STOCKHOLM, April 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Sinch (Sinch AB (publ)) (XSTO: SINCH), which is pioneering the way the world communicates through its Digital Customer Communications Cloud, has once again been named a Leader in the newly released Omdia Universe: CPaaS Platform Providers 2025 report.

This recognition underscores Sinch’s continued leadership as a global innovator in orchestrating intelligent, AI-powered customer interactions and conversational experiences. With strategic investments in advanced conversational AI, RCS messaging, and secure, trusted communications backed by robust fraud prevention, Sinch delivers unmatched performance, local regulatory expertise, and customer-centric support across 60+ countries. Sinch’s sustained excellence in strategy, market momentum, and execution empowers enterprises worldwide to orchestrate seamless, personalized digital experiences at scale.

Sinch’s leadership in RCS and AI-enabled conversational messaging was a standout in this year’s report, reflecting the company’s long-standing commitment to innovating the next generation of customer engagement. As more enterprises turn to mobile-first interactions, Sinch continues to lead the way in helping businesses deliver real-time, two-way conversations that keep customers engaged, informed, safe, and happy.

With a robust API-first architecture and unmatched global reach, Sinch orchestrates 900 billion interactions annually across messaging, voice, email, and conversational channels. 175,000 businesses around the world trust Sinch’s enterprise-grade infrastructure, intelligent orchestration, and conversational capabilities backed by AI to seamlessly connect and reliably automate personalized experiences at scale.

“We’re proud of being recognized by Omdia for our continued progress toward a leadership position in RCS and AI-enabled customer communications, “said Laurinda Pang, CEO of Sinch. “This recognition reinforces our commitment to providing a secure, trusted platform that helps enterprises confidently deliver personalized, automated conversations across every digital communications channel.”

Sinch stood out as a Leader in the CPaaS Universe, scoring well above average in 11 of the 12 evaluation categories, with its highest marks in innovation (95%), go-to-market strategy (91%), and non-functional requirements (91%).

As organizations future-proof their communications strategies, Sinch remains at the forefront of Digital Customer Communications innovation-advancing AI-powered solutions, expanding its conversational commerce capabilities, and delivering seamless, omnichannel experiences all across the globe.

For more information about Sinch and its industry-leading CPaaS solutions, visit www.sinch.com.

 For more information, please contact:

Janet Lennon, Director of Global PR & Communications
janet.lennon@sinch.com 

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

SINGAPORE, April 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Meituan, China’s leading technology-driven retail company, hosted the first-ever overseas ceremony of its renowned “Black Pearl Restaurant Guide” (the “Black Pearl”) at Marina Bay in Singapore on April 25. As it expands globally and embraces cutting-edge AI technologies, Meituan not only seeks to help users worldwide eat better and live better, but also to unlock new business opportunities for culinary brands across the globe.

As the first international food guide rooted in Chinese dining standards, the “Black Pearl” has served approximately 130 million users since its inception. This year, the Guide shines a spotlight on 55 overseas restaurants, marking the fifth consecutive year of growth in international listings. Tokyo leads the way with 30 restaurants, while Singapore and Bangkok each achieved record highs since the guide’s debut in 2018. Notably, two Singaporean restaurants earned the highest honor—the prestigious 3-Diamond rating this year.

Wei Wei, Vice President of Meituan and the company’s head of the in-store dining division, described the ceremony as a major milestone in the global expansion of Meituan’s ranking products. He highlighted the platform’s use of advanced AI technologies to streamline user decision-making. Moving forward, Meituan aims to integrate AI and expertly curated recommendations to seamlessly connect users with quality restaurants, hotels, and attractions, enabling efficient connections between consumers and premium businesses.

Over Half of Chinese Tourists Show Strong Preference for Fine Dining When Travelling Abroad; Southeast Asia’s “Black Pearl” Listings Hit a Record High

In recent years, Chinese tourists have demonstrated a rising preference for premium dining experiences while travelling abroad. According to Meituan data, more than half of Chinese tourists opted for fine dining experiences during cross-border journeys in 2024. During the 2025 Spring Festival holiday, over 85% of Chinese domestic users browsed or searched for information on overseas Black Pearl restaurants ahead of their travels.

Chinese tourists’ growing appetite for elevated dining experiences highlights the increasing importance of the Black Pearl Restaurant Guide as a trusted reference for cross-border culinary exploration. For instance, daily average online visits to Bangkok’s Black Pearl listings surged by 27% week-on-week in the lead-up to the May Day holiday.

Southeast Asian restaurants featured in the Black Pearl have flourished amid rising demand. Le Du, a celebrated modern Thai fine dining establishment, has proudly retained its 1-Diamond rating in the Black Pearl Guide for two consecutive years. Chef Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn shared that Chinese guests now make up 20% of the restaurant’s clientele, with this figure continuing to grow. Similarly, Potong, a Thai-Chinese fusion restaurant nestled in the heart of Bangkok’s Chinatown, earned its first 1-Diamond rating this year. Chef and founder Pichaya “Pam” Soontornyanakij described the accolade as a significant milestone for cross-cultural cuisine and shared her excitement for welcoming more Chinese diners to experience Potong’s unique offerings.

A Powerful Catalyst for Global Culinary and Cultural Exchange

The Black Pearl has evolved beyond a ranking system into a platform for fostering global culinary and cultural exchange. Its annual “Food Vision Summit”—a global culinary exchange platform held every summer—aims to promote collaboration and dialogue between Chinese and international chefs. Chef Ton described the summit as a window into China’s increasingly globalized and open-minded culinary market, where innovative techniques are warmly embraced. “Chinese cuisine is one of the world’s finest, yet globally, awareness of high-end, refined Chinese restaurants remains limited. However, I believe this is changing,” he remarked.

Les Amis, one of Singapore’s most established French fine dining restaurants, has been awarded 3-Diamond rating in the 2025 Black Pearl Restaurant Guide. “Over the years, we’ve grown to really respect the guide — not just for its credibility, but for the cultural perspective it brings to the dining world. We love that it continues to grow its reach and push culinary standards, not just in China, but globally. It’s also given us new ideas in how we run things — like hiring team members who speak Chinese.” shared Chef Sébastien Lepinoy.

Data-Driven Insights and Culinary Expertise Propel the Black Pearl’s Global Ascent

The Black Pearl Restaurant Guide follows a rigorous selection process that combines expert evaluations, anonymous visits by judges, and big data from Meituan and Dianping to ensure fairness and accuracy. Over 77% of the judging panel is made up of gourmand enthusiasts, with annual rotations to maintain fresh perspectives. Looking ahead, the guide plans to integrate AI technology with committee nominations, blending human expertise with intelligent systems to make the discovery of exceptional restaurants around the world even more effortless.

After 15 years of remarkable growth, Meituan today connects merchants across over 170 countries and nearly 1,000 cities worldwide, offering a comprehensive ranking system spanning food, hotel, transportation, and travel. Wei Wei emphasized that as Meituan continues to expand its global footprint and as more Chinese culinary brands earn growing recognition among international audiences, the company’s ranking products are gaining increasing prestige in new markets. This growing momentum underscores Meituan’s broader vision to bridge global food cultures through innovation and champion the digital transformation of the dining industry, both within China and across the world.

To explore more international restaurants featured in the Black Pearl Restaurant Guide 2025, please click the link below to view the full list: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jE9VapAvuM_loFkxgR_FHO6FWd5GJzY7/view?usp=sharing

About Meituan

Meituan (HKG: 3690) is a leading technology-driven retail company in China. With the mission of “We help people eat better, live better,” the Company uses technology to connect consumers and merchants. Service offerings on its platform address people’s daily needs for food and retail goods and extend further to broad lifestyle and travel services. Meituan is the world’s leading on-demand food delivery service provider and China’s leading e-commerce platform for in-store dining services. Meituan helps consumers discover merchant information, make informed decisions, complete online and offline transactions and enjoy on-demand delivery.

About Black Pearl Restaurant Guide

The Black Pearl Restaurant Guide is a prestigious dining guide selected by food enthusiasts, culinary experts, and gastronomy researchers. Anonymous judges evaluate based on culinary presentation，service and environment, and heritage and innovation. Restaurants are ranked into three diamond levels, with three diamonds being the highest. The guide celebrates exquisite cuisine through the “Chinese palate,” reflecting Meituan’s mission: “We help people eat better, live better.”

Introduction: An Integrated Solution to Address Challenges in Digital Transformation

SHENZHEN, China, April 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — In the era where LLM driven intelligence prevails, enterprise data platforms face emerging challenges from LLM application and AI development. To name a few, efficiency loss owing to segmented AI/Data development process, data governance for heterogeneous data, traditional architecture that struggles to meet the needs for real-time data and rapid AI integration. Tencent Cloud WeData addresses these complexities through flexible architecture and product innovation, presenting an integrated data intelligence platform for enterprises to navigate these challenges and prosper in the age of AI.

4 Unique Aspects of the Integrated Data+AI Solution

• Unified Storage Layer: A unified Lakehouse storage system with a centralized catalog service that supports structured/unstructured data and model assets, enablingcross-engine queries .
• Unified Compute Layer: A serverless resource pool to integrate frameworks like Spark, Flink, and PyTorch, improving CPU/GPU resource utilization by 30%.
• Integrated Streaming-Batch-Lakehouse Engine: The Setats engine dynamically switches between streaming, batch, and incremental compute modes, merging real-time states with lake storage to reduce storage costs by 50%.

• Unified Catalog: A centralized catalog to manage structured/unstructured data, enabling seamless access across compute engines (Spark, Flink) and AI frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch).
• Global Asset View: Integration of metadata for tables, volumes, models, and applications, supporting semantic search across all assets.
• Federated Permissions: One single authorization to grant data access across engines like Spark and Ti-One, reducing policy propagation time from hours to minutes.
• Intelligent Semantic Enhancement: Leverages LLMs to auto-generate data description, perform intelligent asset classification and maintenance, and improve documentation completeness by 80%.

Built on the OneOps philosophy, our solution combines DataOps and AIOps to deliver three key capabilities:

• Full-Lifecycle Standardization: Automates enterprise CI/CD pipelines for end-to-end management of data and models.
• End-to-End Observability: Automatically captures lineage from raw inputs to AI model outputs, enabling rapid root-cause analysis, change impact assessment, real-time monitoring, and audit logging.
• Governance-by-Design: Embeds standardized development practices, AI-oriented data modeling, and enterprise semantic layers to systematically accumulate digital assets.

Ensures security across the entire lifecycle—data preparation, model training, and LLM applications:

• Data Security: Global access control, intelligent data classification/categorization, sensitive data masking/encryption, and audit trails.
• Model Security: Detects and defends against adversarial sample attacks during training; embeds watermarks to prevent model theft; blocks discriminatory/harmful AI-generated content during inference via rule engines.
• Application Security: API protection (e.g., unauthorized access prevention) and content moderation (e.g., forgery detection, sensitive content filtering).

#Tencent Cloud Big Data #WeData

EcoVadis Platinum Rating, 100% Renewable Milestone, and Green Financing Highlight a Transformative Year in Digital Infrastructure

SINGAPORE, April 28, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Digital Edge (Singapore) Holdings Pte. Ltd. (“Digital Edge”), a leading developer and operator of sustainable, next-generation hyperscale edge data centers across Asia, and a portfolio company of Stonepeak, a leading alternative investment firm specializing in infrastructure and real assets, today announced the publication of its 2025 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report. The 2025 report showcases Digital Edge’s performance across its three ESG pillars: Respect for Resources, Respect for People & Communities, and Respect for Transparency and outlines how the company is integrating environmental stewardship and social responsibility into the development of high-performance digital infrastructure.

Key Highlights from the 2025 ESG Report include:

• EcoVadis Platinum Rating – Awarded to Digital Edge in its first-ever submission, placing the company in the top 1% of data center organizations globally for sustainability performance.
• 100% renewable energy achieved at EDGE1 and EDGE2 in Jakarta, Indonesia.
• Published and achieved SQS2 sustainability score(very good) by Moody’s Ratings on their first Green Finance Framework.
• Industry-leading PUE of 1.25 or lower achieved at two new data centers: EDGE2 (Jakarta) and SEL2 (Incheon).
• LEED Silver Certification secured for SEL2 and on track for multiple new sites including EDGE2 (Jakarta), BOM1 (India), and TYO7 (Japan).
• 20% of electricity sourced from renewables across the operational portfolio in 2024, with a target of 50% by 2025 and 100% by 2030.

“We are incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made over the past year in aligning our growth with our sustainability goals,” said John Freeman, Chief Executive Officer at Digital Edge. “As demand for AI, cloud, and digital services continues to accelerate, our ability to deliver low-carbon, high-efficiency infrastructure across the region is more important than ever. This ESG report reflects how we’re turning ambition into action—ensuring our platform is built for performance, resilience, and long-term positive impact.”

The report also outlines the expansion of Digital Edge’s latest greenfield data center developments, including its 300MW hyperscale campus in Navi Mumbai and the ongoing buildout of a 100MW campus in Incheon, South Korea. These projects are being developed in line with the company’s Green Finance Framework, which was rated “Very Good” (SQS2) by Moody’s Ratings in 2024.

Digital Edge continues to expand its sustainability leadership through operational innovation, responsible supply chain practices, and enhanced community engagement programs. In 2024, employees across Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore contributed over 250 volunteer hours toward corporate social responsibility initiatives.

Other highlights include:

• Zero serious safety incidents and a total recordable incident rate (TRIR) of just 0.10 across all operations and construction activities.
• 100% of operational data centers certified with ISO 27001, ISO 45001, ISO 14001, SOC 2 Type 2, and PCI DSS.
• 83% of employees surveyed would recommend Digital Edge as a great place to work, reflecting strong engagement and culture.

“Our ESG journey is guided by action, accountability, and an unwavering belief in the role infrastructure plays in building a better future,” said Naz Ghouse, Director of ESG at Digital Edge. “Sustainability is no longer optional—it’s foundational to how we grow. Our ESG framework empowers us to deliver operational excellence while ensuring we are a positive force for people, the planet, and the broader digital economy.”

The full 2025 ESG Report is available for download at:
Digital Edge 2025 ESG Report

About Digital Edge

Headquartered in Singapore, Digital Edge is a trusted and forward-looking data center platform company, established to transform digital infrastructure in Asia. Through building and operating state-of-the-art, energy-efficient data centers rich with connectivity options, Digital Edge aims to bring new colocation and interconnect options to the Asian market, making infrastructure deployment in the region easy, efficient and economical.

Backed by leading alternative investment firm Stonepeak, Digital Edge has established itself as a market-leading pan-Asia data center platform. The company provides data center and fiber services across Asia, with a presence in Japan, Korea, India, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. You can visit the company’s website at www.digitaledgedc.com.