☕️ Good morning, friends,

Even Kim Jong Un has realized it: AI is the future. That’s why we’re excited to announce the launch of asiabits AI today. ✌🏻

Every Wednesday, you’ll get everything that matters on AI in Asia straight to your inbox — written with plenty of love and human intelligence.

To kick things off, we’re giving you our freshly baked AI report, The DeepSeek Shock, for which we analyzed and processed over 35,000 news stories from this year.

P.S. Indian interns at investment banks are now making up to 18k USD a month. To make sure you don’t miss opportunities like that in the future, we’ve launched the Career Bits section.

👉🏻 Today’s highlights: Head of Communications China at Lululemon and a trumpet teacher at the German School in Shanghai.

MARKETS

Highlights

Shanghai and Shenzhen took a short breather after hitting intraday record highs. Margin financing climbed to a record ¥2.4 trillion (≈ US$338 billion), fueling both gains and volatility. Investors are betting big on borrowed money. Analysts view the pullback as normal and remain optimistic in the medium term.

TOP BIT

💼 SoftBank cuts jobs, goes all in on AI 

SoftBank’s multibillion-dollar Vision Fund is undergoing a radical overhaul: about one-fifth of the workforce will be let go. Founder Masayoshi Son is shifting the group away from a traditional tech investment fund toward massive AI infrastructure projects in the U.S. and Asia.

The Details

⚔️ Samurai cut: About 20% of the current 282 jobs are set to go. Since the fund’s peak in 2020, headcount has already shrunk by …