Vietnam’s well-known entrepreneur ventures into AI, blockchain business

Pham Thanh Hung, widely known as “Shark Hung”, has officially joined the board of Hyra Holdings - a pioneer in AI infrastructure, blockchain, and innovative investment technologies in Vietnam, as an independent member.

The announcement was made at the 2025 AGM in Hanoi in May of Hyra Holdings, the parent company of Hyra Tek JSC.

As a seasoned entrepreneur and a familiar face in Vietnam’s startup scene, Hung is poised to drive Hyra Holdings’ strategic expansion into AI and Blockchain sectors.

He is currently vice chairman of major real estate developer Cen Group and CEO of multiple companies including CenInvest, CenHomes, Cenland, CenValue, and Ngoi Sao Moi (New Star)

According to the company, Hung's role will go beyond providing strategic oversight but also be instrumental in forging connections with global investment funds and instilling modern governance standards across Hyra’s tech ecosystem.

Also at the AGM, Hyra Holdings approved a plan to establish a venture capital fund named Hyra Combinator, valued at $500 million by 2030. The fund will focus on breakthrough sectors such as AI, Fintech, Blockchain, Quantum Tech, and will operate under a blended capital model.

Hyra Holdings was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Vietnam. It operates across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the United States.

The company stated that by the end of 2024, its ecosystem had reached 1 million global users. Notably, Hyra AI surpassed 2 million connected devices in 205 countries, with a total compute power of 360,000 TFLOPS.

The company also announced the groundbreaking of Hyra Zone - a $30 million AI data center - and the opening of new offices in Singapore, Dubai, and the U.S.

Further data shows that Hyra Holdings was formerly known as CMC Holdings JSC, with Tran Nam Chung as CEO.

In 2022, the company stirred public attention when it announced the successful raising of $1.5 million in a Co-Founder funding round. According to the firm, these funds were allocated to the development of a digital ecosystem aimed at serving billions of users worldwide.

The company also outlined plans to launch various projects including a real estate exchange, a reverse auction system, and a banking system, with rollouts scheduled for 2022 and 2023.

CMC Holdings once set a bold goal of IPO on the Nasdaq stock exchange by 2027, following a roadmap of seven funding rounds, including Co-Founder, Angel, Series A, B, C, PE, and IB.

Its digital ecosystem was expected to include Hyperas – a specialized platform for tokenizing and digitizing assets, Pindias – a platform for managing transactions involving digital assets, Divega – an e-commerce marketplace using a unique reverse auction model, and Rapital Bank – a digital bank designed to support high-volume global transactions.

Returning to Hyra Holdings’ current ecosystem, according to the website of Hyra Tek (Hyra Network), Hyra AI is the world’s first decentralized AI infrastructure operating on Layer-3 blockchain, combining verifiable compute networks and a fully on-chain decentralized governance mechanism (DAO).

This solution is introduced as a means for all nations, enterprises, and citizens to access and develop transparent and secure artificial intelligence.

Hyra Tek further stated that this achievement has enabled the company to rapidly expand to 200 countries, connecting over 2 million devices and generating stable monthly revenue of $100,000.