AI Weekly Malaysia

WhyQ, a Malaysian food delivery startup, spent a decade pivoting from hawker-to-office delivery to residential delivery during COVID, and finally found a sustainable model in corporate dining. The article outlines how the company learned that scaling too fast burned cash, and a focused B2B approach now delivers better unit economics.

The new Malaysian passport offers a 10-year validity and enhanced security features, with phased rollout starting July 1 at 71 offices nationwide.

Google UK's Economic Impact Report argues that widespread AI adoption could boost UK productivity by over £400 billion by 2030, but requires a national push in skills training, especially for SMEs and public services. The report highlights practical tools like AI-powered assistants and free training programs to democratize access.

Malaysia has officially launched a redesigned international passport with enhanced security features, including a polycarbonate data page, laser-engraved personal details, and a new chip compliant with ICAO standards. The rollout begins for new applications and renewals starting July 1, 2026, with the previous version remaining valid until expiry.

Dbrand announced a Companion Cube mod for Valve's newly revealed Steam Machine but quickly retracted it, as the company failed to secure permission from Valve beforehand.

South Korea announced a massive US$576 billion investment plan with Samsung and SK Hynix to expand AI chip and semiconductor production, aiming to dominate the global AI hardware supply chain amid surging demand and ongoing memory shortages.

The Malaysian Ministry of Energy Transition and Water Transformation will launch the NUR@PETRA 2026 programme on 1 July, offering RM200 rebates on energy-efficient home appliances via an online portal.

WhatsApp is rolling out the ability for users to reserve unique usernames ahead of a full launch, allowing people and businesses to secure a custom identity on the platform.

WhatsApp is rolling out usernames later this year, and users can now reserve their preferred handle. This lets people chat without sharing phone numbers, improving privacy. Malaysian users and businesses should secure their usernames early to avoid losing desirable handles.

Simon Willison's HTML Table Extractor is a paste-conversion tool that extracts tables from copied rich text and converts them to HTML, Markdown, CSV, TSV, or JSON. It's particularly handy for quickly grabbing structured data from web pages like Wikipedia lists. A related update improves his Rich text to markdown tool with table support.

Chamath Palihapitiya raised a $135M Series A for his AI coding startup and stepped in as CEO, signaling continued heavy VC appetite for AI developer tools despite a crowded market.

Simon Willison shares a tiny AppleScript one-liner to count open Safari tabs across all windows: `osascript -e 'tell application "Safari" to count tabs of every window'`. It’s a quick terminal command for macOS users.

DiSCoFormer introduces a single transformer model that jointly learns both the probability density function and the score function (gradient of log-density) across multiple distributions. This unified approach enables tasks like sampling, density evaluation, and out-of-distribution detection without needing separate models.

Arena, the widely-used AI model leaderboard, has become a $100M business just months after launching commercial services. The platform helps developers and enterprises benchmark and compare AI models. Its rapid growth signals strong demand for AI evaluation tools.

Ornith-1.0 is a new open-weight coding model from DeepReinforce, built on Gemma 4 and Qwen 3.5, with sizes up to 397B parameters, achieving top open-source performance on coding benchmarks. It excels at agentic coding with multiple tool calls and runs locally via LM Studio, making it accessible for offline use. Early tests show strong code search and manipulation capabilities.

A Google AI expert explains the concept of a full-stack AI approach, covering integrated hardware and software layers from TPUs to developer tools. This deep integration optimizes performance, scalability, and efficiency for AI workloads.

This week's Lenny's Newsletter covers two main topics: a review of the GLM-5.2 open-source LLM from China, which is competitive with top models on coding and reasoning benchmarks, and a deep dive into how Gusto used Claude Code to rapidly build a new product line, highlighting practical AI agent workflows for engineering teams.

Omen AI raised a $31M Series A to build sensors and AI models that monitor liquid coolant quality in data centers, detecting bacterial growth and corrosion before they damage GPU clusters. The system targets the growing liquid-cooled infrastructure powering AI workloads.

Gusto CTO Eddie Kim shares how a 5-person team shipped a new AI product line in 10 weeks using Claude Code, a permanent Zoom call, and no Figma, Jira, or traditional docs. They relied on AI-generated code, rapid prototyping, and blurred engineering/product roles.

The Ministry of Digital has launched a national AI transformation initiative to accelerate AI adoption across Malaysia's public and private sectors, likely involving policy frameworks, infrastructure, and talent programs.

A leak claims the PlayStation 6 bill of materials has reached US$960, largely due to memory shortages, potentially forcing Sony to delay the console or price it significantly higher than previous generations.

Malaysia Airlines has increased fares by 20-30%, following industry trends. This may raise travel costs for tech professionals attending conferences and client meetings within Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

Lowyat.NET reviews the Razer Atlas Pro glass mousepad, praising its smooth surface and build quality but criticizing its high cost and a size limitation that may not suit all desk setups.

The RedMagic Gaming Tablet 5 Pro will launch globally as the Astra 2, confirming international availability beyond its initial China release. The rebranded tablet targets mobile gamers with high-refresh-rate display and flagship specs.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim will unveil Malaysia's redesigned international passport on 30 June at Parliament, featuring 94 security enhancements to combat counterfeiting and forgery. The update focuses on physical document security rather than direct tech infrastructure changes.