Julian Lim

Julian Lim is an entrepreneur, technology writer, and a researcher. He started JL Data Analysis after graduating from NUS in Intelligent Systems. Julian writes about technology innovations and entrepreneurship on Business Times, Asia Pacific Magazine and occasionally contributes to Startup Fortune.

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Julian Lim · Jun 16, 2026 · 11:58 AM

An Atlantic investigation just blew open the AI music industry's data provenance problem

The Atlantic's investigation has identified four databases holding tens of millions of copyrighted songs, including tracks from Taylor Swift and the Beatles, used to train AI music generators. With Google and Stability AI linked to at least one dataset, and Sony's fair-use cases against Suno and Udio heading toward a pivotal summer ruling, the music industry's data provenance reckoning is now documented and undeniable. For startups and investors building on AI music tools, liability is no longer

Julian Lim · Jun 16, 2026 · 7:32 AM

GitHub had to call Amazon for help because its own infrastructure could not keep up with AI

Microsoft turned to Amazon Web Services to handle capacity overflow at GitHub after AI-driven coding demand shattered every infrastructure forecast the company had made, forcing a shift from a planned 10x expansion to a 30x rearchitecture in four months. GitHub commits hit 1.4 billion per month, Copilot error rates peaked at 21%, and the platform still needed to call in a competitor to stay online. The episode exposes the real gap between Azure's available capacity and AWS's infrastructure scale

Julian Lim · Jun 16, 2026 · 4:25 AM

Stripe is quietly building the infrastructure that makes stablecoins unavoidable for global commerce

Stripe is expanding stablecoin payments to over 160 countries, partnering with Shopify to bring USDC settlement to millions of merchants, and reportedly joining Visa and Mastercard in a joint stablecoin platform. With $9 trillion in stablecoin payment volume processed in the past year, the infrastructure race has moved well beyond pilots.

Julian Lim · Jun 16, 2026 · 2:35 AM

Fox Is Buying Roku for $22 Billion Because the Home Screen Is Now Television

Fox Corporation announced on June 15 a $22 billion deal to acquire Roku at $160 per share in cash and stock, creating a combined entity that will be the third-largest U.S. television player by share of viewing. The acquisition pairs Fox's live sports, Fox News, and Tubi with Roku's 100 million global households and its OneView advertising platform, targeting the projected $60 billion U.S. CTV ad market by 2030. With close expected in the first half of 2027, the deal reshapes the platform OS wars

Julian Lim · Jun 15, 2026 · 3:10 PM

Enflame's STAR Market IPO puts Tencent's chip strategy on public trial

Enflame Technology is seeking $830 million in a STAR Market IPO that exposes China's most technically credible Nvidia alternative to public scrutiny. The company's revenue grew eightfold in two years, but Tencent accounts for 71.84% of it and cumulative losses have reached RMB 4.29 billion. The listing is a bet on China's AI chip ambition and a single mega-client holding firm.

Julian Lim · Jun 15, 2026 · 9:28 AM

US chip curbs didn't slow ByteDance, they built China a homegrown GPU industry

Reuters reported on June 15 that ByteDance is in talks to buy at least 50,000 chips from Shanghai-based Iluvatar CoreX, adding a potential third domestic GPU supplier as Doubao's inference demands have grown twelve-fold in eighteen months. The deal would be a commercial milestone for China's domestic chip sector, which has matured rapidly under the pressure of US export controls. ByteDance isn't waiting for Washington to resolve its chip access problem. It's solving it itself.

Julian Lim · Jun 14, 2026 · 6:05 PM

Google is turning Gemini Omni into a video editing test for AI

Google's Gemini Omni brings conversational video editing into Flow, Flow Music, Gemini and YouTube Shorts. The real test is whether Google can make AI video useful without making authorship and trust harder to see.

Julian Lim · Jun 14, 2026 · 12:43 PM

SEBI is preparing to make AI part of market regulation

SEBI chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey says India’s market regulator is preparing guidelines for responsible AI use across capital markets. The move could shape how brokers, exchanges, fintechs, and AI vendors handle governance, accountability, and investor protection as automated systems move deeper into finance.

Julian Lim · Jun 14, 2026 · 6:35 AM

The Trump meme coin has turned losses into a family revenue machine

Reuters estimates that $TRUMP generated about $616 million for the Trump family and affiliated entities while buyers lost more than $700 million. The coin's 97% fall from its January 2025 peak shows how political memecoins can keep producing insider revenue long after retail momentum fades.

Julian Lim · Jun 13, 2026 · 10:09 PM

Washington is buying its way into the quantum race

The Commerce Department’s roughly $2 billion quantum package shows Washington treating quantum computing like chips and critical minerals. The move could strengthen domestic supply chains, but it also puts taxpayers into a speculative market before the technology is commercially proven.

Julian Lim · Jun 13, 2026 · 4:47 PM

China puts financial data closer to the center of state control

China has issued financial services data guidelines as part of a broader cybersecurity push, according to Reuters. The move raises the compliance bar for banks, insurers, fintechs, cloud vendors, and AI providers handling financial data in China.

Julian Lim · Jun 13, 2026 · 7:34 AM

Partners Group says its evergreen gates will not get tighter

Partners Group says it has no plans to add new liquidity curbs to its evergreen funds after redemption limits unsettled investors. The episode shows how private wealth demand for semi-liquid private equity is colliding with the reality of illiquid assets.

Julian Lim · Jun 13, 2026 · 1:27 AM

Zimbabwe is turning crypto regulation into a test of monetary trust

Zimbabwe is moving to regulate cryptocurrency as it tries to rebuild monetary credibility after the launch of the gold-backed ZiG. The real test is whether licensing can pull crypto and stablecoin activity into supervised channels without simply extending foreign-exchange controls into a new market.

Julian Lim · Jun 12, 2026 · 11:20 PM

New research finds AI data center water fears are outrunning the actual science

Opposition groups blocked $130 billion in U.S. data center projects in Q1 2026, with water cited in more than 40 percent of contested cases. But a peer-reviewed analysis published in AGU Advances and related research show data centers account for a small fraction of national water use, putting the broad moratorium argument on weak scientific ground. The real fight is playing out at the watershed level, and hyperscalers that fail to publish facility-level disclosure are losing it by default.

Julian Lim · Jun 12, 2026 · 7:41 PM

MetaX seeks a Hong Kong listing after shocking Shanghai with a 700 percent debut

MetaX Integrated Circuits, the Shanghai GPU maker founded by former AMD engineers, is pursuing a Hong Kong H-share listing six months after its Star Market debut surged nearly 700 percent and pushed its valuation to $42 billion. The proposed offering of up to 5 percent of enlarged share capital, subject to a June 29 shareholder vote, will put MetaX's loss-making but fast-growing financials in front of international institutional investors for the first time.

Julian Lim · Jun 12, 2026 · 4:05 PM

Lummis Presses Two Bitcoin Bills Before August and Warns That Failure Means 2030

Senator Cynthia Lummis is racing two distinct crypto bills to an August recess deadline, warning that failure pushes the next viable legislative window to 2030. The CLARITY Act cleared Senate Banking 15-9 in May and is four steps from law, while the BITCOIN Act would direct Treasury to accumulate one million Bitcoin over five years, with a structural blueprint expected from Treasury in July.