The first Chinese esports event ever nominated for the “Internet’s highest honor”

SHANGHAI, April 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Hero Esports today announced that the Honor of Kings King Pro League (KPL) 2025 Grand Finals Opening Ceremony has been nominated for Best Use of Immersive in the Video & Film: Performance & Craft category at the 30th Annual Webby Awards.

Presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) and widely regarded as the “Internet’s highest honor,” the Webby Awards are the gold standard for excellence in digital content. Nearly 13,000 entries were submitted this year, with nominees spanning global icons and industry leaders including Bad Bunny, Taylor Swift, Timothée Chalamet, Apple, Netflix, OpenAI, and Google. The KPL 2025 Grand Finals Opening Ceremony marks the first time a Chinese esports event has been nominated for a Webby Award — a milestone for the industry.

A Record-Breaking Night at the Bird’s Nest

The KPL 2025 Grand Finals, hosted by Tencent and organized by Hero Esports on November 8, 2025, made history before the first match was even played. With 62,196 fans in attendance — tickets sold out online in just 12 seconds — the event set a Guinness World Record for the largest attendance at an esports match.

The venue itself added another layer of significance. As the only arena in the world to have hosted opening and closing ceremonies for both the Summer and Winter Olympics, the Bird’s Nest carries a weight of history few venues can match. Spanning 204,000 sqm in site area and 258,000 sqm in floor area, it gave Hero Esports a canvas of extraordinary scale. A 3,663.75 sqm LED floor screen, seamlessly integrated with the venue’s lighting system, transformed the space into a fully immersive environment — enveloping every one of the 62,196 fans from every angle.

Tradition Meets Technology

The opening ceremony set the tone for the night: 124 dancers performed alongside celebrated Chinese vocalist Han Hong, while an AR-rendered golden loong dragon soared across the towering LED displays in a breathtaking fusion of ancient mythology and cutting-edge technology. Award-winning singer Zhou Shen then brought the house down with a show-stopping half-time performance.

Industry Recognition

“Nominees like the KPL 2025 Grand Finals Opening Ceremony are raising the bar for creativity and innovation on the Internet,” said Nick Borenstein, General Manager of The Webby Awards. “At the 30th Annual Webby Awards, this recognition feels especially meaningful. It’s no small feat to stand out among nearly 13,000 entries, and this year’s work reflects the energy, originality, and ambition shaping the Internet right now.”

Vote Now — Until April 16

As a nominee, Hero Esports is eligible to win the Webby People’s Voice Award, determined entirely by public vote. Fans around the world can cast their vote for the KPL 2025 Grand Finals Opening Ceremony now through April 16, 2026:

Vote here Search for: Honor of Kings Pro League Opening Ceremony 2025

Winners will be announced on Tuesday, April 21, 2026, and honored at a star-studded ceremony at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City — where each winner will deliver one of the Webby Awards’ iconic 5-Word Speeches.

About Hero Esports

Founded in 2016, Hero Esports is Asia’s largest esports company, producing more than 7,000 matches annually for an online fanbase of over 800 million. Headquartered in Shanghai with more than 1,100 employees, Hero Esports operates across 12 global office locations and eight world-class esports arenas. The company offers a comprehensive suite of esports services — spanning tournament organization, marketing solutions, and community development — making it a one-stop partner for esports excellence worldwide.

SINGAPORE, April 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — UOB Asset Management (UOBAM) has released its 2Q 2026 Quarterly Investment Strategy, highlighting a more uncertain investment environment as resilient global growth and structural innovation are increasingly offset by heightened geopolitical risks.

According to the report, global growth and corporate earnings expectations remain broadly constructive across major regions, underpinned by continued investment in artificial intelligence (AI), energy and infrastructure. However, recent geopolitical developments — particularly in the Middle East — have materially increased uncertainty, raising the risk of energy‑market disruptions, renewed inflation pressures and higher market volatility.

UOBAM cautions that the Iran conflict is no longer a single-outcome risk and outlined three possible scenarios for the months ahead.

In a 40 per cent probability scenario, geopolitical tensions ease, allowing energy prices to stabilise, inflation pressures to moderate, and risk assets to recover. Another 40 percent probability scenario assumes prolonged disruption, leading to heightened volatility and downside risks to economic growth and markets.

In a lower probability (20 per cent) but more severe scenario, the conflict escalates, and recession risks rise materially.

Anthony Raza, Head of UOBAM Multi-Asset Strategy, said “While geopolitical outcomes remain difficult to predict, markets are likely to focus less on political intent and more on the implications for economic stability, inflation and risk premiums. As a result, investors are reassessing the reliability of the global policy and security environment, increasing the likelihood of structurally higher risk premiums and reinforcing the need for more cautious, resilient and diversified portfolio construction.”

In view of the developments, UOBAM is neutral on equities relative to benchmarks, emphasising diversification and selectivity, while remaining diversified across fixed income, overweight on gold and underweight on cash.

For deeper insights across equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities, read the full Q2 2026 Investment Strategy: https://uobam.com.sg/qis2q26

About UOB Asset Management

UOB Asset Management Ltd (UOBAM) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of United Overseas Bank Limited. Established in 1986, UOBAM has 40 years of experience in managing collective investment schemes and discretionary funds in Singapore, making us among the largest unit trust managers by assets under management. As of 28 February 2026, we manage 61 unit trusts in Singapore and together with our subsidiaries, oversee S$43.4 billion in clients’ assets.

Headquartered in Singapore, UOBAM has a strong presence across Asia, with business and investment offices in Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Our network includes UOB Islamic Asset Management Sdn Bhd in Malaysia, a joint venture with Ping An Fund Management Company Limited (China) and strategic alliances with partners such as Wellington Management Singapore.

UOBAM is one of the region’s most awarded asset managers, with over 380 awards won. In 2025, we were recognised as the Best Regional Asset Management Company by the Asia Asset Management and previously named Best Asset Management House in Asia – 20 Years in 2023. Our digital innovation has also earned top honours, including Best Digital Wealth Management in Asia^[1] and Best Robo Advisory Initiative^[2] for four consecutive years as of 2025.

As a leader in sustainable investing, UOBAM was awarded Best application of ESG in ASEAN^[3] (2023) and has received multiple sustainability accolades in Indonesia and Thailand. Our artificial intelligence capabilities were also recognised with the Most Innovative Application of Artificial Intelligence (ASEAN) for three consecutive years^[4].

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In the news release, “When Demand Becomes the System: Delonix and the Rewriting of Hospitality’s Operating Logic”, issued on April 1, 2026 by Delonix Group over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that there is an update on the boilerplate of the release. Complete, corrected release follows:

When Demand Becomes the System: Delonix and the Rewriting of Hospitality’s Operating Logic

SHENZHEN, China, April 1, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On March 30, Delonix Group presented two new initiatives at its 2026 strategy conference: Genie AI, embedded in its Betterwood App, and a customer experience framework known as the Heavenly Stems & Earthly Branches Model.

Individually, they resemble product and service upgrades. Taken together, they suggest something more structural: an attempt to replace the logic on which the hospitality industry has operated for decades.

For most of its modern history, the sector has been governed by a simple equation—growth through physical expansion. More rooms, better locations, higher occupancy. Scale was both strategy and moat.

That equation is beginning to break.

Chairman Zheng Nanyan framed the shift not as cyclical, but structural. The convergence of maturing consumer expectations and rapidly deployable AI systems is eroding the effectiveness of asset-led growth. Standardization, once a tool for efficiency, now produces indistinguishable experiences. Capital intensity, long tolerated, is becoming a constraint. 

What is emerging in its place is not a more efficient version of the same model, but a different organizing principle altogether: demand, not supply, as the system’s point of origin.

From Capacity to Interpretation

In this emerging model, the central problem is no longer how to build and fill capacity, but how to interpret and respond to fragmented, real-time customer intent.

This is where Delonix is positioning Genie AI.

Unlike most applications of AI in hospitality—which tend to sit at the interface level—Genie AI is designed to sit in the middle of the system, between intent and execution. It does not simply respond to requests; it structures them.

A guest interaction—whether through app input or voice—is translated into a sequence of executable tasks, routed through a centralized decision layer, and distributed to the nearest available human resource, before feeding back into the system as data.

The technical architecture is not unprecedented. What is notable is the ambition to make it foundational.

If it works as intended, service ceases to be a function of individual responsiveness and becomes instead a property of the system itself. Variability, historically managed after the fact, is designed out at the level of coordination.

In that sense, AI is no longer augmenting service. It is defining its boundaries.

Standardization Was the Solution. Now It Is the Constraint.

The industry’s previous growth model depended on standardization: replicable rooms, predictable services, consistent delivery across locations. This enabled scale, but at the cost of differentiation.

As consumer expectations evolve, that trade-off is becoming less acceptable.

Delonix’s response is not to abandon standardization, but to layer variability on top of it—systematically.

The Heavenly Stems & Earthly Branches Model introduces a framework in which products and services are no longer fixed configurations, but evolving modules. Customer interaction becomes an input into how the product itself is iterated over time.

The implication is subtle but significant.

Hotels are no longer static assets with service attached. They become adaptive systems, where the product is continuously reshaped by usage.

For customers, this promises a form of progression—an experience that accumulates rather than resets. For operators and investors, it suggests a shift from one-off capital deployment to ongoing, incremental reconfiguration.

In both cases, the underlying assumption is the same: value is not embedded in the asset, but generated through interaction.

Control Shifts to the System Layer

What ties these elements together is not technology alone, but control.

In the traditional model, control resided in assets—ownership, location, physical scale. In the emerging model, it moves upward, into the system layer that interprets demand, allocates resources, and continuously adjusts the product.

This shift has implications beyond efficiency.

A system that can interpret intent, coordinate execution, and learn from outcomes begins to set the terms of competition. The advantage no longer lies in having more assets, but in having a better system for deciding how those assets are used.

In that sense, AI is not just infrastructure. It is governance.

An Industry at the Edge of Repricing

China’s broader push to integrate AI into industrial and consumer systems provides the backdrop for this shift. Policy frameworks such as the State Council’s “AI+” initiative are accelerating deployment, but the more consequential changes are happening at the level of business models.

Hospitality is one of the more exposed sectors.

As the marginal return on physical expansion declines, and as customer expectations become more fluid, the industry is moving toward a repricing of what constitutes value. Scale, once the primary moat, is becoming easier to replicate and harder to defend.

What replaces it is still being defined.

Delonix’s approach offers one possible direction: treating demand as a continuously generated input, and building systems capable of capturing and compounding it. Whether this model proves durable remains to be seen. But its premise is clear.

The future of hospitality may depend less on how hotels are built, and more on how they think.

About Delonix Group

Delonix Group is a leading international hospitality and experiential consumption group in the Asia-Pacific region. Ranked 14th globally, the Group partnered with Marriott International to launch the world’s first dual-branded luxury property: MajesTang Hotel • A Tribute Portfolio Hotel, while independently creating MaisonLee, a Tang-inspired premium business travel brand. As one of the first Chinese hotel groups to expand overseas, Delonix has established a presence in high-potential markets such as Japan and Indonesia, with a footprint spanning more than 200 cities worldwide. Its portfolio includes Model J, hotel MONday and an investment in IHI that owns Swiss-Belhotel and Artotel, positioning the Group at the forefront of building a next-generation global platform for high-end hospitality and culturally immersive travel.

Bringing Wireless Collaboration from Meeting Rooms to AI-Powered Immersive Experiences

TAIPEI, April 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Astrogate Inc., a leading provider of wireless collaboration solutions, today announced that its ASTROS wireless conferencing system has successfully integrated with AR smart glasses developed by Jorjin Technologies. This strategic integration extends ASTROS’ application beyond meeting rooms and classrooms into emerging AI and immersive environments, enabling more flexible smart workspaces and enhanced learning experiences.

In modern enterprise and education environments, BYOM and BYOD have become essential collaboration models. ASTROS enables seamless wireless BYOM and BYOD experiences, allowing users to instantly share content to displays without cables or complex setup. This capability lays the foundation for next-generation applications powered by AI and augmented reality.

As AI and immersive technologies continue to evolve, the demand for more intuitive and dynamic information interaction is rapidly increasing. With the integration of Jorjin’s AR smart glasses, visual content and data can now be directly overlaid into the user’s field of view. Both on-site and remote participants can simultaneously access the same real-time perspective, creating a more immersive and intuitive collaboration experience.

Fong Ho, Senior Vice President of Global Brand Business at Astrogate Inc., commented:“Rooted in Taiwan’s strong R&D and manufacturing capabilities, Astrogate is committed to making collaboration more flexible and intuitive. Through our partnership with Jorjin, ASTROS is no longer limited to meeting rooms—it now extends into AR and AI-driven application scenarios, enabling seamless information flow across devices and spaces.”

Vince Hsu, Senior Vice President at Jorjin Technologies, added: “Jorjin has long been dedicated to advancing AR smart glasses and wearable technologies, with applications spanning industrial, medical, and remote collaboration sectors. By integrating with ASTROS, we significantly enhance connectivity and flexibility for AR devices in enterprise environments, delivering a more intuitive and efficient smart working experience.”

Bridging Physical and Digital Worlds with AI-Assisted Real-Time Learning

In practical use cases, instructors wearing Jorjin AR smart glasses can deliver lessons while students or remote assistants view the instructor’s first-person perspective in real time. Combined with AI image recognition, the system can automatically highlight key teaching materials, diagrams, or experimental steps, with analysis results synchronized across devices.

This integrated “phygital” (physical + digital) solution breaks spatial limitations of traditional classrooms and campuses. It enables AI-generated insights to flow seamlessly across devices and locations, significantly enhancing the interactivity and precision of remote learning, hybrid education, and hands-on demonstrations.

About Astrogate Inc.

Astrogate Inc. is a Taiwan-based company with over 20 years of expertise in wireless technology. The company launched its ASTROS brand in 2019, focusing on enterprise-grade wireless collaboration solutions, including wireless presentation and meeting systems.

All ASTROS products are designed and developed in Taiwan and are widely adopted across enterprise, education, and government sectors. Astrogate continues to expand its global presence while integrating AI and innovative technologies to advance smart collaboration and accelerate digital transformation.

BANGKOK, April 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Mula-X today announced the rollout of Passkeys+ from Ideem, potentially replacing SMS-based OTPs with biometric, device-bound authentication across its digital wallet platform. With this move Mula-X has positioned themselves as an industry leader by delivering a significantly improved user experience while also automatically strengthening security for its users.

Ending the Security-Convenience Tradeoff

Built on the FIDO standard, Passkeys+ delivers passwordless authentication that is phishing-resistant, invisible to the user, and bound to the device, giving Mula-X visibility and control that standard passkey deployments simply don’t offer. Authentication happens natively within the app, with no redirects, no OTP delays, and no attack surface for credential theft.

“By adopting Passkeys+ technology alongside our existing SMS-based verification, it allows Mula-X to deliver a faster,  more seamless login experience while strengthening security for our users,” said Lyn Kok, Founder & CEO of Mula-X. “Security and convenience usually don’t go together, but with the advent of AI deep faking, improved phishing attacks and more demanding customers they are both paramount in digital finance.”

A Stronger Bottom Line

The operational impact is equally significant. By enabling an alternative to SMS OTP infrastructure, Mula-X potentially removes recurring delivery costs and the operational complexity of managing global OTP providers, replacing variable, usage-based expense with a scalable, fixed-overhead security layer.

“The Thai market is sophisticated and fast-moving, and Mula-X’s users deserve authentication at the forefront of the industry,” said Greg Storm, President of Ideem. “Mula-X has demonstrated that better security and user convenience can be delivered simultaneously. Users will always take the path of least resistance, and by making their security easy and convenient, Mula-X has given their customers an easy, automatic and invisible path to better security. .

As digital finance accelerates across Southeast Asia, Mula-X’s adoption of Passkeys+ sets a new benchmark for what modern fintech security should look like.

About Ideem

Ideem is a global leader in next-generation identity and authentication solutions. By evolving standard FIDO protocols into enterprise-grade security layers, Ideem helps regulated industries, including fintech, banking, and e-commerce, deploy “passwordless” environments that do not sacrifice control for convenience. Its flagship product, Passkeys+, provides the device-bound assurance and visibility required for high-stakes financial transactions while maintaining a frictionless user experience.

About Mula-X

Mula-X is a fintech pioneer dedicated to developing a platform providing accessible and secure financial services. Focused on the Southeast Asian market, Mula-X leverages cutting-edge design and technology to empower users with financial tools that are as secure as they are easy to use.