BLUESCOPE’S ASEAN AWARD TO HONOUR REGIONAL EXCELLENCE IN STEEL ARCHITECTURE

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 15 (Bernama) -- NS BlueScope announced the 2024 BlueScope Steel Architectural Awards ASEAN is now open to projects harnessing the company’s steel in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Entrants are accepted in Residential, Commercial, Industrial and Institutional building sectors, while there is an additional category of ‘Long Lasting Beauty of COLORBOND’ which celebrates projects that have used BlueScope’s COLORBOND steel to weather all conditions to maintain their beauty and strength.

NS BlueScope Chief Executive, Connell Zhang said the company aimed to create and inspire smart solutions in steel, and its new awards programme is a great opportunity to showcase some of the very best architectural projects in this region.

“As well as setting industry benchmarks and promoting best practice, these awards are a great way to encourage knowledge sharing and support our vibrant ASEAN architect community.

“As the industry leader in premium coated and painted steel, BlueScope is in a unique position to support the architectural community in bringing their dream designs to life,” he said in a statement.

The 2024 BlueScope Steel Architectural Awards ASEAN are backed by several respected organisations, including The Association of Siamese Architects under Royal Patronage; Ikatan Arsitek Indonesia; the University of Architecture Ho Chi Minh City; the Australian Chamber of Commerce Singapore; and Malaysia’s ACG Media Group.

Award entries will be judged on their Design Excellence, Innovation and Sustainability, whereby judges will assess multiple areas of building design, from aesthetic merit to functionality and efficiency, among others.

Judging for the ASEAN Award winners takes place in October, with the winners announced in November.

-- BERNAMA

FreedomPay-Stripe Partnership To Facilitate Businesses Unify Commerce

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 11 (Bernama) -- FreedomPay, an innovative leader in Next Level Commerce technologies has partnered Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, to make it easier for enterprises to unify commerce.

According to FreedomPay, the partnership makes it possible for virtually any enterprise to use Stripe for online and in-person payments alongside their existing commerce tools.

“Many of the largest businesses in the world already use FreedomPay and they have been telling us they would love to see Stripe join our growing ecosystem of connectivity.

“We are excited that our merchants can now modernise their systems and grow their revenue with Stripe,” said FreedomPay President, Chris Kronenthal in a statement.

FreedomPay aggregates hundreds of different point of sale (POS) systems and dozens of payment devices and commerce integrations onto a single platform.

Meanwhile, Stripe helps businesses process payments online and in person; offers advanced fraud protection powered by machine learning; optimises authorisation requests for issuers to boost revenue; and maintains industry-leading reliability.

Together, FreedomPay and Stripe will provide enterprises with flexibility and modularity, the ability to add Stripe to an existing set of commerce tools, without requiring significant development resources.

With this partnership, enterprises including hotels, retailers, and food & beverage providers, can now take advantage of Stripe’s platform, including those that already use FreedomPay.

Furthermore, in one place, they will be able to manage payments, loyalty programmes, and customer analytics, among others.

-- BERNAMA

‘CHA CHAAN TENG’ DEBUT IN PARIS TO FURTHER CEMENTS HONG KONG AS ASIA’S ARTS AND CULTURE HUB

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 9 (Bernama) -- Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB) announced its presentation of a Hong Kong-style café, a “Cha Chaan Teng”, at Art Basel Paris from Oct 16 to 20 at the Grand Palais, inviting Hong Kong-based artist Trevor Yeung to illuminate the classic diner with his light artistry.

This marks the first activation in its pioneering three-year global partnership with the world class art fair, following the initial announcement in Basel this June, according to HKTB in a statement.

HKTB Executive Director, Dane Cheng said this collaboration underscores its commitment to promoting Hong Kong as the East-meets-West centre for international cultural exchange, and the art hub in Asia.

“By sharing the city’s unique character through this immersive experience at the inaugural edition of the three-year partnership at Grand Palais, we hope to inspire travellers to visit our city and discover its thriving creative community and rich cultural experiences,” he said.

HKTB will bring an authentic Cha Chaan Teng experience to Art Basel Paris, a dining format harking back to the 1950s known for its bustling ambiance and eclectic menus of comfort food merging Eastern and Western cultures.

This vibrant gathering space in the heart of Grand Palais will introduce international audiences to the city’s unique culture by showcasing diverse culinary flavours, artistic excellence, and dynamic social atmosphere.

Yeung has created a new artwork especially for the Cha Chaan Teng, which is his next instalment of a well-known series titled Chaotic Suns featuring chandelier-like illuminated artworks, last seen at the 24th Biennale of Sydney in 2024, where he uses the gradient of light to bring the classic Cha Chaan Teng to life.

The positioning of a Hong Kong-style café in the locality of Paris encapsulates Hong Kong’s intrinsic ‘East-meets-West’ culture, presenting a sensory journey to visitors by serving the city delicacies including pineapple buns, egg tarts, milk tea, and mango pudding.

The space will also feature classic design elements such as nostalgic colourful patterned floor tiles and cosy booths, as well as Hong Kong’s signature neon signage.

The collaboration between Art Basel and HKTB fortifies Hong Kong’s position as Asia’s arts and culture hub, hosting flagship art events such as Art Basel, the fair’s only destination in Asia.

-- BERNAMA

OPENGEAR’S ADVANCED SOLUTIONS UNTANGLE IT MANAGEMENT COMPLEXITY

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 9 (Bernama) -- Opengear, a Digi International company, has introduced two new advanced offerings that will simplify initial setup with zero-touch provisioning and ensure access to information technology (IT) infrastructure.

Opengear unveiled key enhancements for its Network Resilience Platform with the advanced solutions, namely Connected Resource Gateway (CRG) and Lighthouse Service Portal (LSP).

According to Opengear in a statement, the solutions dramatically reduce complexity and provide efficiency to IT organisations that are under vast pressure due to increasing demands to deliver results with fewer resources.

“Opengear is committed to delivering solutions that solve real-world challenges. Customers rely on Opengear's solution before their network is operational, when it is unavailable and for everyday IT operations.

“LSP provides zero-touch provisioning for Opengear appliances and CRG ensures immediate, reliable, and secure access to essential tasks when managing IT infrastructure,” said its Vice President of Product Management & Strategy, Douglas Wadkins.

Both CRG and LSP simplify the deployment process while providing ease of access, improved security, and simplified management when monitoring and managing IT infrastructure.

Available via the company’s Lighthouse software solution, CRG now enables IT professionals and networking tools to securely access connected IT resources through a web interface offering serial or Internet Protocol (IP)-based connectivity options.

Meanwhile, designed to simplify the deployment of data centre and edge site network infrastructure, LSP streamlines the provisioning of Opengear devices into the Lighthouse software.

Available through the Opengear customer portal and in conjunction with Lighthouse, LSP simplifies and secures the enrollment process, providing a smoother, more efficient starting point for IT management.

-- BERNAMA

H2O.AI AND SINGTEL DIGITAL INFRACO'S RE:AI FORGE PARTNERSHIP TO DELIVER GENERATIVE AI-AS-A-SERVICE

Brings together one of Asia’s leading digital infrastructure providers with the world’s leading Generative and Predictive AI to spur economic growth


HIGHLIGHTS:
 

• H2O.ai and Singtel Digital InfraCo’s RE:AI partner to bring sovereign AI for private, protected data.
• H2O.ai full stack AI software to be offered as a service on Singtel Digital InfraCo’s AI Cloud to reduce time to develop AI applications for public sector and commercial enterprise customers.
• The combined AI- and GPU-as-a-Service will offer customers a full stack cost-effective AI platform as a service bundled with powerful and state of the art GPU infrastructure from Singtel AI cloud, for Generative and Predictive AI to address a wide range of robust Document AI business use cases.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Oct 10 (Bernama-BUSINESS WIRE) -- H2O.ai, the leader in open-source Generative AI and the most accurate Predictive AI platform, today announced a strategic partnership with Singtel’s Digital InfraCo to bring Generative AI-as-a-Service (GenAIaaS) to organizations across APAC. This partnership brings together H2O.ai's best-in-class Generative and Predictive AI with Singtel AI cloud’s powerful and secure GPU infrastructure to deliver a sovereign GenAI platform for private and public sector organizations with strict data protection needs.

H2O.ai Generative AI software suite will be integrated with Singtel’s Paragon platform that powers Singtel AI Cloud, to enable customers to reduce time to develop and deploy AI use cases with optimal total cost of ownership (TCO). Customers can skip the complexity and risk of building their own RAG and benefit from a robust, built-in enterprise multimodal agentic RAG through Enterprise h2oGPTe offered as an AI service on Singtel’s AI cloud powered by Singtel Paragon platform.

Singtel, an existing customer of H2O.ai, is expanding to offer H2O.ai full stack AI service to be integrated with Singtel Paragon platform to offer an “AI as a service” offering on Singtel GPU cloud. The unified AI as a Service solution that bundles the needed GPU infrastructure will offer customers a cost-efficient full stack AI platform for Generative and Predictive AI to address a wide range of robust Document AI business use cases.

Every nation needs to be an AI nation. Public servants and ministries worldwide need their sovereign AI agencies to fulfill their missions with great outcomes. To address both local and continental needs, nations must find economical ways to take AI from pilots to production.

AI will transform the GDP of the world and every nation and community by amplifying the economic output of the population with AI agents. With the right AI infrastructure, nations of any size can leverage AI to create significant growth and transform their economies.

Public servants and all ministries worldwide need their own GPTs and sovereign AI to fulfill their missions with great outcomes and serve their people and communities.

Our partnership with RE:AI represents the future of Generative AI—purpose-led, SLMs on protected data, open source, secure, hybrid and ubiquitous on the edge at a fraction of the economic cost for training and inference.

“H2O.ai is home to the world’s best AI talent with more Kaggle Grandmasters than any company or continent. With our open source community, partnership ecosystem and unique mindset of co-creation with customers we are transforming large banks, telcos and public sector by leveraging their data, upskilling their people, and building custom GenAI and Predictive AI for solving problems and bettering life of citizens globally,” says Sri Ambati, Founder and CEO of H2O.ai.

“As organizations move toward AI-driven solutions, our partnership with H2O.ai ensures that they have access to state-of-the-art Generative AI solutions developed on RE:AI’s cloud platform. Together, we’re enabling businesses to innovate faster, enhance customer experiences, and optimize internal operations with the power of AI,” says Bill Chang, CEO of Singtel Digital InfraCo.

In addition to the SingtelGPT products, H2O.ai has developed the H2O Danube3 series of small language models (SLMs), specifically designed for on-device, offline use cases. Trained on 100 H100 GPUs using a proprietary dataset of 6 trillion tokens, Danube3-4B and 0.5B models outperform Apple’s OpenELM-3B and 0.5B instruct models in key benchmarks. These open-weight SLMs offer developers economical options for fine-tuning their own AI applications. H2O.ai plans to release a series of multimodal SLMs in the coming weeks to further expand its AI offerings.

This collaboration between H2O.ai and Digital InfraCo marks a major step forward in bringing secure, scalable Generative AI-as-a-Service to organizations across APAC while ensuring data sovereignty and compliance.

About H2O.ai

Founded in 2012, H2O.ai is at the forefront of the AI movement to democratize Generative AI. H2O.ai’s open-source Generative AI and Enterprise h2oGPT, combined with Document AI and the award-winning autoML Driverless AI, have transformed more than 20,000 global organizations and over half of the Fortune 500, including AT&T, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Chipotle, ADP, Workday, Progressive Insurance, and AES. H2O.ai’s AI for Good program supports nonprofit groups, foundations, and communities in advancing education, healthcare, and environmental conservation. With a vibrant community of 2 million data scientists worldwide, H2O.ai is on a mission to co-create AI applications that are valuable to all users.

H2O.ai has fundraised $256 million from investors including Commonwealth Bank, Nvidia, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Capital One, Nexus Ventures and New York Life.

View source version on businesswire.com: 
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241009327124/en/

Contact

Media
Betty Candel
VP Marketing
betty.candel@h2o.ai

Source : H2O.ai

Curia Makes Significant Strides In Net Zero Pledges

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 9 (Bernama) -- Curia announced its commitment to set near- and long-term company-wide greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions in line with science-based net zero with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

According to Curia in a statement, to achieve this goal, the company will be investing resources over the next two years to evaluate and develop GHG emission reduction targets for submission to and approval by the SBTi.

“Our targets are ambitious, but we recognise the urgency and importance of cutting emissions in the near-term. With facilities in the United States, Europe and Asia, our actions can have a significant effect on communities on a global scale.

“Environmental stewardship has long been a priority for Curia, and this pledge underscores our commitment to continuous improvement in reducing our environmental impact and bringing us closer to a more sustainable future,” said its chief executive officer, Philip Macnabb.

The net-zero commitment is another step forward for Curia’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) programme, a cross-functional team that advances the company’s environmental and social stewardship with sound corporate governance.

Its ESG programme links with the Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) management system, modelled after ISO 14001 and 45001, the global standards for environmental management systems and occupational health and safety management systems.

Curia’s EHS management system is grounded on eight key pillars that serve as the framework to deliver measurable improvements year-over-year, and sustainability is one key pillar within that framework that underlies the net-zero commitment.

With this commitment, Curia also joins the United Nations’ Race to Zero campaign, a global coalition of non-state actors working toward halving global emissions by 2030.

Curia is a contract research, development and manufacturing organisation, with over 30 years of experience, an integrated network of over 20 global sites and 3,500 employees partnering with biopharmaceutical customers to bring life-changing therapies to market.

-- BERNAMA

SINGAPORE RETAINS TOP SPOT FOR FINANCIAL INCLUSION GLOBALLY - RESEARCH

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 8 (Bernama) -- Singapore is once again the world’s most financially inclusive market for the third year in a row, among 41 markets analysed, as measured by Principal Financial Group's third edition of the Global Financial Inclusion Index.

With Hong Kong, South Korea, Switzerland, and Sweden following closely behind, the research ranks markets based on the support provided by employers, the government, and the financial system to foster financial inclusion.

It provides a comprehensive and comparative evaluation of financial inclusion on a global scale, ranking 41 markets on a relative basis in addition to an absolute score assigned at the global and regional levels.

Principal chairman and chief executive officer, Dan Houston in a statement said it has been a challenging year with inflation outpacing wage growth, interest rate hikes, and ongoing market uncertainty.

“As it became harder for businesses and households to access lending, we have seen how governments and the private sector have stepped up to help societies weather these economic conditions. This has led to levels of financial inclusion continuing to increase around the world,” he said.

Key findings from the research also unveiled that financial inclusion has improved globally for the second consecutive year, with all regions and subregions seeing improvements, especially in Latin America.

In addition, the Asia-Pacific region increased its number of top-performing markets with Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, and Australia all secured spots in the top 10 this year.

Furthermore, employers in young Asian economies have stepped up to help consumers and businesses weather local market economic challenges by supporting households through short-term periods of financial strain.

The research also stated that the United States’ financial inclusion score remains unchanged year over year, suggesting a show of resilience in the face of economic headwinds. However, the market now ranks outside the top five, falling from fourth to seventh.

Conducted by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) and Principal, the research ranks 41 markets on three pillars of financial inclusion, namely government, financial system, and employer support, using data points across public and survey-based sources.

-- BERNAMA