OnMic’s shutdown is less a surprise than a signal. It reflects the harsh reality that not every pandemic-era behaviour translates into a durable business.
Social audio thrived in a moment when people were isolated, experimental, and willing to spend time in live, synchronous conversations. But once normal life resumed, so did user preferences for convenience, speed, and visual engagement.
The deeper lesson is about the gap between traction and sustainability. OnMic appeared to achieve early engagement with Gen Z users and micro-communities, but engagement alone is not a moat. Without a clear monetisation path or strong creator incentives, even loyal communities can dissipate. In a market like Vietnam, where attention is already dominated by platforms like TikTok and YouTube, niche products must work harder to justify their place.
There is also a broader shift at play. Venture capital is no longer funding experimentation at the same pace. Founders are now expected to prove not just that users care, but that the business works. That shift is healthy, but unforgiving.
The story of OnMic, which raised an undisclosed seed round from Touchstone Partners, ultimately reinforces a simple truth: timing can create opportunity, but only strong economics can sustain it.
REGIONAL
OnMic shuts down, exposing the limits of social audio in Vietnam: The Clubhouse-inspired startup launched during COVID-19 on 100% organic growth, but could not survive post-pandemic behavioural shifts, monetisation failures, creator retention costs, and a colder funding climate — a cautionary tale for consumer startups without durable economics.
India is slowing down but Southeast Asia is falling behind faster: India’s funding slowdown reveals resilience, while Southeast Asia faces fragmented markets, weaker exits, and cautious capital, highlighting a growing structural gap in scale, liquidity, and investor confidence.
VinFast bets on EV rentals to crack SEA’s affordability problem: Starting in Greater Jakarta and Metro Manila, the Vietnamese automaker is targeting ride-hailing drivers with daily rental rates from US$17.50, shifting EV adoption from a capital expenditure decision to an operating expense — a strategic move beyond simply opening showrooms.
Gobi Partners backs Transak as stablecoins turn into payment rails: Malaysian VC Gobi’s investment in the global payments infrastructure firm signals a broader conviction: stablecoins are moving beyond crypto trading into cross-border settlement and remittances, with Transak’s compliance-heavy API model serving over 10M users across 600 applications globally.
OnSite raises US$1.3M to fix construction’s WhatsApp problem: Digital inefficiencies cost Singapore’s construction sector over US$860M annually, and the startup tackles this by replacing consumer chat apps with a structured, multilingual communication platform that auto-tags messages by project, location, and timeline for dispute resolution and documentation.
Injewelme raises US$1.2M to scale contactless health screening tech: Led by Temasek Trust’s catalytic vehicle C3H, the Singapore startup uses remote photoplethysmography to measure over 20 vital signs via camera in 30 seconds, achieving 95% accuracy, with expansion targets across healthcare, eldercare, and workforce safety in Southeast Asia.
Muun AI raises US$700K to turn raw machine data into insight: Founded by a Silicon Valley AI veteran, the Singapore startup converts live telemetry into confidence-scored operational insights without requiring historical training data, identifying between 2,800 and 4,200 hours of recoverable inefficiencies in a live Singapore manufacturing deployment.
Stablecoins surge in SEA as remittances and DeFi drive adoption: The Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam rank among the world’s top crypto markets, with stablecoins now comprising roughly 30% of regional crypto transactions and annual remittance flows of US$18B-US$40B per market driving practical, everyday demand beyond speculative use.
Vietnam’s CAEX attracts OKX Ventures and HashKey as crypto rules near: Backed by VPBank Securities, CAEX is raising its capital to 10 trillion dong (US$380M), the minimum required to join Vietnam’s government crypto pilot, as the country’s Digital Technology Industry Law formalises licensing, user verification, and transaction monitoring requirements.
Pony.ai launches robotaxi passenger services in Singapore’s Punggol: In partnership with ComfortDelGro, the Chinese autonomous vehicle firm operates a 12-kilometre pilot route linking housing estates, malls, and public transport hubs, part of a global plan to deploy over 3,000 robotaxis across 20-plus cities this year.
Steam apologises for wrong game ratings shown to Indonesian users: Valve attributed the error to a “technical bug and miscommunication” that briefly displayed inaccurate IGRS age ratings between April 2-5, prompting a commitment to fully implement Indonesia’s official game classification system amid the country’s broader digital content regulation push.
Aspire takes its Southeast Asia fintech stack to the US market: Operating at breakeven since its US$100M Series C and growing 50% year-on-year, Singapore’s Aspire is launching corporate cards and finance tools for cross-border startups in America, partnering with Deel, Stripe, Mastercard, and Plaid to compete against Ramp, Brex, and Mercury.
INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
Hasan VC uses AI to sharpen due diligence while staying ethical: Managing Partner Umar Munshi says the firm embeds AI across analyst workflows to evaluate startups faster, but balances automation with human judgement, screening all investments through AAOIFI Shariah principles and flagging AI-washing among founders who exaggerate their use of the technology.
BDx CEO warns SEA risks data colonisation without sovereign AI push: Mayank Srivastava argues that if data is consistently processed outside the region, economic and strategic value accumulates elsewhere and that SEA telcos must plan coordinated data centre capacity across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam well ahead of surging AI-driven demand.
INTERNATIONAL
SpaceX posts nearly US$5B loss in 2025 after acquiring xAI: The loss follows SpaceX’s absorption of Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI in February, despite revenues exceeding US$18.5B. The company has since confidentially filed for a US listing and was previously valued at over US$1.75T before the xAI integration weighed on its financials.
China EV exports hit record 349,000 units in March on fuel price surge: Higher oil prices linked to the Iran conflict boosted overseas demand, with BYD alone accounting for roughly a third of shipments even as domestic EV and hybrid sales fell 14% for a third consecutive month, with BYD’s home market sales dropping over 40%.
China rolls out policies to accelerate space computing capabilities: Beijing’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is funding R&D in radiation-resistant chips and inter-satellite laser links, establishing a new coordination committee for onboard AI chips, thermal control, and space-based photovoltaics as it competes with the US, Russia, and Japan in orbital computing.
Florida probes OpenAI over national security and child safety risks: The state attorney general’s office is examining ChatGPT for risks tied to foreign access to user data, potential criminal misuse, and interactions with children, adding to similar concerns raised by California and Delaware attorneys general in a September 2025 letter to the company.
Google expands Intel partnership for AI data centre workloads: Intel’s Xeon 6 chips will power AI training and inference workloads across Google’s data centres under an expanded deal, with both companies also continuing joint work on infrastructure processing units even as Google develops its own TPU AI chips and Arm-based Axion CPUs in parallel.
CYBERSECURITY
AI agents are already inside enterprise systems, but who controls them: Gravitee’s report finds 71% of large enterprises have deployed AI agents with direct access to core business systems, yet only 16% govern that access effectively, a critical vulnerability for SEA’s API-heavy digital economy of banks, super apps, and logistics platforms.
The hidden risk in AI adoption: Unchecked agent privileges: Gravitee’s governance gap report reveals that fewer than 22% of enterprises treat AI agents as first-class security identities, while 86% enforce no access policies for AI identities at all, leaving Southeast Asia’s sprawling, API-driven businesses dangerously exposed to invisible privilege accumulation.
It’s not the chatbot but the access: Why AI agents are the real threat: 75% of organisations have already discovered unsanctioned AI tools operating in their environments, yet only 14.4% have achieved full IT security approval for their agent fleets, a shadow AI epidemic amplified by SEA’s startup culture of speed, improvisation, and distributed decision-making.
SEMICONDUCTOR
SK hynix ramps up M15X fab for HBM4 and server memory output: The South Korean chipmaker plans to scale monthly wafer input from 10,000 units currently to as many as 80,000 by next year, with M15X, a US$13.6B EUV-equipped expansion, expected to lift total DRAM wafer capacity by 10-15% ahead of its Yongin fab coming online.
Nvidia’s Rubin AI chip faces delays as HBM4 validation issues persist: TrendForce has cut Rubin’s share of Nvidia’s high-end GPU mix to 22% from 29% while raising Blackwell’s share to 71%, with Nvidia reportedly trimming Rubin production targets to 1.5M units from 2M, a shift that directly threatens South Korean suppliers Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.
Asian chip stocks surge on US-Iran ceasefire and helium supply relief: TSMC, Samsung Electronics, and SK hynix posted sharp gains after the conditional ceasefire reopened the Strait of Hormuz, easing weeks of concern that attacks on Qatari industrial sites had severely constrained the global helium supplies essential for semiconductor fabrication and testing processes.
AI
What NVIDIA GTC 2026 reveals about the future of embodied AI: The conference signalled a decisive shift from cloud-based AI models to physical, voice-native machines, with platforms like Reachy Mini, NVIDIA Jetson, and Seeed Studio’s reSpeaker converging to create always-on, real-time AI systems that can listen, reason, and respond without screen or keyboard interfaces.
Conversational AI is reshaping banking across Southeast Asia: From DBS’s virtual assistants to Vietnam’s Sacombank, which increased call-handling capacity by over 58% using AI voice agents managing up to 41,000 daily calls, financial institutions across the region are deploying AI-driven interaction systems to scale multilingual customer engagement cost-effectively.
Why the future of AI on mobile may not be in the cloud: Advances in on-device models like LLaMA, Phi-2, and Gemma bring computation to the edge, but without local access to real-time data, the model remains blind, making offline-first design, bidirectional sync, and latency-free data access the true infrastructure challenge unlocking mobile AI’s full potential.
Data minimisation vs AI context maximisation: A design conflict: AI systems improve when they ingest more data, but privacy regimes demand the opposite, creating a structural tension that teams rarely resolve because performance gains are measurable while privacy degradation is invisible until it isn’t. The practical answer is context precision: right data, right task, bounded duration.
What big tech won’t show you about the future of AI: While large incumbents fine-tune models, focused AI startups like Quickfind AI and Fluency AI are already deploying practical, scalable tools that solve real business problems, from automating compliance to generating brand-safe visuals, making the case that AI’s next chapter is being written at the edges, not the centre.
Bitcoin holds above US$70K as the US$2.44T crypto rally broadens: With the Fear and Greed Index at a neutral 45 and ETF outflows cooling, Bitcoin’s stability above US$70K enabled capital to rotate confidently into altcoins, with RaveDAO surging 235.4% and Alaya Governance Token climbing 94.5%, fuelled by derivatives activity and social media momentum.
Why institutional money isn’t saving crypto from this sell-off: Despite Wall Street’s best day since April 2025, the crypto market fell 1.42% to US$2.41T as traders unwound leveraged positions rather than joining the rally, with the Altcoin Season Index plunging 12.82% and Morgan Stanley’s spot Bitcoin ETF drawing only US$34M in day-one inflows.
War pause, market gain: Why geopolitical hope isn’t enough to sustain this rally: The US-Iran ceasefire lifted equities but crypto dipped, with the market’s near-term trajectory hinging on Bitcoin holding above the US$2.39T Fibonacci support level, while the SEC’s April 16 CLARITY Act roundtable looms as the most consequential near-term regulatory catalyst for digital assets.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Board diversity 2.0: The strategic advantage Asian boards underestimate: Gender representation has improved, but digital literacy, generational diversity, and cognitive variety remain dangerously underdeveloped across Asian boards, with research showing cognitively diverse boards outperform homogeneous peers by 20-30% in crisis navigation, making diversity a competitive imperative, not a compliance exercise.
Secondary sales in SEA: The liquidity lifeline when exits are scarce: With full exits still limited across the region, secondary share transactions offer early investors partial liquidity, but introduce complex legal challenges around liability gaps, transfer restrictions, tag-along rights, governance updates, and share-class reclassification that require careful structuring to protect all parties.
Networking was the topic; alignment was the outcome: The real problem isn’t how people network, it’s where they do it. When shared goals are built into the room itself, transactional friction disappears, conversations deepen faster, follow-ups happen naturally, and collaborations emerge organically, shifting networking from deliberate effort into momentum.
AI agents are outpacing security: the crisis hiding in plain sight: Gravitee’s research shows 92% of organisations lack full visibility into their AI identities, while 95% doubt they could contain misuse if it occurred — making the governance gap less a compliance problem and more an operational power risk that SEA enterprises racing toward AI adoption cannot afford to ignore.
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