The popular AI framework Virtuals Protocol will host an in-person meet-up in Hong Kong on Friday, January 17.

SWI Group has raised €800 million (approximately $895 million) from institutional investors to expand its artificial intelligence (AI) data center and computing power infrastructure footprint in the U.S. and Europe. The company also plans to repurpose eligible legacy Bitcoin mining facilities into AI infrastructure and is actively pursuing partnership agreements with hyperscale cloud service providers.

Beating AI News Flash (Dongcha Insight) – Reverse engineering tool REA has surged in popularity recently, with its developer Matthew Berman even declaring "software is dead". However, Brandon Thomas, founder of ArtCraft which is using AI to replicate Adobe’s entire software suite, has publicly stated he will not use REA. On Hacker News, Thomas emphasized his team does not decompile commercial software and prohibits reverse engineering tools like Ghidra, over concerns of potential copyright lawsuits. Thomas is leveraging Claude Opus 5.5 to develop a series of free open-source software using Rust. Seven of these tools are designed to match Adobe products, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premiere Pro. Recently, he has shifted his focus to Microsoft, launching projects corresponding to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint respectively. Still, these tools are far from replacing the original versions. Testing found PhotoCraft cannot open HEIC photos (a common iPhone format), while FilmCraft has issues with basic editing operations and audio playback. REA allows agents like Claude Code to call tools such as Ghidra and IDA to analyze software with no public source code, then reimplement its functions based on the analysis results. Thomas, however, adheres to a different development approach: he only references public technical documentation and the actual performance of software, writes code from scratch, and avoids accessing the original software’s internal implementations. This method is known as "clean room" development. He believes REA may be acceptable for personal research or studying abandoned software, but using it to decompile commercial software and then releasing counterfeit versions publicly could lead to lawsuits if proprietary code from the original software is involved.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), U.S. pre-market crypto-related stocks rose broadly, with the following tickers posting gains: CRCL +1.67%, MSTR +1.68%, HOOD +0.99%, BMNR +2.79%, COIN +1.67%, ABTC +4.79%, BNC +0.76%.

Per HTX market data, KGEN broke above $0.16, now trading at $0.16118, up 13.2% in the past 24 hours.

According to an official announcement, Bithumb will list KGEN for spot trading.

The Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) announced that it has collaborated with leading index provider S&P Dow Jones Indices to co-develop and launch the S&P 500 HKEX Tech 100 Index. This cross-market index combines leading U.S.-listed enterprises and the largest Hong Kong-listed technology companies by market capitalization, offering the market a new benchmark. The S&P 500 HKEX Tech 100 Index was launched on September 30, 2026, with the aim of enabling future ETFs tracking the index to qualify for inclusion in the Stock Connect trading scheme. It is designed to provide investment exposure to both U.S. and Hong Kong stock markets through a single benchmark, promoting portfolio diversification and cross-market capital flows.