Thailand has spent years building a startup ecosystem, funding accelerators, running pitch competitions, and producing a steady stream of tech graduates. The results have been mixed at best. Investment has lagged behind regional peers, and too many promising Thai startups have struggled to scale beyond the domestic market or attract serious international capital.

SITE 2026, the annual flagship innovation expo organised by the National Innovation Agency (NIA) under Thailand’s Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, is making a pointed attempt to change that narrative. Launched under the theme “Global Innovation Impact: The Year of Investment,” the event is scheduled to run from 25 to 27 June 2026 at Paragon Hall, Siam Paragon, expanding this year to include Nex Hall on the fifth floor and the SCBx Next Stage on the fourth floor to accommodate a growing programme.

Also Read: Thailand’s startup paradox: Where potential meets patience

The venue upgrade is a small but telling signal. SITE is no longer positioning itself as a showcase event. It wants to be a deal-making floor.

The capital context

The numbers underpinning SITE 2026’s investment pitch are worth paying attention to. According to NIA’s own data, startup investment in Thailand reached approximately US$120 million in 2025. More strikingly, capital ready to be deployed within Thailand’s innovation ecosystem has surpassed US$1 billion.

That gap, between available capital and actual investment, is precisely the problem SITE 2026 is trying to solve. The argument is that the money exists, the startups exist, and what has been missing is a sufficiently structured, credible platform to bring them together in a way that produces real transactions rather than networking card swaps.

“Innovation impact is no longer defined by novelty alone, but by the value it creates and the measurable outcomes it can deliver,” said Dr Krithpaka Boonfueng, Executive Director of NIA, at the event’s launch. It is a deliberate reframing, away from innovation as spectacle and towards innovation as an asset class.

What’s on the floor

The programme at SITE 2026 is built around several strategic pillars: future-focused technologies, investment-readiness, global connectivity, and economic multiplier effects. In practical terms, this translates into a dense three-day schedule designed to appeal to a broader audience than the typical startup expo crowd.

The headline draws include showcases of 100 future-focused startups and 100 market-ready innovations, startup pitching sessions, and Business Matching; the structured, pre-scheduled meetings that serious investors and corporates tend to prioritise over open-floor browsing. An International Pavilion will host delegations and participants from Japan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, adding a meaningful cross-border dimension to the event that previous editions have sometimes lacked.

On the broader ecosystem side, SITE 2026 will also run youth innovation programming through the Startup Thailand League, as well as cross-disciplinary sessions under SYNC Design & Innovation and Maker Faire Bangkok — platforms that skew younger and more experimental, but serve as a talent pipeline for the wider ecosystem.

Global forums and thought-leadership sessions round out the agenda, with speakers drawn from government, venture capital, corporate venture arms, and the startup community itself.

The investment marketplace ambition

The most ambitious aspect of SITE 2026 is also its most difficult to execute: the attempt to function as a genuine investment marketplace rather than an inspiration conference.

Also Read: How Thailand’s NIA is driving global collaboration for Thai innovation

NIA is bringing together venture capital firms, corporate venture capital arms, international investors, and strategic partners under one roof, with the explicit goal of facilitating deal flow, not just deal discovery. For Thai startups, that means access to a concentration of capital and decision-makers that would ordinarily require multiple trips to Singapore, Tokyo, or Seoul to replicate.

For investors, the pitch is equally straightforward: Thailand is a market of over 70 million people with a growing digital economy, a manufacturing base that is beginning to integrate deeper technology layers, and a government that has, at least rhetorically, committed to making innovation investable. SITE 2026 is being framed as the most efficient single point of entry into that opportunity set.

Whether the rhetoric translates into signed term sheets is another matter. Thailand has made similar promises before. The difference this time, NIA argues, is that the infrastructure around the event –the matching mechanisms, the investor curation, the international pavilion — has been built with transactions in mind rather than optics.

Thailand’s broader positioning challenge

SITE 2026 does not exist in a vacuum. Thailand is competing for regional relevance against Singapore’s deeply entrenched investor networks, Indonesia’s sheer market scale, and Vietnam’s increasingly sophisticated manufacturing and tech talent base. In that context, US$120 million in annual startup investment is not a number that commands automatic respect from regional venture capital.

What Thailand does have is a government that is willing to use public infrastructure, NIA being the primary instrument, to de-risk and catalyse private investment in ways that more laissez-faire ecosystems leave entirely to the market. SITE 2026 is an expression of that approach. Its success will be measured not by attendance figures or the number of panels, but by whether the capital sitting on Thailand’s innovation sidelines finds its way into the hands of founders who can deploy it.

The expo is free to attend. Registration is open at site.nia.or.th.

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Singapore’s developers are among the most enthusiastic adopters of AI in the world, but a growing body of evidence suggests the AI infrastructure underpinning that ambition is falling dangerously short.

A survey of 196 developers and tech leaders conducted at API Days Singapore in April by customer engagement platform Twilio found that 96 per cent of respondents already use AI tools in their daily workflows. Yet for many organisations, broad adoption has not translated into meaningful outcomes. The culprit, according to the findings, is a fractured AI infrastructure that cannot support the demands being placed upon it.

Nearly half of respondents — 46 per cent — identified constant context-switching between disjointed tools as the primary source of friction at work. Poor integration between platforms was flagged as the single biggest barrier to achieving effective synergy between AI and enterprise automation.

Over a third of those surveyed (35 per cent) reported struggling with tools that simply cannot communicate with one another, while 24 per cent said they were contending with siloed data spread across multiple disconnected systems. For businesses that have invested heavily in AI tooling, the drag created by weak AI infrastructure is quietly eroding those gains.

Leadership gap stalls AI at the pilot stage

The underlying cause of much of this fragmentation is a lack of strategic direction from the top. Fewer than 30 per cent of respondents said their organisations had a clear strategic vision for AI deployment. Among founders and startup leaders, 41 per cent admitted they were still testing AI tools without a formal framework to guide adoption.

Also Read: “We want things to arrive the next day”: Indiegogo’s APAC head on why SEA is crowdfunding’s toughest market

When individual teams are left to select their own tools without a unified plan, the consequences compound quickly. Forty-one per cent of respondents said their data was now scattered across too many disconnected systems — a direct result of decentralised decision-making.

The consequences for delivery are stark. Nearly a third (31 per cent) of organisations without a formal AI strategy struggle to move initiatives into production. By contrast, only three per cent of organisations with a structured roadmap face the same problem. Robust AI infrastructure, combined with strategic oversight, appears to be the differentiating factor.

Misaligned priorities between teams are accelerating tool sprawl. Sixty-one per cent of software engineers ranked API availability among the most important criteria when evaluating new tools. Only 36 per cent of product managers shared that view, suggesting product teams are more willing to prioritise out-of-the-box functionality over long-term interoperability.

Without top-level coordination, those differing preferences quietly fragment an organisation’s data architecture, making coherent AI infrastructure increasingly difficult to maintain.

The stakes rise as agentic AI arrives

The urgency to address these infrastructure gaps is intensifying. Nearly 40 per cent of respondents said they are already building autonomous AI agents, while 25 per cent are integrating Voice AI to handle complex workflows. These systems — capable of scheduling meetings, processing refunds, and executing multi-step tasks — demand a level of cross-platform reliability that fragmented infrastructure simply cannot provide.

“Running next-generation models on fragmented legacy architecture is becoming a liability in today’s agentic ecosystem,” said Michelle Duke, Senior Developer Evangelist at Twilio. “The missing link is the connective tissue between these isolated systems.”

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Artificial intelligence is no longer just a technology trend. Across Southeast Asia, it is reshaping how businesses hire, how employees work, and what skills matter most in the modern economy.

From startups to large enterprises, organisations are realising that AI is not only automating tasks. It is redefining human value in the workplace.

The biggest shift is happening in talent strategy. Companies are beginning to prioritise adaptability, problem-solving, and AI collaboration over traditional credentials alone. In the AI era, workers are increasingly expected to work alongside intelligent systems rather than compete against them.

For Southeast Asia’s fast-growing digital economy, this transition creates both major opportunities and serious challenges.

Why AI is changing the workforce

AI tools are rapidly improving productivity across industries. Tasks that once required hours of manual work can now be completed in minutes using generative AI, automation software, and intelligent workflows.

Administrative work, customer support, content production, coding assistance, and data analysis are becoming increasingly AI-assisted. As a result, businesses are rethinking what humans should focus on.

Instead of repetitive tasks, companies now value skills that AI cannot easily replicate, including:

• Critical thinking
• Creativity
• Emotional intelligence
• Leadership
• Strategic decision-making
• Communication
• Relationship building

This shift is creating a workforce reset where human strengths become more important as automation grows.

Southeast Asia’s opportunity in the AI era

Southeast Asia is uniquely positioned for this transformation. The region has a young population, rising internet adoption, and rapidly expanding digital economies.

Countries like Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia are investing heavily in digital infrastructure and AI development.

At the same time, many businesses still face a shortage of AI-ready talent.

Also Read: Generalist or specialist? Building future-proof skills in the age of AI

This gap is pushing organisations to rethink recruitment and employee development. Companies no longer want workers who only follow fixed processes. They need employees who can adapt quickly, learn continuously, and use AI tools effectively.

The result is a growing shift toward skills-first hiring.

The rise of skills-first hiring

Traditional hiring often focused on degrees, years of experience, and rigid qualifications. In today’s AI-driven economy, many employers are placing greater importance on practical capability.

A candidate who understands AI tools, automation workflows, or data-driven decision-making may now have an advantage over someone with more traditional experience.

This trend is especially important in Southeast Asia, where access to elite education is uneven. AI tools are making knowledge more accessible, allowing more people to compete globally regardless of background.

Businesses are increasingly evaluating candidates based on:

• Portfolio quality
• Adaptability
• AI literacy
• Communication skills
• Execution ability
• Real-world problem solving

For many employers, learning speed is becoming more valuable than static expertise.

AI-ready teams need continuous learning

Building AI-ready teams requires more than simply adopting new software. Companies must also invest in workforce development.

Many organisations are introducing:

• AI literacy programmes
• Internal upskilling initiatives
• Cross-functional learning
• AI experimentation workshops
• Digital productivity training

Forward-thinking businesses understand that employees who know how to use AI effectively can significantly improve efficiency and innovation.

Also Read: Building the ASEAN AI archipelago: How Southeast Asia can secure its place in the global AI value chain

However, successful adoption also depends on company culture. Employees who fear AI may resist change, while organisations that position AI as a collaborative tool often see stronger engagement.

The goal is not to replace people entirely, but to help teams work smarter with intelligent systems.

Human skills are becoming more valuable

One common misconception is that AI will reduce the importance of human workers. In reality, many human-centred skills are becoming even more valuable.

AI can generate content and process information quickly, but it still struggles with empathy, trust, cultural understanding, and ethical judgment.

Businesses still rely on humans for:

• Leadership
• Negotiation
• Creative strategy
• Emotional connection
• Crisis management
• Relationship building

This is particularly important in Southeast Asia, where business culture often depends heavily on trust and long-term relationships.

As automation increases, human-centred capabilities may become the true competitive advantage.

Education must evolve faster

The AI talent reset also challenges educational institutions across Southeast Asia.

Many schools still focus heavily on memorisation and traditional testing methods, while employers increasingly need graduates with adaptability and digital problem-solving skills.

Also Read: AI’s tipping point: Why 2026 will separate the leaders from the laggards in financial services

Future-ready education should emphasise:

• Analytical thinking
• Creativity
• Communication
• AI collaboration
• Entrepreneurial thinking
• Digital literacy

This shift creates opportunities for online learning platforms, bootcamps, and industry-led training programmes that can move faster than traditional academic systems.

In the AI era, continuous learning is becoming essential for long-term career growth.

The future of talent in Southeast Asia

The future workforce in Southeast Asia will likely be defined by collaboration between humans and AI systems.

Workers who succeed will combine technical understanding with creativity, adaptability, and emotional intelligence. Meanwhile, companies that thrive will be those that invest in learning, flexible hiring strategies, and AI-ready cultures.

Artificial intelligence is changing what work looks like, but it is also redefining what makes humans valuable inside organisations.

For businesses across Southeast Asia, the challenge is no longer whether AI will transform the workforce. The challenge is how quickly organisations can adapt to the new era of talent.

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The post Human value in the AI era: What employers in SEA need next appeared first on e27.

If you want to really understand Southeast Asian gaming in a way that shapes product decisions, go-to-market strategies, and investment theses, you need to spend serious time thinking about Indonesia. Not Singapore, which punches above its weight as a regional headquarters, but has only four million gamers. Not Thailand, which is the most monetised market in the region, but operates at a fraction of Indonesia’s scale. Indonesia.

A gaming report by Southeast Asian gaming marketing agency Ampverse frames the numbers plainly: Indonesia has a population of over 280 million people and a gamer base exceeding 150 million. That is the largest gaming market in Southeast Asia by both absolute player count and download volume, and it is larger than the combined gaming populations of Thailand (35 million), Malaysia (20 million), and Singapore (4 million).

Also Read: The mobile-first myth that is costing SEA’s gaming industry billions

But raw scale is not the story. The story is the complexity. Indonesia is a market that consistently humbles companies that approach it with assumptions borrowed from elsewhere and consistently rewards those who take the time to understand it on its own terms.

Creator trust is not a marketing variable; it is the entry condition

The Ampverse report makes a point about Indonesia that deserves more attention than it typically receives: in this market, creator trust is “critical for discovery and adoption.” That framing elevates creator relationships from a channel choice to a market-entry prerequisite.

This reflects a specific aspect of how information travels in Indonesia. The country spans over 17,000 islands, with a population distributed across major urban centres like Jakarta and Surabaya, as well as hundreds of smaller cities and towns with distinct linguistic, cultural, and consumption contexts. National media reach is uneven. App store visibility is competitive. Traditional advertising is expensive and increasingly ineffective with younger demographics.

What cuts through all of that is peer recommendation, and in gaming, peer recommendation at scale is mediated by creators. A gaming creator in Bandung with 200,000 loyal followers may drive more meaningful installs and retention in that city than a national campaign costing ten times as much. The implication for both publishers and brands is that Indonesia cannot be approached as a single market. It is an archipelago of micro-communities, each with its own trusted voices and cultural reference points.

The localisation problem runs deeper than language

Most companies entering Indonesia know they need to localise into Bahasa Indonesia. What they underestimate is how much further localisation needs to go.

Also Read: Southeast Asia’s gaming boom is bigger than you think — and brands are still getting it wrong

The Ampverse report identifies cultural fragmentation as a key challenge for brands and publishers across Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia. Game mechanics, payment flows, community norms, humour, visual aesthetics, and competitive formats all carry cultural weight that a language translation does not address.

Payment infrastructure is a concrete example. Indonesia has a relatively low credit card penetration rate compared to more developed markets, and a large proportion of gaming transactions run through convenience store payments, digital wallets, and carrier billing. A publisher that optimises its payment flow for credit cards, as many Western studios still do, is effectively locking out a significant portion of its potential paying audience before the game even launches.

Price sensitivity compounds this. The Ampverse report describes Vietnam as “price-sensitive but highly engaged,” a characterisation that applies equally well to large segments of the Indonesian market. The implication is not simply that prices need to be lower; it is that the entire monetisation architecture, from pricing tiers to the cadence of in-game offers to the design of virtual goods, needs to be rebuilt around local economic realities rather than transplanted from a US$9.99-per-month Western subscription model.

Community investment is the actual retention mechanism

Indonesia’s gaming market has another characteristic that distinguishes it from most Western markets and from Singapore’s high-ARPU environment: community-driven retention. The Ampverse report notes that successful publishers in the region invest in community early and think beyond launch windows, a model that runs counter to the traditional publisher instinct to concentrate marketing spend around a game’s release date and then reduce investment as the title matures.

In Indonesia, the post-launch community is often the primary driver of growth. Players who are deeply embedded in a game’s community — its Discord, its Facebook Group, its guild structures, its local tournament circuit — churn at significantly lower rates than those who are not. They also recruit. The viral spread of games through peer networks in both Indonesia and the Philippines is not accidental; it is the natural outcome of deliberately cultivated communities.

For startups building gaming products or services for the Indonesian market, this points to a specific strategic priority: community infrastructure before performance marketing. The companies that have built durable positions in Indonesian gaming are not those that spent the most on user acquisition; they are those that built the strongest community flywheel.

What Indonesia tells us about the next five years

Indonesia’s trajectory over the next decade will shape the overall story of Southeast Asian gaming more than any other single market. The country’s median age is under 30, smartphone penetration in urban and semi-urban areas is near-universal, and internet penetration continues to rise. The pipeline of new gamers entering the market annually is substantial and structurally durable.

Also Read: SEA’s gaming audiences have outgrown your influencer strategy

The Ampverse report projects that the broader Southeast Asian gaming ecosystem will reach US$14 billion by 2030. A disproportionate share of that growth will be determined by what happens in Indonesia — whether local monetisation models mature, whether creator-led distribution scales efficiently, and whether publishers and brands learn to operate in the market on its own terms rather than on the terms they would prefer.

The companies that crack Indonesia do not just win Indonesia. They acquire the operational knowledge, community relationships, and localisation infrastructure that gives them a decisive advantage in every other price-sensitive, creator-driven, community-oriented market in the region. That is the real prize, and it goes to whoever is willing to do the hard work of understanding the archipelago first.

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The pantry on the eighth floor was unusually quiet that morning.

Several employees sat with coffee cups in their hands while large dashboards displayed customer behaviour, inventory movement, and real-time promotion analytics. Yet the discussion inside the room was not about sales targets or product shortages.

It was about something bigger. Talent reset.

“AI is changing retail faster than most companies are prepared for,” Bagas said while scrolling through a customer personalisation dashboard. “And honestly, the biggest challenge is no longer technology.”

Anne looked at him curiously. “Then what is the real challenge?”

“People,” Bagas answered calmly. “The workforce itself has to evolve.”

For years, retail companies focused on operational efficiency: lower costs, faster transactions, larger product catalogues, and more aggressive promotions. Technology mainly functioned as a support infrastructure.

But AI is changing the operating model entirely.

Modern retail systems are no longer passive systems waiting for customer actions. AI recommendation engines now predict customer behaviour, analyse shopping habits, generate personalised promotions, optimise inventory movement, and influence purchasing decisions in real time.

This transformation is creating a new economic reality inside retail organisations. And that reality is forcing companies into what many executives now describe as a talent reset.

What the talent reset actually means

The meaning of talent itself is changing.

Previously, retail success depended heavily on execution speed and operational discipline. Today, companies increasingly need employees who can combine business understanding, analytical thinking, technological literacy, and human empathy simultaneously.

Also Read: What great talent actually means in the AI era

The reset is happening across almost every layer of retail operations.

Marketing teams, for example, are no longer simply designing mass promotions for millions of customers. AI can already automate large portions of campaign distribution. The real value now lies in understanding customer behaviour patterns and designing meaningful personalisation strategies.

“Marketing people now need to think more like analysts,” Bagas explained. “AI can generate promotions automatically. But humans still decide what kind of experience should be created.”

The same shift is happening inside technical teams. Retail programmers are no longer only building cashier systems, mobile apps, or product catalogues. Increasingly, they are expected to understand recommendation engines, customer segmentation models, AI workflows, behavioural analytics pipelines, and automation architecture.

The role is evolving from software builder into business technology translator. A developer today may need to understand not only APIs and databases, but also why certain recommendation logic increases customer retention or why certain customer flows reduce cart abandonment. Technical skills alone are no longer enough. Business reasoning is becoming equally important.

Operations, inventory, and AI credibility

Operations teams are experiencing another form of pressure.

Inventory management used to focus mainly on stock availability. Now, inventory accuracy directly affects AI credibility. An AI system recommending unavailable products damages customer trust instantly.

Operational precision is no longer just an internal efficiency metric. It has become part of the customer experience itself.

“This is where many companies underestimate AI,” Bagas said. “They think AI alone creates transformation. But AI is only as strong as the operational ecosystem behind it.”

The human layer AI cannot replace

As AI automates repetitive tasks, human value increasingly shifts toward emotional understanding, judgment, communication, negotiation, and trust building.

Customer service teams illustrate this transformation clearly. AI chatbots can answer repetitive questions 24 hours a day. They can process refunds, explain delivery status, and recommend products instantly. But when customers are angry, disappointed, anxious, or emotionally frustrated, humans still matter most.

Also Read: From HR to talent flow: Why workforce management needs a supply chain mindset

“AI can predict what people buy,” Bagas said. “But humans understand why people buy.”

That sentence captured the heart of the entire transformation. Because shopping is rarely purely logical. Sometimes customers buy comfort food after a stressful day. Sometimes parents overspend because they feel guilty toward their children. Sometimes people shop emotionally during moments of uncertainty or loneliness. Human behaviour contains emotional context that AI still struggles to fully understand.

The companies that will win

This is why the future of retail will likely not belong to companies that simply deploy the most AI. It will belong to companies capable of redesigning human roles around AI.

The winners will be organisations that treat AI as a productivity layer while simultaneously investing in workforce adaptation, cross-functional thinking, and human-centred capability development.

Because the true talent reset is not about replacing humans with machines. It is about redefining what makes humans valuable in an AI-driven economy.

As the pantry discussion ended, employees slowly returned to their desks. Dashboards continued updating in real time. Recommendation engines kept learning from customer activity. Personalised promotions kept running automatically across mobile apps and digital channels.

And quietly, without dramatic announcements or headlines, the retail workforce itself was already being rewritten.

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