Hello Demo,

I’m sure you’re familiar with Pokemon. At the very least, you’re aware of the existence of Pikachu: The yellow electric mouse is the face of the entire franchise, which includes video games, trading cards, anime, and films.

In the sixth generation of the Pokemon video game, publisher Nintendo introduced the concept of Mega Evolution – “an evolution beyond evolution.” Through the use of specific items, a Pokemon would undergo a temporary transformation that does not only change its appearance and behavior but also drastically increases its strength. It made for some pretty epic Pokemon battles in the game.

Where am I going with this? Well, our top-funded startup this week raised a lot of money – over 3x more than what the company that landed second on our list. It’s also making up more than 40% of the total funding raised this week.

In an era when “mega rounds” – usually worth US$100 million or more – regularly make headlines, it certainly feels that some businesses are unlocking Mega Evolution with the power of a specific thing called funding. But only time will tell if the transformation is temporary or if it’s something more sustainable.

You can find all other important investment deals that happened in the last few days in our weekly funding news wrap-up.

Let’s dive into the biggest deals and M&As that recently took place.

— Stefanie

🇨🇳 Infinigence is an AI infrastructure software developer based in China. It raised US$343 million in series C funding from Baidu, Guokai Technology Venture Investment, Hangzhou High-tech Financial Investment, Legend Capital, Lenovo Capital, Qiming Venture Partners, Shunwei Capital, Tencent, and Xuhui Capital.

🇮🇳 Tessolve, a semiconductor solutions company from India, secured US$75 million in a late-stage round. Novo Tellus, TPG Growth, and Vector Line Capital were among the investors.

🇦🇺 Archa is an Australian corporate card and spend management platform. It banked US$35 million in a debt round from investors including Zip, The Iconic, BetaShares, Netspace, and The Fintech Fund, as well as former Macquarie executives.

🇮🇱 Israel-based Pluto Security helps businesses monitor employees’ use of AI tools and agents. The West Asian startup bagged US$32 million in series A money from Jump Capital.

🇸🇦 Autobia is a B2B automotive spare parts trading platform. Based in Saudi Arabia, it banked US$12 million in a series A round from Aljazira Capital, Artal Capital, and Waed Ventures.

Here’s the complete list of this week’s funding chart: 61 deals worth over US$737 million.

🇮🇱 Loops, an AI-powered analytics platform, has been acquired by Salesforce for US$30 million.

Fundraising is hard. To make things slightly easier, we’ve compiled this list of fundraising startups for our subscribers. Do you run a startup that’s raising at the moment or know someone who does? Sign your company up for listing here.

🇸🇬 This startup from Singapore offers an AI learning companion for high school and college students.

🇮🇳 This Indian airline connects Tier 2 and Tier 3 Indian cities with affordable flights and a digital-first booking and travel experience.

🇯🇵 This Japan-based startup develops humanoid robots and AI for eldercare and other real-world workplaces.

You can find the full list of fundraising startups in Asia over here.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Fundraising often involves reaching out to several contacts, many of whom founders might not have dealt with before. To provide some transparency to this process, we created Glasswall, a platform for founders to give feedback and recommendations on investors. Check out the full list here.

• ✅︎ “It wasn’t merely about the numbers or the metrics; it was about recognizing the potential and the passion behind our endeavor.” – Read more.
• ❌“[Runs] like a small shop, not a professional organization. All decisions made at the top. Guys at the top often make decisions for personal gain.” – Read more
• ✅︎ “Very detail-oriented and evaluates the business or future plans very fundamentally, so having proper clarity is very important for founders before they pitch.” – Read more

Lists of most active investors in the region

China | India | Indonesia | Japan | Singapore | Southeast Asia

List of top-funded startups in Asia

China | India | Indonesia | Israel | Japan | Hong Kong | Singapore | South Korea | Vietnam

1️⃣ On the SGX

Koh Boon Hwee, chairman of the Singapore Exchange, shares his thoughts on the struggles that the bourse has been facing. He points out that while Singapore investors are willing to take risks on volatile growth stocks overseas, they are unlikely to make similar bets at home, where the local market still lacks flow and liquidity. Read more on The Straits Times.

2️⃣ After the exit

An IPO or an M&A gives founders, investors, and even early employees access to liquidity, but this leads to a bigger question: How much of that value strengthens the next generation of startups? Check out Korea Tech Desk to dive deeper.

3️⃣ In the spotlight

Startups based in Singapore snapped up 91% of Southeast Asia’s US$10.7 billion venture capital funding in the first nine months of 2026. That’s up from 62% in 2019, and participation from US investors has remained relatively steady since 2020. Read more on the Singapore Business Review.

4️⃣ Eyes on the youth

Young Ventures is a student-led VC firm launching across a broad network of universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Stanford. The platform, which focuses on deeptech, operates on the premise that students in these institutions can find founders and university-originated technologies earlier than conventional investors.. Learn more about the fund here.

5️⃣ Anatomy of a successful VC

A recent research paper analyzed the largest dataset of individual venture capitalists to date, painting a detailed portrait of these investors. They found that success is highly concentrated among a small number of VCs and that there are some correlations. Find out what these factors arehere about what these factors seem to be.

Today’s edition was written by Stefanie Yeo. It’s edited by Eileen C. Ang.

• Inside Line Man Wongnai’s 2025 financials
• Meet the startups stepping into the spotlight
• Sea and Google join forces on AI

Hello Demo,

When Foodpanda exited Thailand in May 2025, it left behind a food delivery market dominated by two players: homegrown platform Line Man Wongnai (LMWN) and regional player Grab. For LMWN, the shake-up presented an opportunity to strengthen its position.

The bet seems to be paying off. For 2025, LMWN grew revenue 21% year on year, while gross profit was up 39%.

However, this came with a widening bottom line. Net loss nearly doubled to US$43 million, which CEO Yod Chinsupakul attributed primarily to one-off, non-cash accounting items, without disclosing further details.

Together, LMWN and Grab account for almost 90% of food delivery spending in Thailand, with the former holding about 41%, according to a Foodspark report.

LMWN is now looking to turn its scale into sustained profitability while diversifying into payments, merchant software, and AI. It is also preparing for a potential 2027 IPO, with several listing venues under consideration.

In today’s Top Story, we take a closer look at LMWN’s 2025 financials, examining its growth drivers and discussing whether its business expansion can put it on a path to profit ahead of its potential listing.

Samreen Ahmad, journalist

On‑demand services lift Line Man Wongnai’s 2025 revenue to $544m

Photo credit: Line Man Wongnai

While all three of LMWN’s business segments grew in 2025, on-demand services – which includes food and grocery delivery, ride-hailing, and messaging – remained its largest unit, accounting for 88% of revenue.

Revenue from the payments and financial services segment rose nearly 40% year on year, while the merchant digital solutions unit benefited from new merchant acquisitions, low customer churn, and a broader range of product offerings.

Startup Spotlight is a series that features young, up-and-coming startups. Want to get your startup featured? Submit your information here.

Image credit: Shutterstock

• Protecting creator voices from unauthorized AI training
• Move over generic homework solvers, this AI tutor tracks mastery
• This startup digitizes Thailand’s informal service economy

1️⃣ Sea partners with Google AI fund to explore new applications

Through the partnership, Google will give Sea Labs – Sea’s technology innovation and development arm – access to selected frontier AI models and technical expertise.

2️⃣ Anthropic Q3 revenue jumps 45% to $16.8b: source

The company said it was profitable on an adjusted basis. This comes ahead of its IPO, which is expected to happen after the US midterm elections in November.

3️⃣ India’s Jio Platforms targets $3.2b IPO

Jio has set a price band of US$11 to US$12 per share. It will use part of the IPO proceeds to repay debt at its telecom unit.

4️⃣ Southeast Asia fintech funding jumps to $2.3b: report

According to a report from Tracxn, four rounds worth at leastUS$100 million accounted for 86% of total funding in the first nine months of 2026.

5️⃣ ByteDance in talks to buy MediaTek data center AI chips

If the deal pushes through, ByteDance would become MediaTek’s second major customer for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) after Google.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• Starling Studio - Cosmo5 Acquires Brew Group, strengthening its Southeast Asia Presence: Cosmo5, a leading independent global marketing performance group, has acquired Brew Group, a Singapore-headquartered marketing group.
• SotaTek - SotaTek expands cloud capabilities with AWS Cloud Operations Competency: SotaTek strengthens its AWS capabilities from architecture to operations with the AWS Cloud Operations Competency.
• Beldex - Beldex Launches $1M Global Grants Program: Beldex launches $1M Grants Program at Korea Blockchain Week, funding privacy apps, tools and infrastructure worldwide.

EVENTS HAPPENING

You can also check out our curated list of trending tech events and Tech in Asia's signature events.

Cross-border growth and talent The EMERGE: Shaping the Next Generation of Corporate Services summit begins with a dedicated session on cross-border growth, unpacking exclusive survey findings on international expansion, new service lines, and partnerships. Next is the data reveal, featuring a powerhouse panel that explores critical choices regarding M&A, staying independent, and ensuring seamless client and staff continuity during leadership transitions. Secure your seat here.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Digital Marketing Intern at Ematic Solutions | Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
• Digital Marketing (for Fresh Graduates) at Deliveree On-Demand Logistics (Southeast Asia) | Manila, Philippines
• Account Manager at Boleh Dicoba Digital | Bandung, Java, Indonesia

• Tracking the 2025 financials of Funding Societies, Waresix, and Temus
• Spotlight: why SEA apps want us hooked on AI microdramas
• GoTo shareholders clear 2.7% share cancellation

Hello Demo,

Indonesia’s P2P lending industry has had a rough few years. Several players have either shut down or been embroiled in scandals, including Investree and KoinWorks.

Among those still standing is Modalku, the Indonesian arm of Funding Societies, which also operates in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Despite the funding slowdown, Funding Societies narrowed its net losses by 10% in 2025. But it’s hardly out of the woods, with losses still running at a substantial US$35 million.

You can dig into its other financial metrics in our updated tracker, which also features the latest numbers from Waresix and Temus.

Meanwhile, tech companies across Southeast Asia appear to have caught the microdrama bug. YouTube, Shopee, and Grab are all jumping on the bandwagon, hoping that bite-sized dramas will keep users glued to their platforms.

For YouTube, the appeal is obvious. But for Shopee and Grab? Do people really open a shopping or ride-hailing app for a dose of drama?

In today’s Spotlight, I take a closer look at the microdrama craze sweeping tech platforms.

Jofie Yordan, journalist

SEA financials tracker: Funding Societies grows revenue by 24%

Photo credit: Funding Societies

We’ve compiled official filings and financial statements to help readers see which private tech firms are growing, profitable, or cash-generative.

Microdrama push on SEA’s platforms raises questions about its payoff

Image credit: Ulla

Microdramas seem to be everywhere these days. YouTube is pushing short-form dramas through Shorts, Shopee has a dedicated tab for them, and even Grab is reportedly getting in on the action.

I spent some time browsing microdramas on Shopee Indonesia, and most, if not all, seemed AI-generated. The quality, to put it mildly, was hardly impressive.

The visuals also had AI written all over them, while the voices sounded stiff and unnatural.

In August, we took a deep dive into AI-generated microdramas – a trend described as a “multibillion-dollar business.” The format first took off in China before spreading to other markets, including Southeast Asia.

On Shopee Indonesia, I learned that microdramas are racking up thousands of likes and hundreds of comments despite their questionable production quality.

Yet Shopee is giving users a reason to tune in: coins. By watching these shows, viewers can earn loyalty points that they can use to offset purchases on the platform.

The logic is simple: Keep users entertained, give them a little incentive to stay, and hope they’ll eventually buy something.

For Shopee and Grab, whose core businesses are shopping and ride-hailing, the calculation is more interesting. After all, those coins aren’t free.

Shopee, in particular, is effectively paying users to spend more time watching videos, betting that their attention will eventually translate into more purchases.

But will a few extra minutes of screen time generate enough sales to make the investment worthwhile? And do we really need consumer apps giving us even more ways to mindlessly scroll?

1️⃣ GoTo shareholders approve canceling 2.7% of shares

The extraordinary shareholders’ general meeting, held on October 14, approved all agenda items. These included the cancellation of 32 billion treasury shares and the resignation of vice president director Catherine Hindra Sutjahyo.

2️⃣ Anthropic opens Singapore office, signs AI safety pact

The US-based AI company opened its fifth Asia-Pacific office in Singapore and signed a memorandum of understanding on AI safety with the SG government. The memorandum covers technical exchanges on model evaluation, testing standards, and incident response, as well as research on AI adoption and its impact.

3️⃣ SG VC firm Antares Ventures raises $50m, targets $100m fund

The deeptech VC firm, which focuses on science- and engineering-led startups, said the fund’s backers include family offices, as well as corporate and strategic investors from Southeast Asia, Japan, and Korea. It added that it will continue raising funds while deploying capital selectively.

4️⃣ Spacetech startup Aliena raises $5.5m to expand into Europe

The Singapore-based spacetech startup’s series A1 round was led by investment firm In Group Holdings. Founded by two former NTU doctoral researchers, the company develops electric propulsion engines that help satellites maintain their positions in space.

5️⃣ Coins.ph may face BSP action over alleged dealings

The Philippines’ central bank may take action against cryptocurrency exchange and financial services platform Coins.ph over alleged dealings with offshore gambling firms, CoinDesk reported, citing sources.

Coins.ph said it was aware of the situation and took the matter seriously, but denied knowingly serving offshore gaming or gambling operators.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• Starling Studio - Cosmo5 Acquires Brew Group, strengthening its Southeast Asia Presence: Cosmo5, a leading independent global marketing performance group, has acquired Brew Group, a Singapore-headquartered marketing group.
• SotaTek - SotaTek expands cloud capabilities with AWS Cloud Operations Competency: SotaTek strengthens its AWS capabilities from architecture to operations with the AWS Cloud Operations Competency.
• Beldex - Beldex Launches $1M Global Grants Program: Beldex launches $1M Grants Program at Korea Blockchain Week, funding privacy apps, tools and infrastructure worldwide.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Digital Marketing Intern at Ematic Solutions | Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
• Digital Marketing (for Fresh Graduates) at Deliveree On-Demand Logistics (Southeast Asia) | Manila, Philippines
• Account Manager at Boleh Dicoba Digital | Bandung, Java, Indonesia

• Flipkart’s race to catch up with quick commerce, food delivery
• A look at the 2027 tech IPO pipeline in Asia
• From our archives: what’s propping up India’s quick commerce boom

Hello Demo,

Imagine opening a quick commerce app and seeing milk priced at 1 rupee (US$0.01). I shop on these apps regularly, and even I would have assumed it was a typo. But the offer on Flipkart Minutes, which I saw in March, was no mistake.

The Walmart-backed ecommerce company is using aggressive discounts to gain ground in India’s quick commerce battle. The cost of competing, however, is steep. Flipkart is burning around US$31 million a month on the business.

It wants to become one of the country’s top two quick commerce players by the end of this year. It’s also piloting food delivery in Bengaluru, hoping lower restaurant commissions and an existing customer base will help it break into a market dominated by Swiggy and Zomato.

Both bets put Flipkart up against established competitors. In our latest premium story, we explore the firm’s strategy to challenge established players and get ahead in two of India’s most competitive markets: quick commerce and food delivery.

Meanwhile, Flipkart has also put its IPO plans on hold indefinitely, citing market uncertainty.

Our second featured story takes a broader look at Asia’s tech IPO pipeline through a tracker that follows upcoming listings across the region. They range from AI startups to data center operators, each with different conditions shaping their market debut plans.

Samreen Ahmad, journalist

1️⃣ Flipkart’s costly late push into quick commerce and food delivery

Illustration by: Ulla

The ecommerce innovator, which has features like cash-on-delivery and flexible returns, helped bring millions of Indians online. But in recent years, rivals have gained ground in emerging segments, with Meesho building a value-commerce business and Blinkit, Zepto, and Swiggy Instamart reshaping quick commerce.

Now, Flipkart is catching up. Can its deep pockets help reel in rivals?

2️⃣ Tracking IPOs: AI firms and chipmakers lead Asia listings

Asia’s IPO market is fuelled by the AI boom, with model developers and data center operators gearing up for public listings even as market volatility forces some companies to delay their plans.

Among the most closely watched prospects is Chinese LLM developer Moonshot, which recently closed a funding round at a US$50 billion valuation.

Quick commerce is losing money, but investors keep coming

Photo credit: Shutterstock/ avi_Sharma1030

Flipkart’s costly push into quick commerce brings to mind our story from last month on why investors continue backing the sector despite mounting losses. The piece examines how companies look beyond delivery fees to advertising and other revenue streams, while also highlighting the limits of taking the instant-delivery model beyond groceries.

The company’s determination to win quick commerce even as Zepto puts its IPO plans on hold and other startups in the vertical shut down shows how much is still at stake in the market.

1️⃣ VinFast offers dealers up to $60,000 to open EV showrooms

Dealer partners who open new electric motorcycle showrooms in Indonesia and the Philippines receive a support package scaled to each showroom’s size, floor area, and dealership standards.

2️⃣ Character.AI files for bankruptcy as Disney bids $20m

The firm had a peak valuation of US$2.5 billion in August 2024 and was previously backed by Andreessen Horowitz.

3️⃣ DeepSeek to lead seed round for robotics startup Winverse AI

The deal would value Winverse at about US$400 million after the investment and add to DeepSeek’s work in embodied AI, which applies AI models to physical systems such as robots.

4️⃣ Indian fintech firm Juspay revenue rises 30% to $75m

The SoftBank-backed company reported a US$10 million net loss for FY26 as it invested in expansion abroad and AI.

5️⃣ Vertex Ventures leads $3m seed in AI science startup Drylab

Drylab says it will use the funding to hire sales staff, expand its engineering and biology teams, and seek security and compliance certifications.

Get insights on regional expansion and workforce empowerment

Following morning discussions on compliance and AI, the EMERGE: Shaping the Next Generation of Corporate Services summit shifts focus to strategic growth and human capital. Organized by Tech in Asia, this afternoon agenda provides company leaders with the evidence and peer perspectives needed to build a future-ready practice.

It begins with a dedicated session on cross-border growth, unpacking exclusive survey findings on international expansion, new service lines, and partnerships. Next is the data reveal, featuring a powerhouse panel that explores critical choices regarding M&A, staying independent, and ensuring seamless client and staff continuity during leadership transitions.

The summit closes by addressing the critical need to empower talent and move beyond theory to address job redesign, the transition to advisory services, and the real-world realities of AI adoption for SME firms.

Gain the insights and connections required to lead the next generation of corporate services. Secure your seat here.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• Starling Studio - Cosmo5 Acquires Brew Group, strengthening its Southeast Asia Presence: Cosmo5, a leading independent global marketing performance group, has acquired Brew Group, a Singapore-headquartered marketing group.
• SotaTek - SotaTek expands cloud capabilities with AWS Cloud Operations Competency: SotaTek strengthens its AWS capabilities from architecture to operations with the AWS Cloud Operations Competency.
• Beldex - Beldex Launches $1M Global Grants Program: Beldex launches $1M Grants Program at Korea Blockchain Week, funding privacy apps, tools and infrastructure worldwide.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Digital Marketing Intern at Ematic Solutions | Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
• Digital Marketing (for Fresh Graduates) at Deliveree On-Demand Logistics (Southeast Asia) | Manila, Philippines
• Account Executive at TLab | Jakarta, Indonesia

Hello Demo,

There seems to be a growing disconnect between what investors are willing to pour into a private AI company and what they will cough up for those that have gone public.

In recent weeks, Chinese AI companies have raised hefty funding rounds from VC and private equity firms.

Image credit: Made by Ulla/Tech in Asia with the help of AI

Chinese LLM developer Moonshot closed a new funding round that pushed its valuation to US$50 billion. DeepSeek is also looking to raise about US$12 billion in a new round. Both are reportedly preparing for their public debut next year.

Yet, those that have gone public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) have seen their share prices drop just mere months after their market debut.

The share price of agentic model maker Z.ai, formerly known as Zhipu AI, has tumbled by 26% from its closing peak of HK$2,410 (US$307.10) in July. Fellow model developer MiniMax has seen its share price skid by almost 40% since its market debut on January 9, when it closed at HK$345 (US$43.96).

These developments show how much more scrutiny AI firms face from public markets than from their private backers. Private investors are betting on the growth potential of these AI companies, while the markets want profit.

Even data center operators, some of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom, have pushed back or withdrawn their IPO plans.

Australia-based Firmus, which has operations in Southeast Asia, has cancelled its market debut plans. The Nvidia-backed firm’s IPO was expected to be the biggest Australian Securities Exchange listing in almost 30 years, yet that storyline was still not enough to get it to the finish line.

Some investors in the country say “confidence evaporated” for Firmus as it was still unprofitable.

Financial analysts have cautioned that the IPO window for AI companies may be shrinking.

As early as August, PitchBook warned that wars, rising energy prices, and “AI’s draining of moats around business models across industries” has dissipated investor confidence in VC-backed IPOs.

If Anthropic’s expected November debut doesn’t go well, it could sink AI listing dreams far and wide.

Elyssa Lopez, journalist

Editor’s note: This is the Wednesday edition of The Prompt, our AI newsletter that comes out twice a week. Catch up on Monday’s edition, where we looked at ElevenLabs’ India ambitions.

1️⃣ Anthropic says hello lah to Singapore

The Singapore office is Anthropic’s fourth location in Asia, following Japan, India, and South Korea. / Photo credit: Anthropic

Anthropic is arriving in Southeast Asia, with its Singapore office opening today.

It chose the city-state for good reason. Singapore placed second among countries in the Anthropic Economic Index, which ranked the number of Claude users relative to a market’s population.

When it first announced the news, Anthropic said the move was driven by strong enterprise demand from this side of the globe.

Indeed, a McKinsey report made in collaboration with EDB Singapore and Tech in Asia has shown that more than half of enterprises in Southeast Asia have gone beyond experimentation when it comes to AI use, higher than the global average.

Anthropic faces tough competition against rival OpenAI. The latter opened its Singapore office in 2024, and it has already inked multiple partnerships with some of the biggest names in the country and beyond, including the local government and ride-hailing giant Grab.

Curiously, despite the firm’s active partnership-building in the region, OpenAI only hired its first executive head for the region in August – just a few weeks before Anthropic announced it was opening shop in Singapore.

Meanwhile, Anthropic’s general manager for the region is an ex-OpenAI employee.

2️⃣ The rise of US-branded open-source models

Ever since DeepSeek made headlines last year for performing just as well as US frontier AI models with less computing power, some American AI companies have been working double time to prove they can do the same.

And Nvidia hopes to be their godfather.

The firm is reportedly seeking to either invest in or buy Reflection AI, a US-based maker of open-weight AI models.

Founded in 2024, Reflection AI says its latest model Beam can rival those from China – namely DeepSeek, Qwen, and Z.ai – in terms of performance and cost. Beam can reportedly perform as well as Z.ai’s flagship model GLM-5.2 in terms of reasoning, but with two to three times less compute.

It’s not the only move Nvidia is making in the open-source space. In August, it signed a licensing deal with another US open-source model maker – Poolside. The startup also says it can work just as well as DeepSeek’s frontier models but at a lower cost.

These moves show that even the industry knows enterprises are hitting their limits when it comes to AI spending. The era of tokenmaxxing is over.

With more enterprises adopting token-hungry AI agents, using open-source models is the economical choice. For those doing business in the US, finding a partner that will not ruffle the feathers of the US government may be a safer bet than using a cheaper model from China.

We speak with leaders about how their companies are putting artificial intelligence to work. In this edition, Tech in Asia’s senior editor Melissa Goh speaks with Federico Torreti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Oracle, who has a bird’s-eye view on how hundreds of thousands of enterprises are applying the technology.

Torreti, whose career in AI precedes the genAI boom, talks about why measuring AI through vanity metrics isn’t particularly useful, common mistakes companies make when designing AI pilots, and how he’s exploring the tech alongside his two young sons.

The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Federico Torreti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Oracle / Photo credit: Oracle

What does your job as “VP of AI” entail? What does a typical day look like for you?

A large part of my work is focused on having conversations with customers and understanding how they’re thinking about using AI to make it useful in the context of how they operate it.

A lot of those conversations quickly move away from the technology and more into how the organization actually works.

I also spend a lot of time working backward from customer problems, understanding how tech can enable them and what obstacles they face in terms of extracting the value from technology for their businesses.

Where has AI moved the needle for Oracle’s biggest enterprise clients?

A good example in the region is the work we’ve done with SMRT Corporation. SMRT has taken a conscious effort in understanding how best to extend the rich context that they have on their transportation network and develop an effective predictive maintenance system combining maintenance history, asset information, usage, and condition monitoring.

For SMRT, that translates to clear OpEx advantages. Their commuters have also seen the highest level of availability since the deployment of this technology.

You’ve argued that token burn rate isn’t a particularly useful measure of how effectively an organization is using AI. What should companies be measuring instead?

A lot of companies get stuck in this notion of vanity metrics: how much faster they are at doing something, agent count, or how many tokens have been consumed. Unfortunately, in many cases, such vanity metrics are taken as proxies for business value, and I don’t think that’s quite right.

Some organizations claim that their people are now able to submit these invoices in a much faster way, freeing them to do more strategic work. But even that statement, I find to be incomplete. You have to be specific – what work? What decisions are they now able to make because they have more mental capacity? How are their responsibilities or performance changing?

If an analyst for an accountant is spending less time assembling proposals or submitting invoices, we should identify where the capacity actually went. It’s important to think through the lens of an end-to-end business process and not within organizational silos.

What’s one thing companies underestimate about how difficult it is to do?

Companies underestimate how easily AI-generated content can pass for finished work, leaving someone else to supply the missing context, checking, and judgment.

The hard part is giving an agent enough context to know whether the work is ready to move forward, what remains unresolved across other systems, and who can authorize the next step.

For example, an agent might produce a polished customer proposal. If it is forwarded without checking whether it reflects the latest conversation or includes commitments the business can make, the next person has to investigate and correct it.

While the proposal was produced quickly, the work required to make it usable has been passed downstream. That effort is easy to overlook when success is measured through logins, chats, or the volume of documents generated.

Companies need to assess whether the whole AI-enabled process delivers a better result. They need to measure whether the customer gets a correct answer sooner, whether fewer mistakes reach the next team, and whether the total effort has fallen, not just that of a task.

As Southeast Asian companies look to apply AI in their operations, is there one thing that they should be doing more of, or something they can learn from their peers globally?

It’s less about the region or geography and more about the maturity that companies might have in embarking with the adoption of the technology. The conditions that make a pilot successful can hide what it would take to actually operate a viable business. That would be the one thing that I would want to make sure that companies in the region focus on.

We talked about the productivity paradox where you focus on the pilot on the submission of invoices, but you ignore the fact that there is something that happens after you submit them.

The other aspect is that there is hidden implicit knowledge. When designing a pilot, there is a risk of creating a protective environment where you have familiar questions, employees who are quietly correcting mistakes. All these emerge the moment that the system is exposed to the real world.

You have two young sons. When did you begin exposing them to AI, and what are those interactions like? What lessons do you try to instill in them through those interactions?

My sons are five and eight. We started exploring AI together over a year ago, when my older son was in first grade, and his younger brother joined us too.

One activity is storytelling. My older son writes a story on paper, with his own characters and plot. We photograph the page and use AI to create illustrations from his writing. When an illustration doesn’t match his idea, he has to explain what he wants to change.

I enjoy working alongside them because we go through the creative process together: imagining, describing, testing, and revising. The technology makes their ideas tangible, while they remain the authors.

I want them to use technology in ways that help them develop their critical thinking: making a guess, questioning an explanation, and deciding whether something makes sense.

What AI tools do you use daily, and for what use cases?

I use ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude regularly. They have access to my notes in Obsidian, where I keep reflections that I write myself, alongside articles I’ve read and others I need to read. I’ve built that collection over time as a record of my thinking, reading, and unresolved questions.

I use AI to examine that material alongside new ideas. Where does an article challenge something that I previously believed? Have I changed my position without recognizing it? When I’m developing an argument, what am I missing, which assumptions are weak, and what would someone who disagrees say?

I also ask it to suggest readings that take me in a different direction, and it has suggested authors who disagree with my conclusions.

Catch up on past issues of the newsletter here.

• Open Government Products director shares how products get built inside a bureaucracy
• South Korea experiences an AI-driven funding rebound
• Moonshot tackles shareholder dispute as IPO nears

Hello Demo,

If you’re Singaporean or have lived in Singapore, you’ve most likely used one of the products made by Open Government Products (OGP) – whether that’s an app for paying parking fees, one for redeeming government vouchers at the supermarket, or a web platform for booking public badminton courts.

An experimental unit within the Singapore government, OGP has developed over 40 products since it was founded in 2019.

A few weeks ago, I sat down with its director, Li Hongyi, after he took the stage at Tech in Asia Conference 2026. We spoke about a range of topics, from his philosophy when it comes to building to his personal journey that led him to start OGP.

Developing products for the public sector is like “fighting with sticks and rocks,” Li said candidly. What many people don’t see are the products his team has had to kill over the years to focus on those with a higher chance of success and the months it can take for its offerings to find their first user.

Today’s Top Story offers a rare peek into how products get built inside a bureaucracy, what Li believes the public sector can learn from high-performing private companies, and why, despite the challenges, he believes this is a job worth doing.

Melissa Goh, senior editor

Inside Singapore’s government team that kills its own products

Digital collage by Ulla, photo courtesy of Open Government Products

Li previously worked at Google, and his description of the differences between product management at the tech giant and the government was instructive. He said product managers at a company on the scale of Google solve tiny problems with the best resources in the world, while at OGP, he solves big problems without the same arsenal.

That’s something founders everywhere can surely relate to.

The machine age begins in Seoul?

While not close to the heady days of 2021, funding in South Korea has seen a comeback this year. Our data shows US$2.8 billion has been raised so far this year – US$600 million more than all of 2025.

The country’s proficiency in AI hardware production is part of the reason why, and there may be more good news on that front soon. A16z’s infrastructure team is reportedly visiting the country, fresh after announcing a “Machine Age” fund worth US$1.1 billion aimed at AI hardware and infrastructure.

1️⃣ Moonshot faces $700m shareholder dispute ahead of HK IPO

The Beijing-based AI startup’s executives are reportedly in settlement talks with Recurrent.ai over allegations of misleading investors and transferring or deleting AI data.

2️⃣ Mastercard, WEX to launch fleet payments network in APAC

The system would combine fuel, maintenance, tolls, parking, and other vehicle-related expenses in one platform, replacing fragmented payment tools and becoming Asia Pacific’s first unified fleet payments network.

3️⃣ Xpeng says it can adapt driver-assist AI with little data

The Chinese electric vehicle maker says it can adapt its advanced driver-assistance software for European markets with limited local data, as little as one ten-thousandth of the data needed to train its underlying AI models.

4️⃣ Dropbox launches data access governance tool in Singapore

The Singapore launch comes as the city-state’s Personal Data Protection Act requires stronger personal data protection.

5️⃣ Sequoia-backed chip startup Nuvacore seeks $2.5b valuation

The six-month-old company is focused on developing processors for data centers, though it has not yet released a product.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• Starling Studio - Cosmo5 Acquires Brew Group, strengthening its Southeast Asia Presence: Cosmo5, a leading independent global marketing performance group, has acquired Brew Group, a Singapore-headquartered marketing group.
• SotaTek - SotaTek expands cloud capabilities with AWS Cloud Operations Competency: SotaTek strengthens its AWS capabilities from architecture to operations with the AWS Cloud Operations Competency.
• Beldex - Beldex Launches $1M Global Grants Program: Beldex launches $1M Grants Program at Korea Blockchain Week, funding privacy apps, tools and infrastructure worldwide.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Social Media Intern at Ematic Solutions | Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
• Scrum Master at Mobius Digital | Jakarta, Remote
• Account Executive at TLab | Jakarta, Indonesia

Hello Demo,

Have you been to a party entirely soundtracked by AI-generated music? I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I spotted it on the agenda for last week’s ElevenLabs Summit in Bengaluru. But it turned out to be not that bad.

The London-based AI voice startup hosted its post-event party on the terrace of one of Bengaluru’s tallest skyscrapers, with free-flowing wine and beer for close to 1,000 attendees.

Fittingly enough, ElevenLabs has had plenty of reasons to celebrate.

The company raised US$500 million in February, and its top leadership arrived in India fresh off a US$300 million employee tender offer that doubled its valuation to US$22 billion. It has also just opened an office in Singapore.

But of all the places to throw a party of this scale, India is a particularly interesting choice.

Image credit: Made by Ulla/Tech in Asia with the help of AI

The country is a linguistic maze. I have long wondered how AI, whose most powerful models are built largely around English and Chinese, would fare here.

CEO Mati Staniszewski believes that if ElevenLabs can crack “how people interact with AI” in India, it can “solve it anywhere in the world,” pointing to the country’s 22 officially recognized languages and thousands of dialects and accents. The company plans to invest “hundreds of millions of dollars” here as well, Reuters reported.

India is already ElevenLabs’ largest market outside the US, according to Staniszewski. The company now wants to expand its support from 14 Indian languages to all 22 officially recognized languages in the country.

Karthik Rajaram, ElevenLabs’ India head, told me the goal is to also tackle the country’s countless dialects.

For now, the company appears to have a head start.

ElevenLabs said it has signed up more than 250 enterprises. Several developers at the event told me they use multiple AI voice models but found ElevenLabs the most consistent, especially for local languages.

That’s pretty much what I’ve heard, too. Over the past three months, I have spoken to several executives in the voice AI industry, and ElevenLabs has almost always been among the first names to come up in conversations, alongside competitors such as Sarvam, Gnani.ai, and Cartesia.

ElevenLabs’ latest v4 model is intended to push that advantage further. On a benchmark published by Humyn Labs, even ElevenLabs’ older v2 model ranks ahead of competing models across several Indic languages.

“They have the first-mover advantage in India,” a voice AI founder told me at the event. “They started collecting data and improving their models before many of the local players.”

That advantage aside – and to the firm’s credit – the summit steered clear of the usual narrative about AI replacing human workers. At most other voice AI events I’ve attended, people boast about how many calls an AI agent can handle.

Instead, ElevenLabs set up stalls where attendees could clone their voices in 20 seconds and talk to their AI twins. They could also snap a few pictures, turn them into reels, or make their own music using ElevenMusic.

I can’t say whether ElevenLabs will successfully crack the Indian market. But at least I had fun.

Meanwhile, here are some of our recent AI coverage worth checking out:

• Who’s betting big on ChatGPT ads? Not Asian brands
• Voice AI startup Wiz.AI roars to US$3.9m profit in 2025
• Why this founder killed his AI startup despite early success

Pranav Balakrishnan, AI reporter

Catch up on past issues of the newsletter here.

Hello Demo,

There’s a startup for just about every aspect of your daily life.

This week’s biggest deals have got us covered from backend to bedtime – from Supabase keeping apps running in the background and Terra Charge keeping electric vehicles topped up to Lumio having the entertainment sorted once we’re finally home.

And when it’s time to call it a night? There’s Romansive, which caught my attention for a slightly more personal reason.

Now that I’m, ahem, older, I seem to need a supplement for everything: joints, stress, sleep – you name it. I might just have to look into its “nighttime energy drink.”

Build, move, sleep, repeat.

You can find all other important investment deals from the last few days in our weekly funding news wrap-up.

Let’s dive into the biggest deals and M&As that have recently taken place.

— Lilian

🇸🇬🇺🇸 Based in Singapore and the US, Supabase runs an open-source backend platform for building applications on Postgres. The firm has raised US$150 million in series E money from CapitalG, GIC, IronArc Ventures, and Square Peg.

🇯🇵 Terra Charge is a Japan-based company focusing on EV charging infrastructure. It has bagged approximately US$64 million in debt funding from Minato Bank, Mizuho Bank, Resona Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.

🇸🇬 OneByZero is a Singapore-headquartered firm that helps enterprises integrate AI into existing systems and workflows. It has raised US$20 million in a series A round from Jungle Ventures.

🇮🇳 Lumio, a consumer tech brand operated by India-based Circuit House Technologies, has raised US$12 million in series A money from 3one4 Capital, Blume Ventures, and Stellaris Venture Partners.

🇰🇷 Based in South Korea, Romansive develops science-based sleep solutions. The firm has secured approximately US$3 million in series A funding from Lotte Ventures.

Here’s the complete list of this week’s funding chart: 37 deals worth over US$300 million.

🇸🇬 CloudsineAI is a web and generative AI security company headquartered in Singapore. It has seen its majority stake acquired by V-Key, a digital identity and mobile app security firm, for an undisclosed amount.

🇮🇱 Inferize is an inference optimization company based in Israel, which is located in West Asia. The firm has been acquired by AI cloud company Nebius for an undisclosed sum.

This startup bridges handwriting, voice, and AI

Image credit: Notewise

Students and professionals document their ideas across phones and tablets, often including files such as images, voice recordings, and PDFs. Manually sorting these notes and attachments can be tedious, so Singapore-based Notewise is building a single canvas to organize them.

• The gap: Capturing information is easy, but making sense of it isn’t. Handwritten notes, lecture recordings, and PDFs end up scattered across devices, and notes become static storage that needs manual sorting.
• The fix: Notewise is a whiteboard-style canvas that lets users write, record, and import documents in one place. Its multimodal AI transcribes audio, recognizes handwriting, summarizes documents, generates quizzes, and cross-references everything users capture.
• The pitch: The bootstrapped startup charges a monthly or annual subscription fee, with a one-time purchase option for core note-taking. It has surpassed 8 million downloads and won Google Play Best of 2024.

This article is part of our Startup Spotlight series. To get your startup or portco covered, fill out this survey.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Fundraising often involves reaching out to several contacts, many of whom founders might not have dealt with before. To provide some transparency to this process, we created Glasswall, a platform for founders to give feedback and recommendations on investors. Check out the full list here.

• ✅︎ “Best investor ever! I cold-emailed Nicolas at a friend’s suggestion, and he replied ASAP. I got on a call a day later, and three days later, he flew from SF to VN. Five days later, we got a commitment. He’s been with us every step along the way, and he would be the person we would call first for everything. Nicolas is a world-class investor and supporter.” – Read more
• ❌ “An old-school traditional PE mindset trying to be a VC. Extensive due diligence, multiple site visits, multiple investment committee rounds, then pass. Reasons for passing could have been determined from the first pitch deck provided.” – Read more
• ✅︎ “The Investible team was incredible in terms of being transparent where we were in the process, and the information they asked for in the due diligence made sense and also helped us founders in thinking about our business and KPIs strategically.” – Read more

Lists of most active investors in the region

China | India | Indonesia | Japan | Singapore | Southeast Asia

List of top-funded startups in Asia

China | India | Indonesia | Israel | Japan | Hong Kong | Singapore | South Korea | Vietnam

1️⃣ Hard sell

The key to getting employees to use AI? Stop selling it as a productivity hack. Stanford researchers found that workers engage more when AI is framed as a way to make their jobs more meaningful, not just faster. Read this Stanford HAI piece to learn more.

2️⃣ Memory hog

The AI boom is hungry for chips – and your next cheap smartphone may be paying the price. Data centers are driving up demand for memory, squeezing some of the world’s most affordable phones out of the market. This Rest of World piece looks into an unexpected casualty of the AI race.

3️⃣ Tillywood calling

We’ve chatted with AI agents, but have you ever interviewed an AI actress? In this podcast episode, Masters of Scale talks to Tilly Norwood and her creator to unpack whether synthetic performers could democratize entertainment or turn Hollywood on its head.

4️⃣ Entering cell data

AI wants to cure diseases, but here’s the catch: There’s no “internet of cells” lying around for models to learn from. Reuters zooms in on the race to build the biological datasets needed to make AI-driven drug discovery a reality.

5️⃣ Keeping it human

AI can help make music, write emails, and speed up work. But automate too much, and you risk losing the human touch. Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava looks at what’s still worth keeping human in this interview by The Verge.

Today’s edition was written by Lilian Tang. It’s edited by Mina Deocareza.

• SCI Ecommerce unravels amid accounting concerns
• From our archives: Marketplace fees are forcing SEA’s ecommerce enablers to adapt
• Revolut commits US$274 million to fuel Singapore expansion

Hello Demo,

Concerns over possible financial misconduct are once again casting a shadow over Southeast Asia’s startup industry.

This time, the spotlight is on SCI Ecommerce, a Singapore-based ecommerce enabler that once was on the path of becoming a unicorn but could now face liquidation.

In today’s Top Story, I take a closer look at SCI’s FY2025 financial statements, which reveal more than just potential financial irregularities. The company’s auditor flagged civil proceedings involving SCI’s former management and a failed restructuring attempt.

Meanwhile, SCI’s financial position has deteriorated sharply. Cash and cash equivalents plunged 94% at the end of 2025 compared with a year earlier, while revenue fell 69% over the same period.

It’s a dramatic reversal for a company that was previously reported to be eyeing an IPO at an over US$1 billion valuation.

We’re continuing to look into what happened at SCI. If you have information to share, get in touch with me at jofie@techinasia.com or editors@techinasia.com.

SCI’s troubles come at a difficult time for Southeast Asia’s ecommerce enablers. In July, I wrote about how rising marketplace fees are reshaping the industry.

As costs mount, merchants and brands are becoming more cautious about spending, forcing ecommerce enablers to rethink their value proposition. Rather than simply helping brands grow gross merchandise value, they need to show how their services can improve profitability.

Jofie Yordan, journalist

Once an IPO hopeful, SCI Ecommerce nears collapse

Digital collage by Ulla, photo courtesy of SCI Group

SCI Ecommerce had attracted prominent investors and clients, raising over US$65 million in funding to date. It was even reportedly targeting an IPO in 2025 that would have valued it at over US$1 billion.

Yet within a year, its restructuring efforts had failed, and it’s heading toward liquidation. The company’s unraveling raises questions about the financial controls and corporate governance that were in place as it grew.

Rising fees are changing the role of SEA ecommerce enablers

Image credit: Ulla

SCI’s troubles come as ecommerce enablers across Southeast Asia are being forced to rethink their business models. Rising marketplace fees and tighter budgets mean brands are looking for services that improve profitability rather than just boost sales.

Brands are also becoming less willing to pay for basic services such as uploading product listings and running standard campaigns. In response, ecommerce enablers are expanding into fulfillment, analytics, social commerce, and other services that can help brands cut costs or drive sales.

But this shift raises a bigger question: Can ecommerce enablers demonstrate enough value to convince brands to keep outsourcing these functions, rather than bringing them in-house or cutting them altogether?

1️⃣ Revolut to invest $274m in SG over 5 years, focus on profit

Revolut will use the investment to support its expansion, product development, and hiring efforts. The company is also planning to open an office in the city-state’s central business district in early 2027.

2️⃣ ElevenLabs opens Singapore office as Southeast Asia hub

The US-based AI voice software company is opening a Singapore office to support local AI communications. This follows its July launch of data residency in the city-state, which allows local hosting of inference and storage.

3️⃣ CoreWeave plans 240 MW India data center with AdaniConneX

The facility will comprise three 80-megawatt buildings at the Taloja campus of AdaniConneX, which is a joint venture between Indian conglomerate Adani Enterprises and US-based data center firm EdgeConneX.

4️⃣ Endeavor Catalyst closes $320m fund

This puts Endeavor’s assets under management at over US$850 million. The fund, which invests exclusively in companies led by Endeavor Entrepreneurs, has identified Asia as a priority market.

5️⃣ Amazon cuts fewer than 1,000 jobs, mainly in its Stores unit

The layoffs affected staff in the US, India, and the UK, among other markets. It follows a larger round of 30,000 job cuts that began last year and continued into January.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• Starling Studio - Cosmo5 Acquires Brew Group, strengthening its Southeast Asia Presence: Cosmo5, a leading independent global marketing performance group, has acquired Brew Group, a Singapore-headquartered marketing group.
• SotaTek - SotaTek expands cloud capabilities with AWS Cloud Operations Competency: SotaTek strengthens its AWS capabilities from architecture to operations with the AWS Cloud Operations Competency.
• Beldex - Beldex Launches $1M Global Grants Program: Beldex launches $1M Grants Program at Korea Blockchain Week, funding privacy apps, tools and infrastructure worldwide.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Business Development - Mekari Talenta (Singapore and Malaysia) at Mekari | Singapore, Remote
• Scrum Master at Mobius Digital | Jakarta, Remote
• DevOps Engineer (L2) at SIGMATECH | Jakarta, Indonesia

• Traveloka’s profit before tax tanks despite rising revenue
• We take another look into the ambitions behind Traveloka’s move to Singapore
• Moonshot AI seeks US$5 billion through a potential Hong Kong IPO

Hello Demo,

Thanks to travel apps, booking flights and hotels has become so effortless that we often take it for granted. Behind the scenes, though, these platforms face countless issues, often in the form of cancellations and refund requests.

Automating that work could help travel platforms grow without their service costs rising at the same pace. For Traveloka, in particular, the appeal seems easy to see.

Our latest SEA financials tracker shows that the traveltech unicorn’s revenue rose 17% to US$401 million in 2025. Yet its profit before tax fell 71% to US$11.9 million as gross margin narrowed and expenses – including tech and content expenses – increased.

In February 2026, Traveloka confirmed job cuts while saying it would continue hiring, particularly in AI, data, product, and engineering.

That brings a different set of costs into the equation. As explored in our recent piece about AI and travel, hiring AI talent, connecting old booking systems, and running the tech can be expensive.

Practical AI use cases already exist in some travel apps, such as AI agents that reconfirm hotel bookings and chase airline refunds. But getting more work done through this approach doesn’t necessarily mean spending less overall.

Traveloka’s rising tech and content expenses could hint at rising AI expenditure, though it doesn’t tell us what AI also contributed in savings. But these numbers make the company’s hiring priorities worth watching: Can the next round of tech investment help it keep more of the revenue it earns?

Glenn Kaonang, journalist

SEA financials tracker: Traveloka profit drops 71% despite gains

Photo credit: Traveloka

Traveloka’s revenue rose 17% to US$401 million in 2025, but narrower gross margins and rising expenses cut its profit before tax down by 71%. The results show how growth can coexist with weakening profitability.

Our tracker brings together private tech companies’ financials across Southeast Asia, helping readers look beyond revenue to profits and cash flow.

Singapore drift: What Traveloka’s shift really tells us

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Traveloka’s latest results have raised questions about how it can grow more profitably. This July 2025 piece looks into the ambitions behind the firm’s move to Singapore: to reach global investors and expand overseas while keeping core operations in Indonesia.

The piece provides context for Traveloka’s direction as its latest figures show that revenue growth alone doesn’t guarantee stronger earnings.

1️⃣ Moonshot AI eyes Hong Kong IPO after $50b valuation

The startup behind AI model Kimi is reportedly targeting a listing in Q1 2027 and considering raising up to US$5 billion. Investor meetings could begin this month, though the timing may change.

2️⃣ SG digital asset firm ReserveX launches crypto derivatives

The Independent Reserve Group subsidiary offers products including covered calls and fixed coupon notes. It targets high-net-worth individuals, family offices, wealth managers, and institutional treasury teams.

3️⃣ Citigroup sees Meta’s Muse generating $27b a year by 2030

Muse has reached 6.6 million downloads and 1.8 million daily active users since launching in September, says Citi. It expects transactions to generate the biggest chunk of revenue, with subscriptions making up the rest.

4️⃣ Samsung Q3 profit seen up nearly 9x on AI chip demand

Analysts have trimmed their forecasts despite stronger AI-driven memory sales. Slower memory price gains and a stronger South Korean won could limit chip margins as Samsung expands HBM4 shipments.

5️⃣ Granite Asia, Google to invest up to $2m per Asian AI startup

The partnership will source startups through the Granite Asia Fellows Program. Selected companies will also receive up to US$350,000 in Google Cloud and Gemini credits, early model access, and co-development support.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• Starling Studio - Cosmo5 Acquires Brew Group, strengthening its Southeast Asia Presence: Cosmo5, a leading independent global marketing performance group, has acquired Brew Group, a Singapore-headquartered marketing group.
• SotaTek - SotaTek expands cloud capabilities with AWS Cloud Operations Competency: SotaTek strengthens its AWS capabilities from architecture to operations with the AWS Cloud Operations Competency.
• Beldex - Beldex Launches $1M Global Grants Program: Beldex launches $1M Grants Program at Korea Blockchain Week, funding privacy apps, tools and infrastructure worldwide.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Business Development - Mekari Talenta (Singapore and Malaysia) at Mekari | Singapore, Remote
• QA Automation at SIGMATECH | Jakarta, Indonesia
• Back End Developer (Golang) - Banking Industry at SIGMATECH | Tangerang, Indonesia

• RedDoorz sets sights on profit, then IPO
• From our archives: AI is forcing SEA’s VCs to rethink their bets
• Data center operator DayOne moves toward listing

Hello Demo,

Kashmir, Goa, and Ooty – these Indian destinations have been coming up more often in conversations with my friends lately. One of them just returned from a weeklong trip through the Kashmir Valley, while another came back from a long weekend on the beaches of Goa.

Friends who once preferred holidays to foreign destinations such as Europe and Japan are increasingly choosing to explore closer to home.

It’s not that people have suddenly lost their appetite for overseas travel. They still want a break, but with rising airfares, hotel prices, and living costs, a holiday closer to home can feel like a much easier sell. Add geopolitical tensions to the equation, and the appeal of a domestic getaway becomes even stronger.

This applies not only to India. Across Asia, travelers keep spending on travel but are increasingly choosing to explore their own countries. That shift is good news for hospitality companies like Singapore-based RedDoorz.

Indonesia, where the firm gets 85% of its business, is at the heart of that trend. The country logged more than 1.2 billion domestic trips in 2025, the highest in seven years. RedDoorz’s Indonesia revenue grew 24% in local currency terms last year, and the company is now doubling down on hotels it operates itself.

In today’s premium, we spotlight RedDoorz’s 2025 financials and how the firm is betting on domestic travel and its growing portfolio of company-operated properties to turn profitable in 2026, ahead of a planned 2027 IPO.

Samreen Ahmad, journalist

RedDoorz eyes net profit in 2026 ahead of IPO

Photo credit: RedDoorz

The firm makes money mainly through commissions on bookings made at franchised partner hotels and income from company-operated properties.

RedDoorz is shifting from a largely asset-light franchise model toward running more hotels of its own as it chases profitability ahead of its planned IPO next year.

Currently, the firm operates 130 hotels and targets over 200 company-operated properties in Indonesia by 2027, across its RedDoorz, Sans, and Urbanview brands.

SEA VCs diverge on paths to AI gold

Image credit: Ulla

MDI Ventures, the corporate VC arm of Indonesia-based telecoms firm TelkomGroup, has updated its Southeast Asia investment thesis to focus on AI, blockchain, and digital assets.

The move comes as VCs across the region rethink their investment strategies around AI. As my colleagues Elyssa and Jofie highlighted in this archived piece, firms including Analog Ventures, Kickstart Ventures, and 1MX AI have reshaped their mandates around the tech, while others have looked to AI-adjacent sectors such as energy, robotics, semiconductors, and deeptech.

If anything, the flurry of strategy changes suggests Southeast Asia’s VCs are still playing catch-up with an AI boom already well underway.

1️⃣ Singapore data center operator DayOne files for IPO

The company said it has applied to list American depositary shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker DODC.

2️⃣ Malaysian VC firm Cypress Asia launches $12.2m first fund

The fund will back Malaysian tech-driven companies at the pre-series A and series A stages that are already profitable or have a clear path to profitability.

3️⃣ Indonesia’s House passes data law covering AI, blockchain

The bill places National Basic Data under state control as the main reference for development planning, fiscal policy, budgeting, social aid distribution, and other strategic national needs.

4️⃣ Japanese startup Donut Robotics to get $1.9m investment

The deal comes as robots are being used to address staffing shortages in Japan’s eldercare sector – an issue Donut Robotics aims to tackle by supporting care staff in eldercare facilities.

5️⃣ Revolut plans Philippines unit for digital banking

To offer digital banking and electronic money issuer services in the country, the firm is reviewing corporate structures and licensing options under Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas regulations.

Benchmarking your firm for the future

The regulatory and tech landscape facing corporate service providers is transforming rapidly, demanding modernized approaches to compliance and operations. EMERGE: Shaping the Next Generation of Corporate Services – organized by Tech in Asia, the CSPN, and Payoneer Summit – will open with two critical sessions designed to benchmark industry sentiment and strategy.

The day begins with an exclusive presentation of new pulse survey findings on compliance confidence and regulatory impact, followed by a fireside chat with senior leaders on responding operationally to the new regime. This panel tackles what “good” compliance means today while addressing emerging risks.

It then dives into tech, featuring a second presentation of survey findings about the current state of AI adoption, realized benefits, and implementation barriers. This data sets the stage for a crucial discussion on embedding AI, data, and automation responsibly.

The panel also moves beyond experimentation to explore practical use cases, measurable productivity impacts, and vital governance strategies regarding trust and confidentiality.

Join us to gather the evidence and peer perspectives necessary to navigate the future of corporate services. Secure your seat here.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• Starling Studio - Cosmo5 Acquires Brew Group, strengthening its Southeast Asia Presence: Cosmo5, a leading independent global marketing performance group, has acquired Brew Group, a Singapore-headquartered marketing group.
• SotaTek - SotaTek expands cloud capabilities with AWS Cloud Operations Competency: SotaTek strengthens its AWS capabilities from architecture to operations with the AWS Cloud Operations Competency.
• Beldex - Beldex Launches $1M Global Grants Program: Beldex launches $1M Grants Program at Korea Blockchain Week, funding privacy apps, tools and infrastructure worldwide.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Fresh Graduate Management Training Program (Remote) at Deliveree On-Demand Logistics (Southeast Asia)
• Part Time Mandarin Teacher at Cakap
• AI/ML Engineer at PT Allo Bank Indonesia Tbk | Jakarta, Indonesia

Hello Demo,

In 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called the combination of ads and AI “uniquely unsettling.” Advertising, he said, would be a “last resort” for the company, adding that paying users would subsidize free access for those who could not afford it.

Two years later, OpenAI is turning to those free users for advertising revenue. After starting a pilot in the US in February, it launched ChatGPT ads across several Asian markets in September. The ads will appear to users on its Free and Go plans.

Asia is central to this push. In August, OpenAI began rolling out ads in India, which has over 100 million weekly active ChatGPT users. But a large audience does not guarantee a lucrative advertising business.

At the moment, Asian brands are willing to test ChatGPT ads, but they’re still figuring out how people shop through a chatbot, whether those ads drive sales, and what a reasonable price should be. In particular, the cost of running ads on ChatGPT is more erratic than established channels, so brands are unwilling to commit large budgets.

Image credit: Made by Ulla/Tech in Asia with the help of AI

The company may have overestimated how quickly advertisers would commit. Asia’s largest ad spenders are unlikely to go big on ChatGPT ads anytime soon.

But it could attract, or even create, a new breed of advertisers. Our top AI read this week looks at who they might be and how ads could reshape the way hundreds of millions of people across the region use AI.

Elsewhere in this edition, we share our take on Trump’s superintelligence pact that’s not so intelligent, and we explain why Asian consumer-tech companies, including food and grocery delivery platforms, may hesitate to launch their own versions of Muse or Instinct.

Pranav Balakrishnan, AI reporter

Editor’s note: This is the Wednesday edition of The Prompt, our AI newsletter that comes out twice a week. Catch up on Monday’s edition, where we looked at the hype surrounding decision-making model Jev.

Who’s betting big on ChatGPT ads? Not Asian brands

Image credit: Ulla

There is a reason some business decisions are considered a last resort: They may generate revenue, but at a cost. For OpenAI, that cost could be user trust.

Imagine ChatGPT recommends one product while the ad below points in another direction. OpenAI says ads will be clearly labeled and will never influence ChatGPT’s answers, but such contradictions could still leave users unsure about what to trust.

OpenAI is taking that risk because the potential payoff is enormous. It has reportedly told investors that ads could generate US$100 billion by 2030, accounting for 36% of its revenue.

Yet Asian brands remain cautious, partly because early signals from the US pilot have been mixed. Emarketer estimates that the US will contribute roughly half of OpenAI’s ad revenue by 2030, but it puts that figure at just over US$5 billion.

To reach its target, OpenAI will need to build a massive advertising business beyond the US – and do a better job of winning over Asian brands.

1️⃣ Super intelligence, superficial oversight

Image credit: Arsal Ysfin

Last week, Donald Trump gathered AI leaders to sign a “morally binding” safety pact. He also announced a Super Intelligence Force, a taskforce to govern AI, and pushed to rebrand “artificial intelligence” to “super intelligence.”

It is all smoke and mirrors. There is no clarity on whether AI developers would be held responsible for safety incidents. Asking AI companies to regulate themselves is like asking tobacco or alcohol companies to do the same. Why would they voluntarily accept responsibility when their products cause harm?

The reality is that Trump does not want meaningful AI regulation. He wants to protect a technology he sees as driving American prosperity.

As for the rebranding, the less said, the better. Trump thinks “artificial” sounds fake, yet the term AI was coined in 1955 to define a research ambition and attract funding.

As a businessman, Trump should take a lesson or two in branding. For us at Tech in Asia, we’ll stick with calling it AI.

2️⃣ Not everyone is keen on having their agents in your inbox

Muse, Instinct, and now OpenAI’s Dots.

Everyone is launching consumer agents to order food, buy groceries, pay bills, and send emails through a message. But what about the food, payments, and grocery delivery apps themselves? They would want to keep their consumers close and not lose them to another agent.

DoorDash has launched a messaging agent. Expect Asian platforms such as Zomato and Grab to follow. But many efforts could remain experiments until the economics make sense.

An AI agent adds token costs to transactions whose margins these companies have spent years improving, so that cost needs to earn its place. Does it bring in more customers or improve conversion?

Investors in listed Asian consumer platforms expect AI to reduce costs. Paying more to fulfill the same order is a harder sell.

As for the likes of Meta and OpenAI, they need usage to justify large investments in data centers and computing capacity. Their investors are banking on AI becoming an everyday habit, giving them more room to absorb losses.

While Asian companies can build their own agents, whether investors will fund adoption is a different question – and this could give American companies the advantage.

1️⃣ Supabase raises $150m, acquires database startup Turso

Supabase CEO and co-founder Paul Copplestone at the Tech in Asia Conference in Singapore in September/Photo credit: Tech in Asia

Singapore-based Supabase has raised US$150 million from investors, including GIC, CapitalG, IronArc Ventures, and Square Peg. The deal also marks the acquisition of database startup Turso.

Supabase provides database and storage to developers, though most of its users nowadays are AI agents. As a result, Supabase’s service is in huge demand, launching nearly 5 million databases per month.

But Supabase wants to make the process cheaper. Turso’s technology lets a single server manage millions of small databases, loading them when needed and suspending them when idle. This makes serving users’ projects more economical.

2️⃣ Jungle Ventures leads SG AI startup OneByZero’s $20m round

OneByZero, a Singapore-based AI systems integrator, has raised US$20 million from Jungle Ventures in its first external funding round. It will use the money to expand across Asia Pacific, including building a team in Japan.

Systems integrators are nothing new. Getting AI beyond experiments and into everyday business operations remains the hard part. OneByZero reports a 34% reduction in ticket-handling costs at an Indonesian telco.

With decades of data and aging systems, Japan’s businesses present a sizable opportunity for OneByZero to prove its niche.

Catch up on past issues of the newsletter here.

• Struggling Peso, lagging stock market dampen GCash’s IPO hopes
• After 46% revenue bump, Igloo eyes global expansion
• Granite Asia launches US$50 million fund for logistics players

An earlier version of this newsletter reported Granite Asia launched a US$50 billion fund with Port International. It should be a US$50 million fund with PSA International. We regret the error.

Hello Demo,

When my dog welcomed his second birthday, he gave me a surprise: The right side of his heart is apparently larger than the left.

Three vet visits later, he’s fine, but I’ll have to bring him back once a year to have it checked. Those visits gave my wallet a big fright, as they were not cheap.

The experience led me to look for pet insurance. Turns out, e-wallet GCash offers it. After filling out an online form on the app, I was able to send an application 15 minutes later. In less than a day, I got it approved, and the insurance is definitely cheaper than vet visits.

Since 2021, GCash has transformed from a simple e-wallet to a super app that offers stock and bond investing, quick consumer loans, and insurance policies. Part of the firm’s hopes for future growth are pinned on its foray into credit and wealthtech ahead of its market debut on October 20.

While it is expected to be the Philippines’ largest IPO, raising about US$845 million, GCash set its share price at a 30% discount from the maximum it chose when it released its prospectus.

Analysts told me that the firm had to recalibrate its share price to reflect tougher macroeconomic conditions.

Meanwhile, things are looking more positive for GCash’s insurance partner, Igloo. The Singapore-based firm ended 2025 with a 60% year-on-year drop in its net loss, and its CEO told Tech in Asia that the good news is set to continue as 2026 draws to a close.

Elyssa Lopez, journalist

1️⃣ GCash trims IPO ambitions to meet market realities

Digital collage by Ulla, photo courtesy of GCash

Even if GCash parent firm Mynt set its debut share price lower than its projected range, analysts remain divided on whether 6.60 pesos (US$0.11) is fair.

The question lingers over whether the Philippines’ largest e-wallet operator can grow beyond its dominance in the payments business as it ventures into credit and wealthtech.

2️⃣ Igloo CEO eyes global M&A: ‘We have an appetite to grow more’

Raunak Mehta sat down with Tech in Asia to discuss how Igloo plans to hit EBITDA breakeven by year-end and why Indonesia remains a major revenue driver.

Logistics and infra firms set to get a boost with new US$50 million VC fund

Image credit: Made by Tech in Asia with the help of AI

Whether you are raising a new round or simply curious about which investors are splashing the cash, this VC fund tracker is a helpful guide.

Just recently, we updated the list with a new VC fund that Granite Asia has launched with Singapore-based PSA International. The fund aims to back startups that are focused on the logistics and ports industries.

Full steam ahead for those startups, then.

1️⃣ Jungle Ventures leads SG AI startup OneByZero’s $20m round

The enterprise AI startup helps companies integrate AI into their workflows by having its own set of engineers installed within a client’s team.

2️⃣ Singapore fintech firm IPID raises $16m series A

IPID provides real-time bank account verification technology. Its services are used by financial institutions in over 50 countries.

3️⃣ Singapore’s digital economy hits $113b: report

The digital economy made up about 19% of Singapore’s GDP in 2025, according to the government. Jobs related to AI, data, and cybersecurity were some of the fastest growing job categories.

4️⃣ Google pauses open-source bug bounty program over AI spam

Google is halting its Open Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Program after receiving a deluge of automated submissions that were found to be invalid. The program was meant to help the company identify vulnerabilities in its open-source projects.

5️⃣ Trip.com faces scrutiny over refunds, complaints in S Korea

The country’s trade commission has received multiple complaints about Trip.com’s refunding system. The platform issued vouchers instead of cash amounts to customers who purchased airline tickets for canceled flights.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• Starling Studio - Cosmo5 Acquires Brew Group, strengthening its Southeast Asia Presence: Cosmo5, a leading independent global marketing performance group, has acquired Brew Group, a Singapore-headquartered marketing group.
• SotaTek - SotaTek expands cloud capabilities with AWS Cloud Operations Competency: SotaTek strengthens its AWS capabilities from architecture to operations with the AWS Cloud Operations Competency.
• Beldex - Beldex Launches $1M Global Grants Program: Beldex launches $1M Grants Program at Korea Blockchain Week, funding privacy apps, tools and infrastructure worldwide.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Fresh Graduate Management Training Program (Remote) at Deliveree On-Demand Logistics (Southeast Asia)
• Part Time Mandarin Teacher at Cakap
• AI/ML Engineer at PT Allo Bank Indonesia Tbk | Jakarta, Indonesia

• Struggling Peso, lagging stock market dampen GCash’s IPO hopes
• After 46% revenue bump, Igloo eyes global expansion
• Granite Asia launches US$50 billion fund for logistics players

Hello Demo,

When my dog welcomed his second birthday, he gave me a surprise: The right side of his heart is apparently larger than the left.

Three vet visits later, he’s fine, but I’ll have to bring him back once a year to have it checked. Those visits gave my wallet a big fright, as they were not cheap.

The experience led me to look for pet insurance. Turns out, e-wallet GCash offers it. After filling out an online form on the app, I was able to send an application 15 minutes later. In less than a day, I got it approved, and the insurance is definitely cheaper than vet visits.

Since 2021, GCash has transformed from a simple e-wallet to a super app that offers stock and bond investing, quick consumer loans, and insurance policies. Part of the firm’s hopes for future growth are pinned on its foray into credit and wealthtech ahead of its market debut on October 20.

While it is expected to be the Philippines’ largest IPO, raising about US$845 million, GCash set its share price at a 30% discount from the maximum it chose when it released its prospectus.

Analysts told me that the firm had to recalibrate its share price to reflect tougher macroeconomic conditions.

Meanwhile, things are looking more positive for GCash’s insurance partner, Igloo. The Singapore-based firm ended 2025 with a 60% year-on-year drop in its net loss, and its CEO told Tech in Asia that the good news is set to continue as 2026 draws to a close.

Elyssa Lopez, journalist

1️⃣ GCash trims IPO ambitions to meet market realities

Digital collage by Ulla, photo courtesy of GCash

Even if GCash parent firm Mynt set its debut share price lower than its projected range, analysts remain divided on whether 6.60 pesos (US$0.11) is fair.

The question lingers over whether the Philippines’ largest e-wallet operator can grow beyond its dominance in the payments business as it ventures into credit and wealthtech.

2️⃣ Igloo CEO eyes global M&A: ‘We have an appetite to grow more’

Raunak Mehta sat down with Tech in Asia to discuss how Igloo plans to hit EBITDA breakeven by year-end and why Indonesia remains a major revenue driver.

Logistics and infra firms set to get a boost with new US$50 million VC fund

Image credit: Made by Tech in Asia with the help of AI

Whether you are raising a new round or simply curious about which investors are splashing the cash, this VC fund tracker is a helpful guide.

Just recently, we updated the list with a new VC fund that Granite Asia has launched with Singapore-based Port International. The fund aims to back startups that are focused on the logistics and ports industries.

Full steam ahead for those startups, then.

1️⃣ Jungle Ventures leads SG AI startup OneByZero’s $20m round

The enterprise AI startup helps companies integrate AI into their workflows by having its own set of engineers installed within a client’s team.

2️⃣ Singapore fintech firm IPID raises $16m series A

IPID provides real-time bank account verification technology. Its services are used by financial institutions in over 50 countries.

3️⃣ Singapore’s digital economy hits $113b: report

The digital economy made up about 19% of Singapore’s GDP in 2025, according to the government. Jobs related to AI, data, and cybersecurity were some of the fastest growing job categories.

4️⃣ Google pauses open-source bug bounty program over AI spam

Google is halting its Open Source Software Vulnerability Rewards Program after receiving a deluge of automated submissions that were found to be invalid. The program was meant to help the company identify vulnerabilities in its open-source projects.

5️⃣ Trip.com faces scrutiny over refunds, complaints in S Korea

The country’s trade commission has received multiple complaints about Trip.com’s refunding system. The platform issued vouchers instead of cash amounts to customers who purchased airline tickets for canceled flights.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• PixVerse - PixVerse Introduces R2, Advancing Its Real-Time World Model: PixVerse's real-time world model now scales: taking on more data, tasks, and input types while still running in real time.
• Kestone CL Asia Hub - H2O.ai's Singapore Lab Aims to Turn the Republic From AI User to AI Maker: H2O.ai founder Sri Ambati on why Singapore's constraints and demanding market make it a testbed for sovereign AI.
• Lyzr - Lyzr Launches OpenController to Give Enterprises Visibility into AI Agent Spend and Performance: Most AI agent projects never reach production. Lyzr provides the platform and expertise to deploy governed AI agents at scale.

EVENTS HAPPENING

You can also check out our curated list of trending tech events and Tech in Asia's signature events.

Shape the next generation of corporate services Most CSP leaders are managing more complexity with the same infrastructure. To turn mounting pressures into deliberate strategic decisions for 2027 and beyond, CSPN and Payoneer invite you to EMERGE: Shaping the Next Generation of Corporate Services, organized by Tech in Asia. Secure your seat by registering today.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Fresh Graduate Management Training Program (Remote) at Deliveree On-Demand Logistics (Southeast Asia)
• Part Time Mandarin Teacher at Cakap
• AI/ML Engineer at PT Allo Bank Indonesia Tbk | Jakarta, Indonesia

Hello Demo,

Not every AI task needs a model to think hard and write an essay. Sometimes, you just need it to make a call: Is this customer complaining, asking for a refund, or trying to buy something?

That seemingly boring job helps explain why developers have been buzzing about a new model called Jev over the past two weeks. Vercel, a popular cloud platform for developers, says Jev became its fastest-adopted model based on the number of paying teams who used it within the first 24 hours of its release.

So what’s all the hype about?

Jev is built to make decisions, an approach shaped by its creator and TypeSafe founder, Diogo Almeida, who helped build ChatGPT at OpenAI.

Provide some information, ask a question, give a set of possible solutions, and it picks an answer for you. It even assigns probabilities to the options provided.

Some billionaires famously wear the same outfit every day for a reason: Fewer choices mean fewer decisions. With Jev, instead of asking a model to generate from a near-limitless universe of possible answers, you narrow the field and ask it to choose.

Large language models (LLMs) can do this, too, but they are built to generate answers token by token, which can be an overkill when all you need is a quick pick among several options.

To be clear, Jev isn’t trying to replace LLMs. It can decide which tool to use or what action to take next, unlike an LLM, which steps in when the job requires deeper reasoning.

Image credit: Made by Ulla/Tech in Asia with the help of AI

Some companies are already finding uses for Jev.

Ivan Lee, founder and CEO of Datasaur, says his team has been experimenting with the model for the company’s annotation platform. He describes Jev as a “universal classifier” that offers an alternative to both LLMs and traditional classification models.

LLM inference costs can quickly add up when labeling data at scale, according to Lee. And while traditional classification models are cheaper, they require additional training for each new task.

Others are already seeing those savings in practice.

Leonard Loo, co-founder and CEO of Voltade, says his AI agent startup has deployed Jev to filter and label customer messages.

Filtering 700 customer messages used to take five minutes with DeepSeek Flash. But with Jev, the same process now takes 20 seconds and costs 200x less, Loo wrote on LinkedIn. The feature is already live for Voltade’s users.

Kevin Daniel Pantasdo, founder of AI coding startup Superalignment, estimates that categorizing 100,000 financial transactions costs about US$60 with Claude Haiku 4.5 but only US$2 using Jev. He acknowledges that the actual cost of using Claude can be cheaper when factoring in caching and batch discounts, but using Jev is still cheaper.

OK, Jev is indeed useful. But is it revolutionary? On X, one developer questioned the excitement around use cases that traditional classifiers can already handle.

Then there are the imitators. Within days, open-source alternatives to Jev had popped up on GitHub and Hugging Face. Inference startup Together AI also published a guide to training a Jev-like classifier for US$17.

Lee of Datasaur is curious about the quick arrival of competitors.

“If this is relatively simple to recreate from an LLM, what occupied TypeSafe’s two years in stealth?” he asks.

Still, Jev’s creator, TypeSafe AI, is looking like the hot new kid on the block. The Financial Times reported that the startup could be raising a massive new round at a US$10 billion valuation or more.

Meanwhile, here are some of our recent AI stories that are worth checking out:

• Voice AI startup Wiz.AI roars to US$3.9m profit in 2025
• Why this founder killed his AI startup despite early success
• Agents – not humans – have picked the next $100b company

Glenn Kaonang, journalist

Catch up on past issues of the newsletter here.

1️⃣ Why SBI paid a premium for Ajaib amid a tough market

Photo credit: Ajaib

Ajaib isn’t Indonesia’s largest digital investment platform. But its sizable presence could be valuable for the investor’s push into digital assets.

2️⃣ Voice AI startup Wiz.AI roars to US$3.9m profit in 2025

Wiz.AI co-founder Jianfeng Lu took over as the startup’s CEO in 2025. / Photo credit: Wiz.AI

In his first year as CEO, Jianfeng Lu has steered the voice AI startup into profitability by focusing on projects that generate recurring revenue.

3️⃣ Why Grab paid $1.5b for Atome instead of building lending

Image credit: Ulla

After spending US$1.2 billion learning how hard credit is, Grab bought Atome’s lending engine. Here’s what the deal unlocks for Grab.

4️⃣ GCash trims IPO ambitions to meet market realities

Digital collage by Ulla, photo courtesy of GCash

GCash has set its IPO share price at a discount. Still, analysts are divided if this is a fair valuation.

5️⃣ Igloo CEO eyes global M&A: ‘We have an appetite to grow more’

Digital collage by Ulla, photo courtesy of Igloo

The Singapore-based insurtech firm is bracing for more forex impact on its bottom line this year as regional currencies weaken against the US dollar.

EVENTS HAPPENING

You can also check out our curated list of trending tech events and Tech in Asia's signature events.

Shape the next generation of corporate services Most CSP leaders are managing more complexity with the same infrastructure. To turn mounting pressures into deliberate strategic decisions for 2027 and beyond, CSPN and Payoneer invite you to EMERGE: Shaping the Next Generation of Corporate Services, organized by Tech in Asia. Secure your seat by registering today.

Hello Demo,

Some problems are universal and timeless. Take payments, for instance – wherever you are in the world, there’s always someone trying to figure out how to make the process of exchanging money for goods faster, better, and more frictionless. We’ve come a long way from counting coins at cash registers.

How about identity protection and verification? False identities have always been a concern, but while in the past you’d be worried about fake IDs and uncanny impersonations, we’re now fretting about making sure people are who they say they are in the digital space.

The companies that raised the most funds this week are all dealing with challenges that are tales as old as time – and that’s cool, because it means we keep innovating and trying to come up with better ways to do things. Yay.

You can find all other important investment deals that happened in the last few days in our weekly funding news wrap-up.

Let’s dive into the biggest deals that recently took place.

— Stefanie

🇨🇳 Leadsynbio develops bio-manufacturing technology. Based in China, it raised US$67 million in a late-stage funding round from Beijing Chuangke Zhisheng Investment, Harvest Capital, Hunan Caixin Investment Holding Group, Hunan Chasing Financial, Oriza Holdings, and Suzhou Industrial Investment.

🇸🇦 Erad, an alternative financing platform from Saudi Arabia, bagged US$22 million in series A funding. Investors in the round include 500 Global, Aljazira Capital, Arāya Ventures, Conjunction Capital, Joa Capital, Khwarizmi Ventures, Middle East Venture Partners, Nuwa Capital, Oraseya Capital, S60 Ventures, Saudi Venture Capital, and ANB Capital.

🇸🇬 iPiD’s solution makes cross-border payments as easy as text messages or scanning a QR code. The Singapore-based firm raised US$16 million in series A funding from Citi, Foundation Capital, HSBC, Monk’s Hill Ventures, QED Investors, and Quona Capital.

🇮🇱 Rig Security is a identity security platform from Israel, which is in West Asia. It bagged US$12 million in seed money from Brightmind Partners, CrowdStrike, Ten Eleven Ventures, and Ami Luttwak.

🇮🇳 Balwaan Krishi is an India-based online seller of agricultural products focused on farm mechanization. It raised US$10.4 million in series B funding from First Bridge Investment Managers.

Here’s the complete list of this week’s funding chart: 41 deals worth over US$216 million.

Fundraising is hard. To make things slightly easier, we’ve compiled this list of fundraising startups for our subscribers. Do you run a startup that’s raising at the moment or know someone who does? Sign your company up for listing here.

Here’s a preview of the startups:

🇸🇬 This company from Singapore builds licensed video and audio datasets for multimodal AI, world models, and embodied agents.

🇮🇩 Hailing from Indonesia, this AI civil engineering startup can turn visual and sensor data into damage maps, 3D models, and more.

🇮🇳 This Indian firm is reimagining the future of computing with a cloud-based operating system powered by AI.

You can find the full list of fundraising startups in Asia over here.

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Fundraising often involves reaching out to several contacts, many of whom founders might not have dealt with before. To provide some transparency to this process, we created Glasswall, a platform for founders to give feedback and recommendations on investors. Check out the full list here.

• ✅︎ “It wasn’t merely about the numbers or the metrics; it was about recognizing the potential and the passion behind our endeavor.” – Read more.
• ❌ “The process was excessively drawn out. Many team members in Indonesia were clearly underqualified, compensating with arrogance rather than capability. They consistently overcomplicated simple tasks and crossed a serious line by contacting customers without permission. In the end, they made an unreasonably low offer, which I refused – very happy that I didn’t take their money” – Read more
• ✅︎ “She came to the conversation well-prepared, having thoroughly reviewed our deck beforehand, and instead of asking us to present it, she focused on asking insightful questions to clarify specific points.” – Read more

Lists of most active investors in the region

China | India | Indonesia | Japan | Singapore | Southeast Asia

List of top-funded startups in Asia

China | India | Indonesia | Israel | Japan | Hong Kong | Singapore | South Korea | Vietnam

1️⃣ Getting selective

Institutional investors and family offices are getting more particular about where they invest their money in Asia. In a panel at the recent Asia PE-VC Summit, investors said that they are placing a larger emphasis on returns, valuations, and exit prospects while also prioritizing diversification. Dive deeper in this piece from DealStreetAsia.

2️⃣ AI + innovation

According to the United Nations, corporate research and development spending is reaching record highs, brought about by investments and advancements in AI. The World Intellectual Property Organisation highlights that AI is fueling much of the world’s economic growth. This piece from The Straits Times has more.

3️⃣ Time will tell

Five institutions in South Korea are set to make their foray into venture capital through the country’s new LP Growth Fund. While their initial commitments show that the program can bring in new investors, the real test will be in whether they return for the next one, and whether South Korea will be able to build lasting investment capacity. Read more here from Korea Tech Desk.

4️⃣ Central Asia calling

Central Asian founders are building businesses with global ambitions in mind, and international funds are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in them. Check out this piece from The Times of Central Asia to dive into the region’s most successful founders and companies.

5️⃣ All things AI

There’s plenty of talk about AI’s impact on work, but a lot of it is just hot air. What do actual studies say about how AI is affecting organizations, and how can you leverage this research for your company’s AI integration efforts? Check out the Harvard Business Review’s collection of its most insightful research on AI at work here.

Today’s edition was written by Stefanie Yeo. It’s edited by Lorenzo Kyle Subido.

EVENTS HAPPENING

You can also check out our curated list of trending tech events and Tech in Asia's signature events.

Shape the next generation of corporate services Most CSP leaders are managing more complexity with the same infrastructure. To turn mounting pressures into deliberate strategic decisions for 2027 and beyond, CSPN and Payoneer invite you to EMERGE: Shaping the Next Generation of Corporate Services, organized by Tech in Asia. Secure your seat by registering today.

• How Ajaib secured US$270 million at a higher valuation than its previous fundraise
• Wiz.AI turns profitable as voice AI demand grows in Southeast Asia
• Indonesia halts construction of BDx’s data center in West Java

Hello Demo,

News that Ajaib raised US$270 million from SBI Holdings in late August came as a breath of fresh air for Indonesia. Amid all the negativity around the country’s tech industry, this development was much needed.

What’s more, the fintech firm secured the funding at a higher valuation than its 2021 fundraise, making it stand out from the many other Indonesian startups raising down rounds.

In today’s first Top Story, I look at how Ajaib broke the mold. What made SBI willing to pay a premium for the investment platform?

Several investors we spoke with argue that SBI sees future potential in Ajaib’s digital asset and tokenization businesses. Both spaces are considered largely untapped in Indonesia, with local regulations still being developed.

Meanwhile, we’ve been putting more focus on the earnings of AI startups in the region. Today’s second Top Story spotlights Wiz.AI, which doubled its revenue year on year to US$23.5 million in 2025.

Co-founder and CEO Jianfeng Lu tells Tech in Asia that the voice AI company lost focus in 2024. The year after, it course-corrected by prioritizing projects with clear ROI.

Jofie Yordan, journalist

1️⃣ Why SBI paid a premium for Ajaib amid a tough market

Photo credit: Ajaib

Ajaib’s deal stands out not just for its size, but for the questions it raises about how private-market valuations are being set. The numbers suggest its current business alone may not fully explain the price SBI agreed to pay.

The deal points to the value SBI may place on Ajaib’s licenses, customer base, and ability to build new financial products. The fintech firm’s next test will be turning those advantages into new sources of growth to support the valuation.

2️⃣ Voice AI startup Wiz.AI roars to US$3.9m profit in 2025

Wiz.AI’s revenue growth and move into profitability came after it narrowed its focus to AI projects with clearer returns and recurring demand. Its customer base – banks, telcos, and ecommerce companies – offers a window into where voice AI is already delivering commercial value in Southeast Asia.

At the same time, the startup faces much larger rivals in global AI giants and well-funded voice AI companies. Wiz.AI’s regional language expertise, enterprise relationships, and pricing could determine how much it can defend its niche.

BDx reaches 1.2 GW deal to power its data centers in Indonesia

Photo credit: BDx

In June, BDx secured 1.2 gigawatts of power capacity from Indonesian state utility firm PLN. It’s the largest allocation held by a single data center operator in the country.

Part of that capacity was earmarked for BDx’s CGK4 campus in West Java, which is designed to support up to 650 megawatts for AI and cloud workloads.

But construction of the campus, which broke ground on September 22, has been temporarily halted. The local government suspended the project over permit issues amid growing public concern about how data centers affect the environment. Authorities will conduct an environmental impact assessment before construction can resume.

The development highlights a growing tension in Indonesia’s data center push: operators are securing huge amounts of power for AI infrastructure while environmental scrutiny of such projects is intensifying.

1️⃣ Indonesia pauses BDx AI data center project over permits

The Purwakarta government said BDx must complete its environmental impact assessment before construction resumes on its data center in Jatiluhur. The facility’s expected water use is also being assessed.

2️⃣ Singapore healthcare startup Zeya Health acquires ConnectLah

Following the acquisition, Zeya Health will integrate ConnectLah’s clinic automation technology into its platform.. The company aims to expand its client base to 1,000 healthcare providers by mid-2027.

3️⃣ Tencent signs Oracle deal for 100,000 AI chips abroad

The reported deal involves a five-year lease on 100,000 chips located in Oracle data centers across Southeast Asia. This comes as Tencent invests in its Hunyuan model to close the gap with its Chinese rivals.

4️⃣ Meta names new Southeast Asia business group head

Meta has appointed Dhruv Vohra as managing director of its Global Business Group in Southeast Asia. He will lead commercial strategy across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

5️⃣ Huawei launches new Kirin chips after $250b R&D investment

The company said its US$250 billion R&D investment from 2007 to 2025 helped drive advances in its Kirin chips, HarmonyOS, and other technologies. The new chips are featured in Huawei’s new Mate 90 series of smartphones.

PRESS PEEKS

The following press releases were published as they were received, without any editing from the Tech in Asia team. You, too, can publish your own press release on our site by simply filling out this form. Our team will get back to you by the next business day.

• PixVerse - PixVerse Introduces R2, Advancing Its Real-Time World Model: PixVerse's real-time world model now scales: taking on more data, tasks, and input types while still running in real time.
• Kestone CL Asia Hub - H2O.ai's Singapore Lab Aims to Turn the Republic From AI User to AI Maker: H2O.ai founder Sri Ambati on why Singapore's constraints and demanding market make it a testbed for sovereign AI.
• Lyzr - Lyzr Launches OpenController to Give Enterprises Visibility into AI Agent Spend and Performance: Most AI agent projects never reach production. Lyzr provides the platform and expertise to deploy governed AI agents at scale.

WHO'S HIRING

You can post a job here or search for jobs here.

• Senior Account Manager at SEO Copilot Pte. LTD. | Yogyakarta, Remote
• Real Estate Consultant at Propseller | Singapore, Singapore
• Business Development at Daya Wira Performa | Jakarta, Indonesia