South Asia Investor Review

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to discuss promoting “a durable peace between Israel and Iran,” the State Department said in a statement, according to  Reuters .  Both leaders "agreed to continue working together to strengthen Pakistan-US relations, particularly to increase trade", said a statement released by the Pakistan government. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio The call came after Iran and Israel agreed to a ceasefire to end what President Donald Trump described as a "12-day war". It is yet another indication of Pakistan's close ties with both Tehran and Washington. Pakistan strongly condemned Israel's "unprovoked attack" and the US bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities. It also  shows Washington’s growing engagement with Islamabad at a time when the Trump administration is exploring a new diplomatic initiative with Tehran, possibly “as early as ne...

Anysphere, founded in 2022 by Sualeh Asif, Arvid Lunnemark, Aman Sanger and Michael Truell, has been approached by investors about a deal that would more than double its valuation in a new funding round to $18 to $20 billion, according to  Bloomberg .  Sualeh Asif , 25, the Chief Product Officer and co-founder, hails from Karachi, Pakistan.  He studied at Nixor College in Karachi before going to the United States in 2018. He met the other three co-founders while studying at the Massachusetts  Institute of Technology (MIT). One-half (Sualeh Asif and Aman Sanger) of the startup’s founding team is of South Asian origin. The company moved to  San Francisco  soon after its founding in 2022.  Sualeh Asif, Anyshphere Inc's Pakistani-American Founder Anysphere’s lead product is an AI code editor called Cursor AI.  It works as an AI assistant that writes code and also anticipates code developer's needs, identifies inefficiencies, and helps solve compl...

Pakistan imported an estimated 1.25 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of lithium-ion battery packs in 2024 and another 400 megawatt-hours (MWh) in the first two months of 2025, according to a research report by the  Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis  (IEEFA). The report projects these imports to reach 8.75 gigawatt-hours (GWh) by 2030. Using  5.2 hours  per day of peak sunlight translates into 1,898 hours per year. It means that each gigawatt of installed solar capacity can produce up to 1.8 terawatt-hours of electricity in a year, and each gigawatt-hour of battery capacity can store up to 1.8 terawatt-hours of electricity over a year. Currently, Pakistanis consume about 110 terawatt-hours of energy from the grid in a year.   Battery Storage Growth in Pakistan. Source: IEEFA Chinese battery packs have become particularly affordable with rapidly declining prices due to falling raw material costs, overcapacity in manufacturing, and increased production ...

A London-based startup builder.ai, founded by an Indian named Sachin Dev Duggal,  recently filed for bankruptcy after its ‘neural network’ was discovered to be 700 Indians coding in India. The company promoted its "code-building AI" to be as easy as "ordering pizza".  It was backed by nearly half a billion dollar investment by top tech investors including Microsoft. The company was valued at $1.5 billion. This is the latest among a series of global scams originating in India.  In recent years, India has emerged as a major hub for global scams. The US government has alleged in court documents that a large enterprise originating from India was involved in stealing nearly $1.5 billion from elderly Americans. Recently, two Indian nationals, Pranay Mamindi and Kishan Patel, were found guilty of participating in a money laundering conspiracy, concealing the source of the money, and using the illegally gained money to further promote a criminal enterprise.  Six other defen...