Central Asia and Mongolia received significant investments in 2025 from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), while the AI industry saw new developments with partnerships and innovative research, according to multiple reports. The EBRD invested almost $2 billion through 120 projects in the region, with a focus on renewable energy, infrastructure, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as reported by Euronews. Simultaneously, the AI sector witnessed the launch of new multilingual models and the emergence of innovative research labs.
The EBRD's investment represented one of its strongest operational results in Central Asia and Mongolia in over a decade, with 53% of the investment dedicated to renewable energy projects, Euronews reported. In the lending department, 68% of loans went to private enterprises.
In the realm of artificial intelligence, Indian IT giant Infosys announced a partnership with Anthropic to develop enterprise-grade AI agents, as reported by TechCrunch. The collaboration aims to integrate Anthropic's Claude models into Infosys' Topaz AI platform to build agentic systems capable of autonomously managing complex enterprise workflows across various industries. This announcement was made at India's AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.
Also at the India AI Summit, Cohere launched a new family of multilingual models called Tiny Aya, according to TechCrunch. These open-weight models support over 70 languages and can operate on everyday devices without an internet connection. The base model contains 3.35 billion parameters and includes support for South Asian languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, and Marathi. Cohere also launched TinyAya-Global, a version fine-tuned for broader language support.
Meanwhile, a new AI lab called Flapping Airplanes emerged, focused on finding less data-hungry ways to train AI, TechCrunch reported. The lab, propelled by its founders, secured $180 million in seed funding. "We want to try really radically different things," said one of the co-founders.
In other news, a recent study published in Science detailed a new approach to storing solar energy as heat for months, Ars Technica reported. The approach, called molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage, aims to trap energy in the bonds of a molecule that can later release heat on demand.
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