The partnership explores the integration of Blackpanda’s IR-1 and ST Engineering’s AETHER solution to advance regional cyber defence capabilities.

SINGAPORE, Dec. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Blackpanda, Asia’s leading cyber incident response firm, today announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Collaboration (MOC) with ST Engineering‘s Cyber Business, an industry leader in cybersecurity trusted across critical sectors and markets. The collaboration marks a significant step forward in expanding accessible, enterprise-grade incident response across Asia, leveraging the combined strengths of both organisations.

WATCH VIDEO: WHAT IS BLACKPANDA IR-1?

Blackpanda and ST Engineering will collaborate to strengthen regional cyber resilience through technical collaboration and market development, exploring integration opportunities for Blackpanda’s IR-1 assurance solution and ST Engineering’s AETHER AI-enabled threat elimination and response solution. This partnership aims to create an integrated, proactive, and responsive ecosystem that helps SMEs across the region prepare for, respond to, and recover from cyber attacks with unprecedented speed and assurance.

“Blackpanda’s IR-1 rapid response capabilities, combined with ST Engineering’s deep expertise in cybersecurity infrastructure, represent a powerful alliance for Asia’s cyber resilience,” said Victor Tan, Managing Director, Southeast Asia, Blackpanda. “Together, we are making it possible for SMEs to access the same level of protection and recovery once reserved only for the largest corporations.”

Democratising Access to Cyber Emergency Response

As digital transformation accelerates across Asia, SMEs face an escalating volume and complexity of cyber threats, from AI-powered phishing to supply chain attacks. Yet despite this growing risk, most enterprises remain unprepared for major incidents. SME businesses require an incident response service that is specifically tailored to meet their needs and budget.

Blackpanda’s IR-1 cyber emergency subscription addresses it by providing always-on access to elite cyber responders, digital forensics, and access to discounted cyber insurance coverage from its Lloyd’s of London insurance coverholder — ensuring immediate expert support when a breach occurs. Through this collaboration, both companies seek to expand IR-1’s accessibility and strengthen organisations’ ability to withstand cyber crises.

“Through this collaboration, we are combining our rapid response capability with ST Engineering’s robust AETHER solution to make professional cyber emergency response widely available,” said Gene Yu, CEO of Blackpanda.

For more insights on cyber resilience and incident response across Asia, visit the Blackpanda Knowledge Hub. To learn more about the impact Blackpanda is making in the Asia market, view real-life case studies here. To learn about Blackpanda IR-1 in less than two minutes, watch the short video here.

About Blackpanda

Blackpanda is a Lloyd’s of London–accredited insurance coverholder and Asia’s leading local cyber incident response firm, delivering end-to-end digital emergency support across the region. We are pioneering the A2I (Assurance-to-Insurance) model in cybersecurity — uniting preparation, response, and insurance into a seamless pathway that minimises financial and operational impact from cyber attack. Through expert consulting services, response assurance subscriptions, and innovative cyber insurance, we help organisations get ready, respond, and recover from cyber attacks — all delivered by local specialists working in concert. Our mission is clear: to bring complete cyber peace of mind to every organisation in Asia, from the first moment of breach through full recovery and beyond.

HONG KONG, Dec. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — In the latest episode of ‘Tech for Good’, CNN anchor and correspondent Kristie Lu Stout meets the young innovators developing cutting-edge technology that could one day revolutionize agriculture, food production, and reforestation. From robot harvesters to self-burying seeds, ‘Tech for Good’ dives into the future of farming and environmental restoration – designed, coded, and cultivated by the next generation.

Kristie first visits a farm on the outskirts of Sydney, Australia, to meet SwagBot, an AI-powered agriculture robot. What began as a cattle-herding robot has evolved to autonomously collect data about animal grazing patterns, weather, and nutrition, helping farmers optimize livestock care and increase productivity. Kristie meets post-doctorate researcher Fiorella Sibona who is testing how SwagBot, and a host of other robots developed at the University of Sydney, can be used to make farming more sustainable. 

Next, ‘Tech for Good’ heads to Switzerland to visit École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne’s CREATE Lab, where students are developing new forms of intelligent robots for agriculture. We first meet a dexterous robot that can plant, monitor, and harvest vegetables autonomously; its robotic arms were made from scratch and have been trained by students using bespoke haptic gloves and AI. Then we meet the GOAT (Good On All Terrains) robot, a shapeshifting, multi-modal robot capable of rolling, crawling, and flying, that could one day be used for environmental monitoring and mapping on difficult terrains like steep vineyards.

‘Tech for Good’ also revisits Flash Forest, a Canadian startup featured in 2021, which uses drones and advanced technology to plant seed pods in areas affected by wildfires. Kristie speaks to co-founder Cameron Jones to find out how the company is now leveraging AI, lidar sensors and more advanced drones to expand their reach, as they aim to plant one billion trees by the early 2030s.

Finally, in America, a team at the University of California, Berkeley is developing ‘E-seeds’, which are biodegradable, self-planting seed carriers that can automatically corkscrew into the soil when moistened. We meet PhD student Semina Yi, who is testing how her new seed carrier prototype can be deployed using drones, in a bid to help with land reforestation.

Tech for Good trailers: http://bit.ly/43ZBlmc
Tech for Good images: https://bit.ly/443bKbW
Tech for Good microsite: https://cnn.it/3PB5DSq

Airtimes for 30-minute special:
Saturday, 6^th December at 2:30pm and 7:30pm HKT
Sunday, 7^th December at 10:30am HKT
Monday, 8^th December at 2am and 12pm HKT

About CNN International  
CNN’s portfolio of news and information services is available in seven different languages across all major TV, digital and mobile platforms, reaching more than 379 million households around the globe. CNN International is the number one international TV news channel according to all major media surveys across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the Asia Pacific region, and Latin America and has a US presence that includes CNNgo. CNN Digital is a leading network for online news, mobile news and social media. CNN is at the forefront of digital innovation and continues to invest heavily in expanding its digital global footprint, with a suite of award-winning digital properties and a range of strategic content partnerships, commercialised through a strong data-driven understanding of audience behaviours. CNN has won multiple prestigious awards around the world for its journalism. Around 1,000 hours of long-form series, documentaries and specials are produced every year by CNNI’s non-news programming division. CNN has 36 editorial offices and more than 1,100 affiliates worldwide through CNN Newsource. CNN International is a Warner Bros. Discovery company.

A unique investment from the quant trading giant signals a shift in how complex systems will be tested.

TYSONS CORNER, Va., Dec. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — Antithesis today announced a $105 million Series A round led by Jane Street, the global technology-driven quantitative trading firm known for building some of the world’s most advanced software systems. The investment underscores Antithesis’s emergence as critical infrastructure for enterprises operating complex, distributed systems. Jane Street is both an Antithesis investor and customer.

Additional investors include Amplify Venture Partners, Spark Capital, Tamarack Global, First In Ventures, Teamworthy Ventures, Hyperion Capital, and individuals including Patrick Collison, Dwarkesh Patel, and Sholto Douglas, alongside other new and returning investors. The capital will be used to accelerate Antithesis’s product innovation and scale its go-to-market operations across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Software systems have grown more complex, and as AI accelerates the volume of code being produced, traditional testing cannot keep pace. Today, most organizations still rely on example-based tests (whether written by engineers or by AI). These methods catch surface-level issues but cannot reliably expose the deep, emergent behaviors that cause outages, data corruption, and cascading system failures.

Antithesis replaces this with deterministic simulation testing: running a fully automated, massively parallel simulation of the system being validated that compresses months of production behavior into hours. The platform explores edge cases, injects common faults, validates correctness, and perfectly reproduces any failure so engineers can fix issues with unprecedented speed and confidence.

“Software now underpins everything, and as systems become more complex and distributed, the world needs a new testing model that guarantees correctness,” said Will Wilson, CEO of Antithesis. “With this funding, we’re expanding the infrastructure that makes reliability not just achievable, but expected, just as we expect traffic lights to work every time. Our customers are already proving that deterministically validated systems ship faster, without breaking, and earn deeper trust.”

“Jane Street runs some of the most demanding distributed systems in the world, and Antithesis has helped us uncover issues that no other testing method could find,” said Doug Patti, Engineer at Jane Street. “We hold a very high bar for the technology we rely on, and an even higher bar for the companies we choose to invest in. While leading an early round is rare for us, Antithesis is years ahead, and we believe deterministic simulation testing will become foundational across industries.”

Customer impact across finance, AI, blockchain, and data infrastructure
Antithesis is already used by organizations whose systems cannot fail:

• Jane Street depends on Antithesis to validate complex distributed systems critical to the operation of its global trading business.
• Ethereum used Antithesis to simulate its global network under extreme conditions ahead of The Merge, uncovering critical issues that could have jeopardized the historic Proof-of-Stake transition.
• MongoDB uses Antithesis to rigorously test core components of its database platform, helping engineers catch subtle issues before they reach customers.

These examples reflect a rapidly expanding customer base across finance, infrastructure platforms, and organizations building advanced AI systems. Antithesis has increased revenue by over 12x over the last two years and continues to grow rapidly.

Use of proceeds
With the new funding, Antithesis will:

• Expand engineering teams to strengthen its deterministic simulation engine
• Advance platform intelligence and autonomy
• Build a world-class sales and marketing organization
• Scale GTM operations across North America, Europe, and Asia
• Deepen availability through cloud channels, including AWS Marketplace

About Antithesis
Antithesis is a fundamentally new way to validate that software works correctly before it is released. It conducts a fully deterministic, massively parallel simulation that tests years of real-world production in a few hours. Antithesis intelligently explores the far corners of your codebase, strategically injecting common faults to ensure the system always behaves as intended. The platform perfectly reproduces any bug it finds in its one-of-a-kind environment for rapid debugging. The company is based in Northern Virginia, was founded in 2018, and launched out of stealth in 2024. For more information, visit https://antithesis.com/.

About Jane Street
Jane Street is a global technology-driven trading and investment firm. Founded in 2000, the firm brings a research-driven approach and quantitative expertise to markets worldwide, with over 3,000 employees across offices in New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Amsterdam. For more information, visit www.janestreet.com.

PANAMA CITY, Dec. 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — As we enter December, both macro and crypto markets are stepping into a key window characterized by dense data releases and policy-path uncertainty. In this edition of DeepThink, HTX Research analyst Chloe (@ChloeTalk1) analyzes how the upcoming macro releases could heavily influence expectations for the Federal Reserve’s December meeting, and become the defining catalyst for risk sentiment across equities and digital assets.

A Dense Cluster That Will Anchor Rate-Cut Expectations

Although markets broadly expect the Federal Reserve to cut rates again in December, Powell emphasized last week that due to the government shutdown and resulting gaps in official data, policymakers may not have access to complete labor-market and inflation indicators before the meeting. Therefore, this week’s cluster of high-frequency data will directly determine whether the probability of a December cut falls back toward 50% or surges close to 100%.

The first major release is the November ISM Manufacturing PMI. Manufacturing has been in contraction since March, with last month’s reading at just 48.7. Both new orders and employment sub-indices remained below 50, reflecting ongoing uncertainty from tariffs and weakening global demand.

By contrast, the Services PMI held at a moderate 52.4 expansion, though its price sub-index stayed elevated near 70, showing that inflation pressure now comes more from domestic services rather than imports. If November services remain resilient, hawkish voices inside the Fed will be reinforced; if the index slips back to 50 or below, a December cut becomes almost assured.

The labor market is the biggest swing factor. With October’s nonfarm payrolls cancelled and November NFP postponed until December 16 (after the FOMC meeting), this week’s ADP private-sector employment data becomes crucial. October ADP added 42,000 jobs, beating expectations. A stronger-than-expected November print would weaken the case for immediate easing; a softer reading would strengthen the argument for faster policy accommodation. Closely following is the Challenger layoffs report, which saw October layoffs surge to 153,074—the highest in 22 years. If November layoffs continue rising, markets will quickly reprice the risk of a U.S. labor-market downturn.

On Friday, the spotlight shifts to PCE inflation and personal spending, the week’s most important macro event. Markets expect headline PCE for September to edge up from 2.7% to 2.8%, with core PCE holding at 2.9%. If the data continue to show inflation stuck near 3%, the Fed’s rate-cut pace will remain constrained; if PCE unexpectedly softens, markets will gain short-term relief.

Risk Appetite Remains Compressed

In U.S. equities, Goldman’s trading desk highlights that as volatility receded and market breadth rebounded from –150 to +150, systemic selling pressure was largely flushed out by mid-November. Institutional positioning models now expect a shift from net selling to roughly $4.7 billion in net buying in December. This means the traditional “Santa Rally” is not dead—the ignition simply depends on whether this week’s data support the rate-cut trajectory.

In crypto, Bitcoin has bounced back above $85K, according to HTX data, after a nearly 30% drawdown from its October peak, but overall sentiment remains fragile amid thin liquidity. ETFs continue to see mild outflows, while the Coinbase premium stays weak, signaling institutional caution. Options markets display a classic risk-averse posture: near-term IV significantly higher than long-dated IV, and 25-delta put skew negative across maturities. Investors remain willing to pay for downside protection, reflecting expectations of short-term volatility spikes.

Key Macro Data to Determine Whether a Reversal Takes Shape

Overall, the crypto market is in a sensitive phase where the fundamental outlook is unclear, but bottom-forming characteristics are gradually emerging.

• If this week’s U.S. data show a combination of slowing growth without recession and softening inflation, Bitcoin and major assets may see a natural recovery, with IV compressing quickly and short-vol strategies regaining effectiveness.
• Conversely, if manufacturing, employment, or PCE surprise to the upside and suppress rate-cut expectations, thin holiday liquidity could trigger another sharp downward move.

In the current environment, taking heavy one-sided bets carries elevated risk. Market structure tends to show gradual accumulation behavior near lower ranges, while elevated short-term IV provides room for hedging. The $80K–$82K zone remains a notable support, but a genuine trend reversal will depend on clearer signals from this week’s macro releases.

*The above content  is not an investment advice and does not constitute any offer or solicitation to offer or recommendation of any investment product.

About HTX

Founded in 2013, HTX (formerly Huobi) has evolved from a virtual asset exchange into a comprehensive ecosystem of blockchain businesses that span digital asset trading, financial derivatives, research, investments, incubation, and other businesses.

As a world-leading gateway to Web3, HTX harbors global capabilities that enable it to provide users with safe and reliable services. Adhering to the growth strategy of “Global Expansion, Thriving Ecosystem, Wealth Effect, Security & Compliance,” HTX is dedicated to providing quality services and values to virtual asset enthusiasts worldwide.

To learn more about HTX, please visit https://www.htx.com/ or HTX Square , and follow HTX on X, Telegram, and Discord. 

About HTX Research

HTX Research is the dedicated research arm of HTX Group, responsible for conducting in-depth analyses, producing comprehensive reports, and delivering expert evaluations across a broad spectrum of topics, including cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and emerging market trends. Visit us.