| Hi, this is Sohee in Seoul. Netflix attracted more than 60 million viewers to something it doesn’t often do: a live-streamed event. But before we get into the ups and downs of it... Three things you need to know today: • Sony is mulling a takeover of Japanese content powerhouse Kadokawa
• The US DOJ will push Google to sell Chrome to break search monopoly
• Taiwanese banks are pulling ads from Facebook over scam worries Netflix Inc. can consider its broadcast of the boxing bout between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul a success. Not because it was a great fight, it wasn’t. Nor was it because Netflix executed it with perfect aplomb. But the popularity of the contest between a 58-year-old former heavyweight champion and a YouTuber-turned-fighter was such that Netflix’s servers struggled to handle all the demand and triggered a wave of error reports and complaints about “infinite buffering.” Looking past those solvable problems, this weekend’s event will serve as support for Netflix’s pursuit of the insatiable appetite for live sports. In Seoul, renowned for its high-speed internet, I watched at home with only a couple minor snafus. The fleeting glitches included a frozen screen, audio that didn’t sync with the video and drops in video quality. Despite those hiccups, I enjoyed the slate of matches, including the legendary female boxers facing off. While none of it was for the purists, the event — available for free to Netflix subscribers — was a goldmine for social media engagement. I confess I was more fixated on scrolling through X, where streaming complaints mingled with excited posts and memes about the undercard, plus jokes about the sheer absurdity of what was to come. And the technical challenges were a good test run before Netflix gets truly serious on Christmas Day. That’s when the streaming platform is hosting two NFL contests, with Beyoncé starring in the halftime show for the Ravens versus Texans tussle. As the NFL season has unfolded, the other game, between the Steelers and the Chiefs, is also shaping up to be a barnburner between storied franchises fighting for playoff positioning. That’s when Netflix can’t afford a misstep like it had on Friday. Beyoncé is expected to give the first live performances of songs from her latest album, Cowboy Carter. For an event of this magnitude, neatly enveloping sports and music superstars, glitches won’t just be frustrating — they’ll be unacceptable to passionate fans. The upcoming halftime show may be a breakout moment for Netflix in Asia as well. Beyoncé is an icon for us, just as she is in the US. Fans across the region are expected to tune in for her, even if they know little about American football. Some of my friends watched this February’s Super Bowl just to look in on Taylor Swift’s romance with one of the star players on the field. Netflix may be preparing to bring more and potentially even bigger events to its live programming slate. My question is whether the company is quite ready for the massive influx of viewers from Asia, who have a healthy appreciation of US culture — but would also expect live translation into languages from Hindi to Japanese and Korean. During Friday’s boxing event, Netflix offered live subtitles in English, though they came with a noticeable delay of up to eight seconds. Netflix had planned to provide commentary in English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French and German, according to a press release. However, there was no support for Asian languages. “This year and next year, we’re confining live attempts to US-based events. They broadcast globally,” Netflix told my colleague Lucas Shaw. “As we build momentum and get better at it, we can roll it out to ex-US countries in 2026 and beyond.” Bringing multi-language capabilities is no mission impossible. Advanced AI tools can now translate multiple languages in real time, and the tech is portable enough to be available in the latest Galaxy smartphones. Meanwhile, India’s JioCinema is already offering live commentary in a dozen local languages for Indian Premier League cricket, which drew hundreds of millions of viewers in this year’s spring season. With the recent merger of Reliance Industries’ entertainment business and Disney’s India unit to form a JV called JioStar, the platform is poised to draw an even larger audience for next season. “Watching Netflix struggle to stream the boxing match is a reminder of the tech that we take for granted now in India, thanks to the scale engineering that JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar have demonstrated,” Akash Saxena, chief technology officer at JioStar, said in a LinkedIn post, offering to help fix Netflix’s bandwidth problems. “Call us Netflix - JioStar will take care of it :D” For Netflix to expand its live-streaming business across the world, especially in the competitive Asia market, multilingual capabilities for live events and the technical backing to support that would be key. Netflix has been positioning itself as a premium video streaming service in the region, and it has ample room for growth. It just needs to put all the pieces in place. Asia’s live-streaming market has proven its sports fandom. JioCinema is streaming cricket games to massive audiences, Vidio in Indonesia is capturing significant viewership with the English Premier League and in South Korea, Coupang Play streamed Shohei Ohtani’s LA Dodgers debut at a MLB Seoul event. Netflix has shown its international nous with localized series tailored to particular markets and tastes. To take the next step, it’ll again have to work to get the basics right — from ensuring the servers don’t buckle to making each sporting event accessible to the widest possible audience.—Sohee Kim Huawei’s efforts to create more powerful chips for AI and smartphones have hit a roadblock because of US sanctions, stalling a major Chinese push to match American technology. Huawei’s next two Ascend processors, its answer to Nvidia’s dominant AI accelerators, are being designed around the same 7nm architecture that’s been mainstream for years, people familiar with the matter said. Without access to ASML’s highly prized and protected chipmaking gear, China’s broader AI ambitions are also being hampered.  Chips stocks edged higher, with the exception of Nvidia, ahead of its earnings on Wednesday as reports emerged that the design of its AI chips has hit a snag. Sylvia Jablonski, Defiance ETFS CEO and CIO, joins Caroline Hyde to discuss on Bloomberg Technology. Nvidia is teaming up with Google to design quantum computing processors. Canva hired former Zoom CFO Kelly Steckelberg in a move signaling approaching IPO. Japan’s ruling party named Daishiro Yamagiwa as its new chips czar. | 
