📅 Asoba Events
LTM Energy at the ESCO & Energy Efficiency Forums in Mauritius
Join LTM Energy in Mauritius for a high-impact, two-day engagement in collaboration with the Global ESCO Network (GEN) and the United Nations. Explore how energy-efficient technologies and sustainable development are transforming the regional landscape, creating massive opportunities for engineering firms, auditors, and financiers. (January 22–23, 2026 | Port Louis, Mauritius)
Learn from Dhevan Pillay, Group CEO of LTM Energy, as he presents real-world case studies on risk-free energy optimization and the future of green jobs.
Engage with decision-makers from the UN and top energy-intensive sectors, including luxury resorts and shopping malls, to unlock new market opportunities.
Position your business at the forefront of the Indian Ocean’s rapidly growing green economy through UN-aligned platforms.
🔥 AI, Energy, and Geopolitics
Africa
Egypt signs $35B natural gas megadeal with Israel
Egypt's massive gas deal highlights how traditional energy infrastructure remains critical—even as global demand shifts toward cheaper, renewable fueled electricity consumption.
Suez Canal shipping resumes as tensions ease
Global supply chains—including semiconductor and hardware logistics—depend on critical chokepoints like the Suez Canal. Any disruption here affects the flow of chips, rare earths, and components essential for infrastructure worldwide.
Americas
TSMC says AI demand is "endless" after record Q4 earnings
The world's most critical chipmaker declares AI demand has no ceiling in sight. This is exactly the kind of euphoric projection the IMF warns could precede a "sharp reassessment"—endless demand assumptions baked into valuations.
US government to take 25% cut of AMD, NVIDIA AI sales to China
Trade tensions now directly target AI chip sales. The US is weaponizing semiconductor exports, which could fragment global AI readiness and slow the productivity gains the economy is counting on.
The Real AI Talent War Is for Plumbers and Electricians
The bottleneck isn't just chips—it's the physical infrastructure. Data centers can't be built fast enough because there aren't enough skilled tradespeople. AI productivity gains depend on infrastructure that doesn't exist yet.
AI's water and electricity use soars in 2025
AI infrastructure is consuming resources at an alarming rate. The physical constraints on AI expansion—power, water, cooling—are becoming material risks to the productivity narrative.
Asia
'Physical AI' enters the hype machine — Japan and China lead robotics race
Japan and China are racing to dominate "physical AI"—robotics and embodied intelligence. This next frontier of AI investment represents another massive bet on productivity gains, extending the AI wager from software into the physical world.
Over 60% of critical minerals demand met through global trade
The 4th Industrial Revolution’s supply chain is deeply globalized and vulnerable. With most critical minerals crossing borders, any trade disruption cascades directly into infrastructure delays and cost increases.
Europe
What Spain's Blackout Means for America's Grid and Its Energy Storage Future
Spain's grid failure is a warning sign for “energy transition” economies everywhere. The infrastructure needed to support a fully 21st century leading economy may not be resilient enough.
Trump's Greenland Tariffs threaten Denmark
Trade tensions are spreading beyond China. Tariff threats against European allies create uncertainty that could significantly impact renewables supply chains.
Germany signals strategic roadmap away from US/Europe alignment
Much like PM Carney, Germany’s Chancellor Merz was overt and explicit about strategic shift away from attempted multilateralism with the US and broader European readiness even beyond Trump to realign at least the OECD outside of US leadership.
🏆 Inside Asoba
This month, we are excited to share several key milestones—from the development of private research tools and strategic partnerships to celebrating a very special new arrival to our team.
Engineering Zorora: Deep Research, Locally Deployed
We are proud to showcase Zorora, a deep research engine built by Asoba for macOS (Apple Silicon). Designed for absolute privacy, Zorora runs entirely on your local machine—meaning all data, chats, and findings stay off the cloud. This evolved from an in-house development REPL we built to address LLM orchestration and hallucination issues in other AI tools like Gemini CLI and Cursor. Now we’re making it available open source - for now just to researchers. Learn more here
LTM Energy Partnership
We are excited to officially start our sales partnership with LTM Energy! Together, we are bridging the gap between raw energy data and actionable intelligence.
As the first major milestone of this collaboration, we will be launching LTM eSUMS on January 23rd, coinciding with our joint engagement at the UN-hosted forums in Mauritius. LTM eSUMS acts as a sophisticated intelligence layer, absorbing complex energy data to provide real-time forecasting and stable API integration for advanced AI models.
Sending love to Chiwoneso!
Congratulations to our Head of Marketing, Chiwoneso, on the birth of her baby! We are so happy for you and wish you a beautiful journey into motherhood filled with love and happiness. 👶✨
🌍 Heard Around the World
You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
He has a point…but also, this is about as clear a case of Imperial Boomerang for Canada and Europe as we will likely ever see.
Till next time,