The official ceremony underscores Southeast Asia’s growing role in the global semiconductor value chain through collaboration, innovation and ecosystem-wide partnerships

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA – Media OutReach Newswire – 5 May 2026 – SEMICON Southeast Asia (SEMICON SEA) 2026 was officially launched today at the Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre (MITEC), bringing together policymakers, manufacturers, suppliers, researchers, investors and emerging talent from across the global semiconductor ecosystem for three days of industry dialogue, technology showcases and business engagement.

The opening ceremony was officiated by YB Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani, Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI), and attended by SEMI leadership, the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) led by the Chief Executive Officer Datuk Sikh Shamsul Ibrahim Sikh Abdul Majid, and senior executives from global semiconductor companies.

Held under the theme ‘Transform Tomorrow’ in strategic partnership with MITI and MIDA, SEMICON Southeast Asia 2026 is expected to welcome more than 20,000 innovators, policymakers and technology experts. The three-day event focuses on key industry priorities including manufacturing scale-up, advanced packaging, intelligent manufacturing and workforce development, as companies respond to demand driven by artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and advanced electronics.

Datuk Sikh Shamsul Ibrahim Sikh Abdul Majid, Chief Executive Officer of MIDA, said Malaysia is approaching the next phase of semiconductor growth as an active builder rather than a beneficiary of global trends.

“The semiconductor industry is at an inflection point, and Malaysia intends to be at the centre of what comes next. Under the MADANI Economy Framework and the New Industrial Master Plan 2030, we are not simply maintaining our position in the global semiconductor supply chain, we are deliberately reshaping it. The NIMP 2030 sets a clear direction for the E&E sector to move beyond assembly and test into design, advanced packaging and innovation-driven manufacturing, and MIDA is here to make that transition real. The RM28.5 billion secured by the E&E sector in 2025 is proof that global confidence in Malaysia has not wavered. What we are now building is the ecosystem to match that confidence, through supply chain integration, local capability development and the kind of high-value partnerships that platforms like SEMICON Southeast Asia are uniquely placed to catalyse,” said Datuk Sikh Shamsul Ibrahim.

“SEMI’s role has always been to bring together the global semiconductor ecosystem, and that responsibility becomes even more important as the industry grows in scale and complexity. Today, innovation is no longer confined to a single segment. It requires closer alignment across design, manufacturing, materials and supply chains. SEMICON Southeast Asia provides a platform to bridge these different parts of the ecosystem, enabling stakeholders to engage in more meaningful collaboration and move from discussion to execution,” said Ajit Manocha, President and CEO of SEMI.

“As demand continues to be driven by artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and advanced electronics, the ability to coordinate across regions and capabilities will be critical. SEMICON Southeast Asia 2026 is not only about showcasing technology, but about strengthening the partnerships needed to support long-term industry growth and resilience.”

The event features key leadership programmes including the Executive Leadership Summit, MIDA Strategic Semiconductor Forum and Seminar, Sustainability and Energy Summit, TechZoomers Challenge and TalentCONNECT, reflecting SEMICON Southeast Asia’s role not only as an exhibition platform, but as a convening point for leadership, capability and execution across the region’s semiconductor ecosystem.

Marking over a decade of strategic collaboration, MIDA and SEMI today reinforce 12 years of a transformative partnership dedicated to elevating Malaysia’s standing in the global semiconductor value chain. This enduring alliance remains anchored on three core pillars designed to future-proof the nation’s industrial landscape:

• Ecosystem Integration: Harmonising domestic and international supply chains to ensure seamless operational synergy.
• Enterprise Capability: Empowering local businesses to scale their technical expertise and compete on a global stage.
• Talent Advancement: Cultivating a high-skilled workforce as the essential bedrock of Malaysia’s long-term economic resilience and competitive edge.

SEMICON Southeast Asia 2026 runs from 5–7 May 2026 at MITEC, Kuala Lumpur, with participation from companies and organisations across Asia, the United States and Europe.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About MIDA

MIDA is the government’s principal investment promotion and development agency under the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry (MITI) to oversee and drive investments into the manufacturing and services sectors in Malaysia. Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur Sentral, MIDA has 12 regional and 20 overseas offices. MIDA partners with investors at every stage of their journey, supporting sustainable growth and long-term value creation for Malaysia. For more information, please visit www.mida.gov.my and follow MIDA on X, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube.

About SEMI

SEMI® is the global industry association connecting over 4,000-member companies and 1.5 million professionals worldwide across the semiconductor and electronics design and manufacturing supply chain. We accelerate member collaboration on solutions to top industry challenges through Advocacy, Workforce Development, Sustainability, Supply Chain Management and other programs. Our SEMICON® expositions and events, technology communities, standards and market intelligence help advance our members’ business growth and innovations in design, devices, equipment, materials, services and software, enabling smarter, faster, more secure electronics. Visit www.semi.org, contact a regional office, and connect with SEMI on LinkedIn and X to learn more.

Collaboration bridges gap between vulnerability discovery and real-world risk reduction

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 5 May 2026 – TrendAI™, the enterprise AI security leader from Trend Micro Incorporated (TYO: 4704; TSE: 4704), today announced a collaboration with Anthropic to support the expanded deployment of Claude Opus 4.7 for security research. Through this collaboration, organizations can reduce real-world risk faster: leveraging AI-accelerated threat intelligence to identify, prioritize, and mitigate exploitable vulnerabilities before they impact the business.

TrendAI™ is participating in Anthropic’s Cyber Verification Program, which provides credentials to engage in the defensive use of frontier AI models.

Rachel Jin, Chief Platform and Business Officer, Head of TrendAI™: “AI is dramatically accelerating vulnerability discovery, but remediation timelines haven’t kept pace. Our collaboration with Anthropic ensures that organizations get the best vulnerability threat intelligence and the ability to reduce risk across their environments before attacks take place.”

TrendAI™ launched AESIR (AI-Enhanced Security, Intelligence, and Research), an AI-powered internal security research platform that combines machine-speed automation with human expert oversight, in 2025. AESIR uses Claude Opus 4.7 to reason like an attacker, determining what’s reachable, what’s controllable, and what’s exploitable across complex software ecosystems. At scale, this means autonomously discovering and proving real vulnerabilities. TrendAI Vision One™ builds on these insights by prioritizing, mapping attack paths, and enabling swift mitigation—including virtual patching—across hybrid environments.

TrendAI™ is operating at the intersection of the two most critical dynamics in cybersecurity today: the AI models driving the new threat landscape, and the AI-powered defenses needed to match them. AESIR has already uncovered and, with ZDI, collaborated on patching for critical CVEs across industry-leading AI platforms including NVIDIA, Tencent, agentic frameworks, and MCP tooling.. The TrendAI State of AI Security Report projects between 2,800 and 3,600 AI CVEs in 2026 alone; AESIR was built precisely to operate at that scale.

To learn more about how TrendAI™ is advancing AI-powered security, visit: https://www.trendmicro.com/en_hk/research/26/a/aesir.html

The collaboration between TrendAI™ and Anthropic pushes the industry forward by combining AI-driven code intelligence and real-world risk prioritization. The ability to determine which vulnerabilities pose real-world risk, prioritize them, and mitigate them before they are exploited has become critical. With TrendAI Vision One™, organizations can operationalize findings by determining asset exposure, identifying attack paths, and applying controls like virtual patching and exploit detection. This reduces risk quickly, even when code fixes require more time. This is crucial for production environments, where vulnerabilities are often discovered after deployment.

Hashtag: #trendmicro, #trendvisionone, #visionone, #aisecurity, #anthropic, #ClaudeOpus

https://www.trendaisecurity.com
TrendAI™, the global AI security leader and enterprise business unit of Trend Micro, empowers organizations with full AI visibility and consolidated security that inspires confidence, drives innovation, and eliminates risk. Trusted by the largest enterprises and governments across 185 countries, TrendAI™ secures the entire organization, from identities, to infrastructure, to data. Global Fortune 500 companies rely on TrendAI™ to cut risk and stop threats up to three months earlier, powered by world-leading threat and attack intelligence. AI Fearlessly.

About Anthropic

Anthropic is an AI safety and research company dedicated to building reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. Its Claude family of models, including Claude Opus 4.7, enables advanced capabilities across a wide range of applications, including code understanding and security analysis.

In today’s digital economy, trust has emerged as the most valuable asset, surpassing money as the key currency. The collaboration between BIK and Fair Score Africa unites a robust, well-established security infrastructure developed in Poland with the dynamic growth of African markets, where mobile payments and digital banking are rapidly becoming central to everyday financial transactions. This partnership is focused on the deployment of BIK’s proprietary Behavioural Verification Platform in seven leading African countries: South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Botswana, Ghana, Namibia and Zambia.

The collaborative initiative directly addresses the rapidly expanding issue of financial fraud in Africa’s fast-growing markets, which are home to a population exceeding 427 million. According to the Interpol report Africa Cyberthreat Assessment, published in June 2025, cybercrime now constitutes more than 30% of reported fraud cases in both West and East Africa. Between 2019 and 2025, the continent has suffered financial losses exceeding USD 3 billion as a result of identified cyber incidents.

Security measures relying solely on passwords, one-time SMS codes, and other traditional identity verification methods are no longer sufficient and fail to provide effective protection against increasingly sophisticated threats.

The BIK Behavioural Verification Platform (BVP) is an innovative response to the escalating challenge of digital fraud within the financial sector. Designed to proactively safeguard both individuals and institutions, the BVP leverages advanced behavioural analytics to identify each user’s unique patterns of interaction. By monitoring how customers engage with their devices during online and mobile banking sessions, the platform operates in real time to detect anomalies that may indicate fraudulent activity. This enables the prevention of unauthorized transactions and the submission of credit applications without customer consent, ensuring enhanced protection for all parties involved.

Using state-of-the-art Machine Learning algorithms, the platform continually updates each user’s behavioural profile, adapting dynamically to emerging threats. All data is processed in a context-free manner, strictly adhering to international privacy standards. The BIK Behavioural Verification Platform delivers robust security for end users and supports financial institutions in significantly reducing fraud-related losses across the entire ecosystem.

The BIK solution streamlines institutional anti-fraud operations while maintaining a seamless customer experience. Developed and proven in the Polish financial market, the BIK Behavioural Verification Platform is now emerging as a new standard for digital protection, combining effectiveness, user convenience, and resilience against modern cyber threats. Its adaptable nature enables deployment across international markets, setting a benchmark for security and operational excellence globally.

“Our collaboration with BIK directly responds to a pressing need across the African market, where we are witnessing a swift rise in financial crime, especially through mobile platforms. BIK’s behavioural verification technology offers a crucial enhancement to our security landscape-improving fraud detection without compromising the user experience. We believe this forms the basis for secure and sustainable growth across the region” – says Dr. Danny Zandamela, CEO of Fair Score Africa, and adds:

“We position the partnership with BIK as a long ‑ term commitment, the outcome of which is the ability to provide local financial institutions with a critical technology that protects against the evolving threat landscape across the African continent. In future, it may serve as an authentication layer for national citizen ‑ identification systems through integration with, for example, the Ghana Card or Nigeria’s NIN, which are the respective equivalents of the Polish national identity card” -adds Dr. Zandamela.

“At BIK, we are proud to be building one of the world’s most advanced anti-fraud ecosystems, renowned for its exceptional scope and technological sophistication. By expanding this digital shield to our partners’ markets in Africa, we are not simply sharing technology – we are exporting trust and confidence in the financial sector. By analyzing each customer’s distinctive behavioural patterns, our technology can safeguard their finances even in situations where login credentials have been compromised by cybercriminals. We are demonstrating that cutting-edge technology developed in Poland is fully scalable and ready to protect financial sector clients across continents” – says Mariusz Cholewa, PhD, CEO of BIK, President of ACCIS.

BIK – the only Credit Information Bureau in Poland, member of ACCIS, associating the largest group of credit registers in the world. BIK supports the security of financial institutions and their clients by providing a safe system for exchanging credit and economic information and innovative anti-fraud solutions. The sectoral solutions in BIK portfolio are: BIK Anti-Fraud Platform, Cyber Fraud Detection Platform, Behavioural Verification Platform, ESG BIK Platform. BIK collects and provides data on the credit history of individual customers and entrepreneurs from the entire credit market, as well as data from the area of non-bank loans. BIK possesses the highest competencies in market analysis and modern technologies. It combines the features of a modern technology company with the attributes of a public trust institution.

Fair Score Africa – the company is an innovative FinTech in credit repair, credit re-integration, alternative credit scoring and financial inclusion, developing mobile‑ and behavioural‑data‑driven risk assessment tools that enable the secure scaling of financial services across African markets. Fair Score’s Score Improvement Program is able to improve the credit risk profile of individual consumers through targeted interventions that improve the behaviour of consumers in the credit economy, making them more responsible participants of that arena. In this way, lenders are also able to engage these consumers through a redefined credit risk outlook in their assessments. The Score Improvement Program has recently been awarded as being the Best Credit Assessment Initiative – Africa for 2026 by The Digital Banker in Singapore.

Hashtag: #BIK

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.