Zero2Launch Ventures @02Launch

Learn to say ‘No’, easy said than done. But since my awakening, I had learned to say more ‘No’ than ever. You don’t have to please the world, please those closest to u.

Thanks Steve! Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

His startup died in April 2022. Four months later, he started again, now his robot hand is one of Japan's most awarded. Meet Hiromichi Fujimoto, for 19 years he ran ATOUN, a Panasonic spin-off building powered suits, COVID killed it! August 2022, he founded Thinker (thinker-robotics.co.jp), built on 10+ years of research at Osaka University, first product shipped within a year. Today I saw it up close at Global Startup Expo 2026 in Osaka. Thinker just showed Think Hand proto-2 doing the step line workers still own, mating a wire-harness connector. The hand uses what they call groping connecting, proprietary contact sensing, compliant joints, and edge AI, to find the socket by touch, correct misalignment, and seat the plug. In the clip, the arm takes a loose harness on a perforated fixture, probes the left bracket, pushes the connector home, and retracts. The harness stays mated, that is the difference between moving a part and closing a connection. Everyone's obsessed with AI that talks, the next wave is AI that touches. Chatbots read the world, robots have to handle it. And Thinker wasn't alone. 5 booths. 2 hours. One pattern. → FLOSFIA: gallium oxide power chips. ~700 patents filed. → QuEL: control systems inside Japan's fully domestic quantum computer. → EX-Fusion: laser fusion, built on 50 years of Osaka University research and they had successfully raised over $40 millions. → RegeNephro: kidney therapy from iPS cells, phase 2a trial complete. None of these started with a pitch deck, they started with decades in a lab. My takeaway: Silicon Valley optimizes for speed, Osaka / Kansai optimizes for depth. In deep tech, depth wins. And right now, it's still priced like nobody's watching. Thank you, Osaka Prefecture - Business and Investment, for opening these doors.

Osaka has been doing biotech since 1678. Investors are only now noticing! In 1678, a medicine merchant opened a shop on one street in Osaka. That shop became Tanabe Pharma. And that street, Doshomachi, still hosts 300+ pharmaceutical companies. 348 years later, I walked into Tanabe Pharma Museum… and to witness the same business signage dated back to 1678 still proudly featured at the main entrance. This museum showcases the wisdom and future of Japan's pharmaceutical industry, nurtured in Doshomachi, alongside Tanabe Pharma's 348-year history. The company was founded in 1678 when Tanabeya Gohei I opened a store south of Tanabeyabashi (now Joanbashi) in Tosahori, Osaka, manufacturing and selling the compound drug "Tanabeya Shiridashiyaku." For over 300 years since, the company has contributed to the health of people around the world through the creation of pharmaceuticals. The Museum, which you can visit if you are in Osaka, brings together historical materials that document the company's corporate activities, which have always been ahead of the times and provided useful new drugs to society. Then a short ride away to Nakanoshima Qross. 16 floors. Hospitals, corporates, startups and investors all under one roof. Even Japan's drug regulator, PMDA, runs its Kansai branch from inside the building, that's the part most investors miss. In biotech, the bottleneck isn't the science, it's the 10 to 15 years between lab and patient. Osaka is shrinking that gap physically. Lab. Clinic. Regulator. Capital. Same address. Visited and talked to several young and innovative biotech startup founders at O-Nexus innovation campus operated by Nippon Life and CIC (Cambridge Innovation Center), and found lots of investment potentials here, a must presence for investors in the Life Sciences and biotech. Quoting CIC’s D'Arcy Butler: “Osaka’s innovation in Life Science has massive opportunity”. My takeaway… most capital chases innovation where it's loud and noisy… Tokyo. Singapore. Silicon Valley. The real edge is where it's quiet and compounding. Osaka has been compounding medicine for 348 years, now it's building what comes next. Global Startup Expo opens today, tomorrow: deep tech. Thank you, Osaka Prefecture, Business and Investment for hosting and providing me the insights and opportunities into Osaka’s Life Science and biotech innovation landscape.

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Nvidia keeps $55.60 of every $100 it sells, Glencore keeps 10 cents. Same planet, same economy, 556x difference! Look at the top 5 on this list. Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Apple, all tech, all keeping $27–$56 per $100. Now look at the bottom. Walmart: $3.10. Costco: $2.90. CVS: $0.40. Massive revenue, almost nothing left. The lesson wasn't "be big”, it was: own the bottleneck. Nvidia doesn't win because it sells the most, it wins because everyone building AI has to go through it. Scarcity sets the margin. Retailers move goods, tech companies own the choke point. That's why $120B in profit comes from Nvidia, while Walmart's scale yields $22B. The AI economy is repricing everything, every industry is being sorted into two groups: Those who own the scarce layer. And those who pay rent to it.

This is how you can beat Inflation, something they don’t teach you in school!

They couldn’t make the chip smaller. So they tried to make it smarter. @Huawei’s Mate 90 series is here, and the story worth caring about sits under the hood. The flagship silicon is the Kirin 9050 Pro. Other models use Kirin 9035 or Kirin 9030. Together they make up the Tau chipset: not a nickname for one part, but a family built around a new way of moving work through the phone. For years the industry sold one idea. Make the transistors smaller, and the phone gets faster. Huawei could not stay on that factory path, so it redesigned the traffic inside the chip. Fewer bottlenecks, shorter waits. In your hand that should mean apps that open without the little stall, photo albums that keep sliding when the roll is huge, and more of the clever stuff, call translation, on-screen help, photo edits, happening on the phone instead of waiting on a cloud. The feature that I found most impressive is the screen. On the brighter models, the second-generation Linglong display stays readable in hard sunlight, the kind of noon glare that usually turns a phone into a black mirror. You should not have to cup your hand over it just to read a message. I wrote about Tau earlier this year, and I still think this is the interesting bet. Most phone launches are a slightly faster version of last year’s idea. This one is an argument, if the smallest factory is closed to you, redesign the road. That is a harder claim than another spec, and it is the one I have been watching. The Tau chipset’s speed is real. The proof is not the keynote, it is whether the phone still feels instant after a long day.

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AI agents + tokenization are the next real investment lane, not more model hype. In this 3.0 TV (@reallive3tv) conversation, I laid out where the value is actually moving: The frontier-model race is no longer the whole game. Closed US models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Grok) still matter for deep reasoning. Open-source (China + US players like Nvidia Nemotron) matters for on-prem, privacy-sensitive work. Expect a hybrid stack, roughly 80/20 closed/open — closer to iOS vs Android than a winner-take-all war. Geography is complementary, not a death match: •US + China: R&D •China: physical AI and manufacturing •India: deployment, integration, services •SEA: high-adoption test lab at scale AI agents are not “replace the team tomorrow.” Phase one is replacing the repetitive work one person already hates, email, calendar, monitoring, first-pass research. One operator running 10–50 agents can already absorb a team’s grunt work. Crypto traders already have usable versions sitting on Coinbase and Binance. Intelligence is now cheap, judgement is not. Every VC has the same research tools. The edge is still founder quality, timing, and the call no model will own for a while. Where I’d put capital in 2026: •AI agents and AI infrastructure •Stablecoins as programmable money (AI that can act still needs money that can execute) •Tokenization / RWA — the compliance layer that takes Web3 out of the wild-west phase Watch the full conversation: youtu.be/7thD8eBi_HY Thanks 3.0 TV (3verseTV) for the invite to the show, and I look forward to the next one!

The most important thing happening in AI may not be that intelligence is getting smarter, it’s getting cheaper and dramatically cheaper. And when intelligence becomes abundant, the competitive advantage shifts. It’s no longer “Who has access to AI?” Almost everyone will, the real question becomes: Who knows how to apply it best? The next wave of productivity won’t come from simply using ChatGPT or Claude, it will come from redesigning how we think, work, decide and execute around AI. AI is becoming a commodity, AI leverage is not. That’s where the real 10X opportunity lies, AI that actually works for you → 10xme.biz⁠

There was one moment from Huawei’s launch of the tri-fold phone that made me smile… Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer BG, spoke in Chinese throughout the keynote, but when it came to the Kirin 9050 Pro, he switched to English. “Kirin 9050 Pro. Super fast, super intelligent, super cool!” It was just one sentence, but it carried a lot of confidence and honestly, I like these little moments at tech launches because when a company has something genuinely exciting to show, you don’t always need a complicated explanation. Sometimes, you just say it and let the technology do the talking. 🚀

I’ve been following the evolution of foldables for a while, and what I find interesting is that the category is finally moving beyond the question of “How many screens can we fit into a phone?” The new HUAWEI Mate XT 2 ULTIMATE DESIGN caught my attention for a different reason, Huawei seems to be asking what a foldable phone should actually feel like in everyday life. The feature that stood out most to me is the new folding architecture. Instead of simply improving the previous design, Huawei has changed the way the device folds altogether. The two sides fold inward, fully enclosing the flexible display, while an independent outer screen lets you use the phone normally when it’s closed. That feels like a meaningful design decision to me. A foldable is only truly useful if you don’t have to think about the folding mechanism every time you use it. For calls, messages or quick tasks, it behaves like a phone. When you need more space, you open it up and suddenly have a much larger canvas. The other feature I found genuinely interesting is Lingdun Privacy Display. With increasingly work from our phones, emails, financial information, business documents, conversations. The idea of having hardware-level privacy that can help shield the screen from people looking from the side feels surprisingly practical. And perhaps that’s what I like most about this generation. The impressive part isn’t simply that it looks futuristic, it’s that some of the engineering appears to be focused on solving very ordinary problems: How do I use a large screen without carrying a tablet? How do I protect what I’m looking at in public? How do I make a sophisticated device feel natural? That, to me, is where technology becomes interesting when innovation stops being about showing what’s possible and starts making everyday life a little easier.

@alvinfoo @NewInAsia Wow… keep it up Alvin! We are proud of you!

What an incredible first Ultra Web3 Festival in Kuala Lumpur, this is my first event which I had co-founded and organized since returning to Malaysia having been away for 20+ years in China. 
Learned so much about AI + Web3 from the speakers and got to network with so many great delegates. Already looking forward to the next Ultra events! 🔥 I want to thank Lawrence and Kevin, my 2 other co-founders for inviting me to the team, they are both instrumental in making Ultra Web a reality.

Ultra Web3 Festival @UltraWeb3Fest

2 months ago

5,000+ attendees across main and side events. 120+ speakers from 20+ countries lit up Web3's main stage. Enjoy the #UltraWeb3Festival Aftermovie All eyes on the next chapter: Web3. TradFi. AI. The convergence continues.

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AI is coming for developers. But probably not in the way you think. The biggest threat isn’t that AI will write better code. It’s that companies will need far fewer people whose primary job is writing code. That changes everything. The developers who thrive won’t necessarily be the ones who can code the fastest. They’ll be the ones who can think better, architect better, ask better questions, understand the business, and orchestrate AI to build what matters. The job isn’t disappearing. The job is being radically redefined. I recently shared my thoughts on this in an interview with TechTalents Insights by Jobshark, on the future of software development and what AI means for developers. 👉 The uncomfortable question isn’t “Will AI replace developers?” It’s: “If AI can do 80% of what you do today, what will you do with the other 20%?” Read the interview: news.jobshark.eu/leadership/wil…

Even cold wallets can get wrecked!! This COLDCARD seed-entropy disaster is the brutal reminder: air-gaps, secure elements, and “don’t trust, verify” still failed thousands of the most careful holders because of a 2021 build flaw that turned their supposedly random seeds into something an attacker could just regenerate and sweep. Nearly 1,400 BTC gone. People who did everything right, hardware only, offline, no seed phrases ever typed online, still got cleaned out in minutes. The crypto industry keeps proving it: the real threat isn’t always some phishing scammer. Sometimes it’s the very tools we trust the most that contain the fatal bug. Careful people are the ones paying the price right now. And AI is making it worse. Scammers now use it to craft perfect deepfakes, hyper-personalized phishing, and faster vulnerability hunting, lowering the barrier for sophisticated attacks while flooding the space with more convincing fakes. Everyone needs to stay sharp on both the pros (better threat detection, smarter wallets) and the serious cons of AI in crypto. Protect what you can: - Split holdings across several independent wallets / devices (never one single seed) - Use multisig where practical - Diversify hardware brands and keep most funds truly cold - Stay on top of device-specific security advisories and firmware notices Security is never absolute. Not even on a Coldcard.

International Cyber Digest @IntCyberDigest

3 months ago

‼️ The COLDCARD theft is still ongoing: A third wave has just started, taking estimated losses to nearly 1,400 BTC.

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Exclusive for my followers: If you’re in Kuala Lumpur on 30–31 July, don’t miss Ultra Web3 Fest 2026, one of the region’s largest gatherings dedicated to AI & Web3. As a co-organizer, I’m inviting my community to join two days of world-class keynotes, thought-provoking discussions, live demos, and networking with global and local leaders shaping the future of technology. 🎟 Claim your FREE ticket with my exclusive code: ALVINFOO 👉 Register now: buff.ly/bJUVcUI 🌐 Event details: buff.ly/Saoe1Ga ⚠️ Free ticket redemptions are limited. Once they’re gone, they’re gone. Register now before the allocation runs out. Whether you’re an executive, founder, investor, developer, or simply curious about where AI and Web3 are headed, this is your opportunity to learn, connect, and stay ahead of the curve. If you’re coming, comment “SEE YOU” below or send me a DM. I’d love to meet you in person. The future won’t wait. Neither should you. See you at Ultra Web3 Fest 2026. 🚀

Huawei Built a European Palace for 35,000 Researchers, Then Spent $28 Billion on R&D in a Single Year I walked into what looked like a European palace. Marble floors. Crystal chandeliers. Gilded railings. Classical statues. Vaulted ceilings that belong in a ministry building in Vienna or Paris. Then the giant screen lit up with the Huawei logo. This is not a government building.
This is Huawei’s Shanghai research campus. A self-contained research city with lakes, landscaped grounds, modern laboratory blocks, elevated walkways, and its own internal light-rail system. Designed for 35,000 researchers. Current density is already extreme: roughly 80% hold a master’s degree or higher. About 10% are PhDs. Throw a stone and you hit advanced technical talent. In 2025, Huawei generated CNY 880.9 billion in revenue. 
It spent CNY 192.3 billion on R&D, 21.8% of total revenue, roughly US$27.9 billion. That single-year R&D outlay exceeds the entire GDP of multiple countries with larger populations. 
Total employees: ~213,000.
R&D headcount: 114,000 (53.7% of the workforce). Most companies and most nations still treat research as a residual. Huawei treats it as the core operating expense. The result is not just beautiful architecture. It is sustained technological capacity under pressure. This is the case study that matters. Resource allocation at this intensity, sustained for more than a decade, produces outcomes that incremental budgets and short-term political cycles cannot match. Have you visited a corporate campus that genuinely changed how you think about what’s possible? Video produced and edited by Arianne, my beloved daughter 😍

Just returned from WAIC 2026 in Shanghai. One thing became crystal clear. Most people in the West are looking at the AI race through the wrong lens. They see: • OpenAI vs DeepSeek • Nvidia vs Huawei • US vs China That’s not what I saw. China isn’t trying to win the chatbot race. It’s trying to build the world’s largest AI-powered economy. That changes everything. Some observations from the ground: → AI is moving beyond demos into real industrial deployment. Factories, logistics, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, education and government dominated the conversation, not consumer chatbots. → Compute sovereignty is no longer optional. China is investing across the entire AI stack, chips, networking, cloud infrastructure and software optimization, not simply because it’s faster, but because strategic independence matters. → Robotics has crossed an important threshold. This year’s focus wasn’t robots dancing. It was robots working. Factories. Warehouses. Hotels. Industrial inspection. Real production environments. Deployment matters more than demonstrations. → The ecosystem is much broader than many realise. Everyone knows DeepSeek. But also watch: • Qwen • Kimi • GLM • MiniMax • Baichuan China now has multiple world-class AI companies competing aggressively across different layers of the stack. Competition creates speed. → China also wants to influence AI governance. Technology is only part of the strategy. Standards. Rules. International collaboration. Countries that help shape global AI governance may influence AI adoption just as much as those building frontier models. My biggest takeaway? The AI race is no longer just about building smarter models. It’s about building better infrastructure. Better deployment. Better ecosystems. And ultimately… A larger AI-powered economy. The companies that create the most economic value, not necessarily the highest benchmark scores, will define the next decade. That’s the signal I believe many people outside China are still underestimating.