is complemented by stronger customer engagement, operational efficiency, and long-term business sustainability.

Nguyen Huu Quang, CEO of Cake Digital Bank, said:

“Winning Gold at the Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards is a meaningful international recognition of Cake’s AI-first banking model. From the beginning, our ambition has been to build a digital bank that combines technological innovation with sustainable business performance, while making financial services simpler, more accessible, and more relevant to customers. This recognition reinforces our commitment to delivering world-class banking experiences for Vietnamese users and continuing to advance our AI-first capabilities.”

The Gold Award marks another milestone in Cake’s development as a next-generation AI-first digital bank. It also demonstrates how a banking model developed and scaled in an emerging market can deliver meaningful customer and business outcomes, contributing practical perspectives to the global conversation on the future of digital banking.

In September 2026, Cake was also named “Vietnam’s Best Digital Bank” by Euromoney under its Group Level Banking Awards, further recognizing the bank’s progress in strategy, technology, and business performance.

About the Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards

The Qorus-Infosys Finacle Banking Innovation Awards are jointly organized by Qorus, a global association for retail financial institutions, and Infosys Finacle, a digital banking solutions provider. Now in their 13th edition, the awards recognize innovative initiatives and banking models that deliver meaningful impact across the global financial services industry.

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SOURCE Cake Digital Bank

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