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Shopee posts record of over 2 billion items sold in 11.11 Big Christmas Sale
Shopee, the leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, sets two new records at the year’s largest shopping festival, 11.11 Big Christmas Sale. With a huge array of irresistible deals, shoppers across the region bought over 2 billion items across the festival period, smashing its previous record in 2020. Excitement peaked on November 11, with visits spiking 5.5 times in the first two hours compared to an average day.
Martin Yu, Director at Shopee Philippines, said,“It brings us great joy to see the impact of our 11.11 Big Christmas Sale on shoppers, businesses, and our local communities. The digital economy continues to present many opportunities for growth, and we want to enable more people to benefit from this growth by increasing e-commerce adoption and helping more consumers and businesses go online. At the same time, we are humbled that we can use our platform to give back to the wider community and support those in need. We look forward to creating more impact for our users in the months ahead.”
Helping more shoppers access, benefit from the digital economy
11.11 Big Christmas Sale encouraged more people to access and enjoy the benefits of online shopping, particularly those outside major cities where digital awareness has been relatively lower. This resulted in an 5-time increase[1] in the number of shoppers from rural and smaller towns, who were able to enjoy the convenience of accessing a wider variety of products on Shopee.
Beyond convenience, the 11.11 Big Christmas Sale also brought shoppers and businesses closer together. More than 3.5 billion messages were sent on the in-app Shopee Chat on November 11, as shoppers were able to interact live with sellers and get more information prior to making their purchases.
As a secure and seamless mobile wallet, ShopeePay continued to accelerate adoption of digital payments at the 11.11 Big Christmas Sale. Across the region, more shoppers used ShopeePay to pay for their Shopee orders seamlessly, especially outside big cities where ShopeePay transactions grew 9 times from an average day.
Creating a record boost for businesses of all sizes
For businesses in the region, the 11.11 Big Christmas Sale was a springboard for growth and recovery. Local sellers benefited from the spike in shopping activity, as those joining 11.11 for the first time saw their orders surge 18 times compared to an average day.
Additionally, Shopee Mall continued to attract many shoppers who were drawn to the attractive discounts and exclusive deals from their favorite brands.
11.11 Big Christmas Sale highlights in the Philippines
- More shoppers from outside the metro: South Luzon saw the most orders in the whole country, followed by Metro Manila.
- Shoppers buy everything on Shopee: Filipinos were eagerly anticipating the unbeatable deals at the 11.11 Big Christmas Sale to meet all their needs, from branded items to daily household essentials. A user in Quezon City spent over ₱466,000 in a single order, buying motorcycle parts, electric tools, game consoles, smartphones, and tablets.
- Shopee remains the preferred one-stop shop for home decor, essentials, and more: Shopee continues to provide a wide assortment of products at the best prices. At the 11.11 Big Christmas Sale, more Filipinos bought Home & Living, Health & Personal Care, and Women’s Apparel products. Filipinos have consistently prioritized health essentials and home decor during Shopee’s past sales, and the 11.11 Big Christmas Sale was no different as shoppers stocked up on face masks with over 3 million items sold, and took the time to spruce up their home for the holidays with over 800,000 wallpapers sold.
- Shoppers take advantage of deals from their favorite brands on Shopee Mall: Filipino favorites such as Uni-Care, Unilever Beauty, Xiaomi, NIVEA, and INSPI received the most orders from shoppers during the 11.11 Big Christmas Sale.
- Shoppers found endless fun and joy throughout 11.11 Big Christmas Sale: Live streaming continued to be a core part of the online shopping experience. 5 million hours of live streams were watched on Shopee Live, as users connected with sellers and caught NCT 127 and other top stars live on Shopee. Over 270 million plays were recorded on Shopee Prizes in the Philippines, as users enjoyed more fun and rewards at 11.11.
- ShopeePay brings more rewards to users, serves more payment needs: This 11.11, more shoppers used ShopeePay for greater convenience, security, and value.
- Seamless payments both online and offline with ‘Deals near Me’: Through ‘Deals near Me,’ Shopee’s location-based feature, shoppers discovered the best deals offered by merchants nearby and showed their support with over 1.2 million offline payment vouchers claimed.
- Meeting all payment needs with ShopeePay: ShopeePay has also become more deeply integrated with users’ lifestyles by serving multiple payment needs, including bills and tax payments. During 11.11, almost 100,000 users used ShopeePay to make their utility bill payments, benefitting from rewards in the form of cashbacks.
Shop from the 11.11 Big Christmas Sale: https://shopee.ph/m/christmas-sale
Download Shopee for free on the App Store or Google Play Store.
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Isambard-AI, the UK’s most powerful AI supercomputer, goes live
6:39 p.m. July 18, 2025
(NVIDIA PR) The U.K. has officially joined the premier league of global AI infrastructure — and it’s not starting small.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing (BriCS), leaders today unveiled Isambard-AI, the most powerful AI supercomputer ever built in the U.K.
U.K. Secretary of State Peter Kyle was joined by leaders from across academia, industry and government, including Simon McIntosh-Smith, director of the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing, and Neil MacDonald, executive vice president and general manager for Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s server business.
“And as we press this switch to activate the UK’s most powerful supercomputer, we are embarking on Britain’s super future where AI contributes towards the delivery of better public services, greater public prosperity, deeper scientific discovery and stronger national security,” Kyle said.
The numbers back up Kyle’s statement:
- 21 exaflops of AI performance
- 5,448 NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips
- Set to rank 11th worldwide on the latest TOP500 list of world’s fastest supercomputers
- More than 10x faster than the next-fastest supercomputer in the U.K. More computing power than all other U.K. supercomputers combined
- Ranked fourth globally for energy efficiency
Engineering teams working collaboratively to maneuver and install components within the supercomputer’s data hall, illustrating the complex and coordinated effort behind the build.
Why It Matters
Isambard-AI gives U.K. researchers and businesses a once-in-a-generation leap in computing power. It’s a platform to accelerate breakthroughs in:
- AI-driven drug discovery
- Advanced climate modeling
- Materials science
- Large language models (LLMs) tuned to U.K. languages and laws
Backed by £225 million in government investment and built with NVIDIA, HPE, the University of Bristol and others, Isambard-AI signals a clear ambition: to lead in AI, the U.K. must lead in compute.
Simon McIntosh-Smith, director of the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing, with Simon Appleby, AI business lead at HPE.
A glimpse into the project’s strategic planning, showing a screen outlining the ambitious goal of installing multiple supercomputers, including Isambard-AI’s phases, within 12 months.
A Turning Point for UK Science
Named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel — the 19th-century engineer who reshaped Britain with railways, bridges and ships — Isambard-AI brings that same scale of ambition to AI research.
And like Brunel’s projects during his era, it moves fast. Having gone from conception to deployment in just under two years, including the construction of the modular data center in 48 hours, the supercomputer is already running live projects aligned with national priorities.
Early flagship projects include:
- Nightingale AI: A sovereign, multimodal health foundation model trained on National Health Service (NHS) data to support earlier diagnoses and personalized care.
- BritLLM: A U.K.-developed LLM project supporting British languages like Welsh, alongside English, to promote inclusivity and better public service delivery in healthcare, education and public services.
- UCL Cancer Screening AI: Developing the first scalable AI system for prostate cancer detection via MRI, aiming for faster diagnoses and tailored treatments.
- EIMCRYSTAL (University of Liverpool): Using AI to search 68 million chemical combinations to discover greener, more sustainable industrial materials — reducing reliance on rare or toxic inputs.
- EgoAI (University of Bristol): Using AI to analyze recordings from wearable cameras and other smart devices to help people perform tasks better at home. This holds immense promise for assisting dementia patients in the future.
A technician carefully installs a server blade equipped with direct liquid cooling, demonstrating the hands-on precision involved in assembling Isambard-AI’s advanced computing infrastructure.
Built Fast, Built Smart
How do you build a supercomputer in half the usual time?
“We treated the project like a high-performance processor,” said Simon McIntosh-Smith, director at BriCS. “We executed everything in parallel.”
Key to this speed:
- Parallelized project management
- Early procurement of critical hardware, particularly GPUs
- Prefabricated modular data halls shipped in and assembled in days
- Relentless optimization of delivery timelines
- Ground broke in June 2024. By June 2025, the full 5-megawatt system was live: built, tested and running at a global scale.
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Smart launches revamped Online Store, rolls out Postpaid Plan 799
9:43 p.m. July 7, 2025
Mobile services provider Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) is making it simpler and faster for more Filipinos to elevate their digital lifestyle with the launch of its revamped Smart Online Store (https://store.smart.com.ph/), a portal where new and existing customers can conveniently explore and securely avail of the latest prepaid and postpaid offers with just a few taps on their smartphone or computer.
As a special introductory offer, the revamped Smart Online Store is the launch platform for Smart Postpaid Plan 799, a SIM-Only Plan that comes with 15 GB open-access data for all sites and apps, 100 GB of 5G data for six months for use in Smart 5G-covered areas, Unlimited Calls and Texts with Landline Calls, and a complimentary Netflix Mobile subscription.
As an added perk for subscribers who will subscribe to the new Smart Postpaid Plan 799, applications made through the Smart Online Store will receive 50% more open access data (7.5 GB) for the first six months.
Easily sign up for a Smart Postpaid Plan 799
New and existing subscribers can conveniently sign up for Smart Postpaid Plan 799 by simply going to https://store.smart.com.ph/ (https://store.smart.com.ph/), selecting “SIM-Only Plans,” and then choosing “Plan 799.”
Customers must then fill out the required personal information to complete their online application.
Initially available only on the Smart Online Store, Smart Postpaid Plan 799 will also be offered to all Smart Stores nationwide soon.
Value-packed offers at your fingertips
Aside from enabling subscribers to avail of Smart Postpaid Plan 799 with just a few clicks, the Smart Online Store also allows customers to bundle a device with their SIM-Only Plan.
Moreover, Smart Online Store’s intuitively designed portal makes it so much easier for customers to discover other value-packed products and services that suit their lifestyle – from data, call, and text offers, SIMs and eSIMs, to the latest smartphones.
The portal also allows users to reload for credits, avail of limited promos, purchase phones bundled with Smart and TNT SIM cards, buy devices under Smart Bro 5G promos, and order Smart and TNT SIM packages.
Lastly, customers can enjoy a wide range of payment options with priority handling for select credit cards.
The revamped Smart Online Store is just one of the many ways that make Smart simply reliable for Filipino mobile users looking to level up their digital lifestyle and enjoy the many benefits of technology.
Visit the Smart Online Store and sign up for a Smart Postpaid Plan 799 now at https://store.smart.com.ph/.#
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Mega Sardines: 50 years of serving nutrient-rich meals, primed to go global
10:22 a.m. June 20, 2025
As it celebrates its 50th anniversary, Mega Prime Foods Inc. reflects on a remarkable journey—one that began with a simple mission to provide affordable, nutritious food to Filipino families.
What started as a humble fishing company has now become one of the most innovative and socially driven food manufacturers in Southeast Asia, producing over 3 million cans of sardines daily from its advanced facilities in Batangas and Zamboanga.
Sardines, long a staple in Filipino households, are among the most nutritionally dense foods in the world—rich in Omega-3 fatty acids for brain and heart health, vitamin B12 for metabolic support, and a host of other essential nutrients like calcium, iron, and selenium. Mega Sardines ensures these health benefits are preserved through its industry-leading “catch to can in 12 hours” process—setting it apart in freshness, quality, and care.
For Chairman and Founder William Tiu Lim, the journey has not been easy. From natural disasters like the devastating 1970s typhoon that destroyed much of their fishing fleet, to political and economic crises, Mega has endured and grown stronger. Through it all, Tiu Lim held fast to three core values: Quality, Innovation, and Malasakit—a uniquely Filipino term meaning selfless concern for others.
“We’ve always aimed for the best possible quality,” said Tiu Lim. “Our fish go from sea to can in just 12 hours, compared to the industry’s usual 1–3 days. That freshness is our edge.”
This commitment to innovation and excellence recently culminated in a global milestone: Mega Sardines was designated a “Superfood” by the Medical Wellness Association (MWA), becoming the first seafood product ever to receive the distinction. The recognition was awarded during Mega’s 50th anniversary celebration by MWA Board Member and faculty member James Michael Lafferty, underscoring the brand’s role in promoting global wellness.
“I was honored to announce Mega Sardines as the world’s first seafood Superfood,” said Lafferty. “It’s a testament to their quality, innovation, and mission to improve health outcomes.”
As the company transitions into its second generation of leadership under President and CEO Michelle Tiu Lim-Chan, the vision for global expansion is clear—but rooted in the same human values that built the brand.
“We are people-first,” said Lim-Chan. “We serve our customers, support our employees, and provide opportunities to improve lives. Growth is not just about geography—it’s about purpose.”
Mega Prime Foods is already expanding its product lines, offering not only sardines but also tuna, mackerel, fruit cocktails, coconut gel, Primo non-alcoholic sparkling juices, and the Jimm’s Coffee functional beverage line.
“Our proudest achievement is our ability to turn compassion into tangible, quality products,” Lim-Chan added. “We are not done yet. The next 50 years will be even more exciting.”
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