Global financial markets are currently undergoing a severe recalibration as the artificial intelligence trade unwinds. This paradigm shift is triggering a broad rotation out of high-flying momentum stocks and into defensive sectors. The contagion is evident across major Western indices. The S&P 500 retreated by 1.4 per cent to settle near 7,375, while the technology-focused Nasdaq Composite suffered a sharper 2.2 per cent decline. The Dow Jones Industrial Average demonstrated relative resilience, slipping a mere 0.09 per cent. Across the Atlantic, European markets also felt the pressure, with Stoxx 600 futures dropping approximately 0.9 per cent as they pulled back from recent record peaks.

The correction hit the Asia-Pacific region with exceptional force, driven by a sharp rout heavily weighing down high-flying technology and semiconductor firms. The MSCI regional benchmark plummeted 2.9 per cent. South Korea experienced the most dramatic fallout, with the KOSPI plunging roughly 10 per cent and triggering an automatic 20-minute trading halt. This massive wipeout was spearheaded by memory chip giants SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, both of which cratered by over 12 per cent.

Japan saw the Nikkei 225 fall 3.6 per cent to close at 69,788.38, breaking below the critical psychological threshold of 70,000. In Greater China, the Hang Seng Index dropped 1.8 per cent to 23,445, cementing a bearish head-and-shoulders technical pattern, while local artificial intelligence software names like MiniMax tumbled 16 per cent intraday. The mainland saw the Shanghai Composite ease 1.4 per cent to 4,106 points, and the technology-reliant Shenzhen Component shed 3.2 per cent.

Beyond equities, the risk aversion sentiment extended to commodities and private technology valuations. Global oil prices retreated as geopolitical tensions in the Strait of Hormuz cooled, sending Brent crude down over one per cent to near US$76.95. In the technology sector specifically, Alphabet dived five per cent, and private aerospace titan SpaceX experienced a massive 16 per cent valuation crash. Investors are aggressively booking profits and pivoting out of growth areas into defensive pockets of the market, including select European semiconductor plays and financial institutions.

Also Read: From frontier to emerging: How Vietnam’s stock market rewrote the ASEAN playbook in 2025

This massive unwinding of the technology trade has created a direct spillover effect into digital assets, proving once again the tight correlation between traditional technology markets and cryptocurrency. Bitcoin has lost its clear upward direction and is currently wobbling in the US$62,000 to US$62,500 range.

The cryptocurrency broke key support levels two times during the Asian session before attempting to consolidate near US$62,370. Crypto buying power remains heavily constrained by stalled United States exchange-traded fund inflows and broader market anxieties regarding upcoming Federal Reserve monetary guidance.

The underlying catalyst for this synchronised selloff is a fundamental reevaluation of Federal Reserve interest rate expectations, accompanied by a slight spike in United States Treasury yields. Investors are aggressively pricing in the potential for a rate hike, forcing a rapid rotation out of growth assets. Market sentiment has turned decidedly bearish in the short term. This shift has triggered active prediction hedging on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, where speculative volume is surging as traders place bets on whether Bitcoin will test lower handles around the US$58,000 mark.

At the point of writing, Asia market has not started. Let’s see if it will go down further.

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The post From silicon to satoshis: Tracing the contagion of the global market unwind appeared first on e27.

Vietnam is preparing to test a more interventionist model for building technology companies, with the Ministry of Science and Technology proposing a National Venture Capital Fund with initial capital of US$100 million for the 2026-2028 period.

The proposal, discussed at a meeting of the government’s science, technology, and innovation committee on Tuesday, is designed to accelerate the commercialisation of strategic technologies and support the creation of competitive technology enterprises.

Also Read: Vietnam isn’t just inviting private capital in. It is structurally dependent on it

While US$100 million is modest by global venture capital standards, the plan is significant for Vietnam and the wider Southeast Asian startup ecosystem. It signals Hanoi’s intent to move beyond policy support and infrastructure building and towards direct participation in venture financing, particularly in sectors where private investors remain cautious because of long development cycles, uncertain exits, and high technical risk.

The fund is being modelled on Israel’s Yozma programme, one of the most cited examples of state-backed venture capital catalysing a private VC industry. Under the Vietnamese proposal, the state would lead the fund’s initial capital structure. From 2028 to 2035, the fund would gradually mobilise more private capital, with private investors expected to account for 30 to 40 per cent of total capital. The ministry has also proposed the development of separate funds for different technology sectors.

Vietnam’s deeptech funding gap

The timing is notable. Vietnam has emerged as one of Southeast Asia’s more dynamic startup markets, supported by a young digital population, a growing engineering workforce, and increasing interest from regional and global investors. However, much of the country’s startup funding has flowed into consumer internet, fintech, e-commerce enablement, and software businesses rather than harder technology categories.

That is not unique to Vietnam. Across Southeast Asia, deeptech, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, climate technologies, biotech, and other research-heavy sectors often struggle to secure early-stage risk capital. These companies typically require longer gestation periods, specialised evaluation, patient funding, and stronger links between universities, laboratories, corporates, and investors.

Vietnam is trying to position itself more aggressively in strategic technologies as global supply chains shift and as multinational technology companies expand their presence in the country. The country has already attracted attention as a manufacturing base for electronics and is attempting to move up the value chain into higher-value technology development.

A national venture capital fund could help bridge the gap between research and commercialisation, especially if it can back companies emerging from universities, research institutes, and incubators. But the challenge will be turning a state-funded vehicle into a credible venture investor rather than another public-sector grant mechanism.

The Yozma inspiration and its limits

Israel’s Yozma programme, launched in the 1990s, helped seed the country’s venture capital industry by using government capital to attract foreign and domestic private investors. Its structure gave private investors strong incentives and helped create a commercially disciplined investment culture.

Also Read: Vietnam’s biggest PE bet of 2025 was not on tech. It was on what 100M people eat every day

Vietnam’s proposal borrows from that logic: state capital comes first, private capital follows, and specialised funds are created around priority sectors. In theory, this allows the government to absorb some early risk while encouraging private investors to participate once the model matures.

But transplanting Yozma-style models is rarely straightforward. Israel already had strong research universities, defence-linked technology capabilities, global diaspora networks, and deep connections to US capital markets. Vietnam has different institutional realities, including a younger VC ecosystem, fewer proven deeptech exits, and a capital market still developing mechanisms for valuing high-growth technology businesses.

The ministry appears aware of these constraints. It has identified the tension between venture capital’s risk-tolerant nature and the public-sector principle of preserving state capital as a major challenge. That tension is central to whether the fund can function effectively.

Risk cannot be managed deal by deal

Venture capital works because a small number of outsized winners compensate for many failures. Public capital management, by contrast, often penalises losses on individual investments, even when the overall portfolio performs well. If officials managing the fund are exposed to personal or legal liability for failed startup investments, the vehicle could become too conservative to achieve its purpose.

To address this, the ministry has proposed that fund performance be evaluated across the entire portfolio rather than on individual deals. It has also called for protection mechanisms for decision-makers who follow proper procedures.

This is a crucial point. Without such protections, fund managers may avoid genuinely risky strategic technologies and instead back safer, later-stage, or politically favoured companies. That would undermine the rationale for creating a venture fund in the first place.

The ministry has recommended that the government report to the National Assembly to issue a resolution creating a specific mechanism for the fund. This would include liability exemptions for officials managing state-funded venture capital, provided they comply with regulations. The goal is to enable controlled risk-taking in investments involving strategic technologies.

Governance will decide credibility

The proposed governance structure also points to lessons from past state-backed investment efforts in the region. The ministry has recommended market-based recruitment and compensation, autonomy for the fund’s investment council, and stronger ties with research institutes, universities, and technology incubators.

These details are important. A venture fund needs experienced investors, sector specialists, and the ability to make decisions quickly. If compensation is not competitive, the fund may struggle to attract talent from the private market. If investment decisions are too bureaucratic, promising startups may look elsewhere for capital.

Autonomy will also be closely watched by private investors. For the fund to crowd in capital rather than crowd it out, it must be seen as commercially disciplined, transparent, and free from excessive administrative intervention.

Southeast Asia has no shortage of government-backed funding initiatives, from Singapore’s deep pool of state-linked capital to Malaysia’s startup financing schemes and Indonesia’s efforts to mobilise domestic capital for technology and innovation. The strongest models tend to combine public-sector strategic direction with professional investment management and clear accountability frameworks.

Also Read: Why Vietnam is the next big thing for startups and corporate partnerships

Vietnam now appears to be moving in that direction, but execution will be decisive.

The exit problem

Perhaps the most difficult issue is not capital deployment but capital recovery. The ministry highlighted Vietnam’s underdeveloped exit ecosystem, including limited mechanisms for valuing technology companies and insufficient channels for investors to recover capital.

This is a broader Southeast Asian problem. IPO markets remain uneven for technology companies, M&A activity is still limited compared with the US or China, and many regional startups depend on later-stage funding rounds rather than clear exit pathways. For deeptech companies, the problem is even more acute because buyers are specialised and commercialisation timelines can be long.

If Vietnam wants private investors to account for 30 to 40 per cent of the fund’s capital in later phases, it will need to improve exit visibility. That could involve strengthening domestic capital markets, encouraging corporate acquisitions, creating clearer valuation standards, and deepening cross-border links with regional and global investors.

The proposed US$100 million fund is therefore not just a financing instrument. It is a test of whether Vietnam can build the institutional architecture required for a more sophisticated innovation economy.

If designed well, the fund could help turn public research into commercially viable companies and give Vietnam a stronger position in Southeast Asia’s emerging deeptech landscape. If designed poorly, it risks becoming another state capital vehicle constrained by caution, weak incentives, and limited exits.

For now, Hanoi has identified the right problems. The harder task will be building a fund that is allowed to take the risks venture capital requires.

The post Vietnam looks to Israel’s Yozma model for US$100M national venture fund appeared first on e27.

As AI blurs the boundary between human and machine online, a new platform is making the case that proving you are a real person should be as fundamental and private as having a password.

World ID, developed by Tools for Humanity, is a digital identity credential designed to verify that a user is a unique human being without collecting or retaining personal information. The platform is now expanding across Asia, with Singapore serving as a key regional hub.

At its core, World ID functions as a modern proof of personhood. Andrew Hsu, General Manager for Singapore and Taiwan at Tools for Humanity, describes it in an email interview with e27 as “a modern-day blue checkmark for personhood” — one grounded not in celebrity or social standing, but in the simple fact of being human.

The practical applications span a wide range of industries. Concert ticketing platforms can use World ID to ensure tickets reach genuine fans rather than automated bots. Dating apps can confirm that profiles belong to real people. Enterprise tools can verify that the individual on a video call or behind a digital signature is who they claim to be. Partners already integrating the tech include Tinder in Japan, Zoom, DocuSign and Concert Kit, which has announced plans with the band 30 Seconds to Mars.

The bot problem World ID is built to solve

The platform emerges at a moment when traditional verification methods are under significant strain. Bots can now bypass CAPTCHAs more reliably than humans, and AI-generated documents are increasingly capable of deceiving legacy systems. Fraudulent accounts, deepfakes, and synthetic identities are no longer edge cases. They are, according to Tools for Humanity, a growing structural threat to digital trust.

Also Read: Vietnam looks to Israel’s Yozma model for US$100M national venture fund

“As AI advances, it is blurring the line between human and machine interactions online,” Hsu says, “making it harder to prove with certainty that a person is truly a person.”

World ID addresses this by separating the question of identity — who you are — from the question of personhood — that you are human.

How the Orb works

Verification is conducted through a device called the Orb. When a user downloads the World App and presents themselves at an Orb station, the device photographs their face and irises. These images are used to generate an encrypted code, which is split into randomised fragments and sent to the user’s device before being permanently deleted from the Orb.

The encrypted fragments are then compared across independent compute nodes run by third parties including universities using a process called Anonymised Multi-Party Computation. This confirms that the individual has not previously verified without revealing who they are. Neither World nor Tools for Humanity retains any personal information from the process, and users may delete their data at any time.

Independent security audits of the Orb and its software have been conducted by cybersecurity firms Trail of Bits and Theori, with results made publicly available. The underlying tech is open-source.

Also Read: Who am I in the age of AI? Identity, displacement, and awakening

Singapore as a regional blueprint

In Singapore, Orb stations have been deployed at self-serve locations through partners including Collin’s and Sakae Sushi restaurants, with community pop-ups also under way. Hsu describes Singapore as a “bellwether” for Southeast Asia, citing its strong public-private collaboration and high awareness of digital safety issues.

The company acknowledges that building public confidence will take time. Hsu frames education, accessibility and regulatory engagement as the three pillars of its approach to new markets — noting that trust, ultimately, “is earned over time and through consistent action.”

World ID is currently available to users aged 18 and above.

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Image Credit: World ID

The post Can World ID solve the internet’s fake human problem? appeared first on e27.

When Meta announced that CRED founder and one of India’s most celebrated fintech entrepreneurs, Kunal Shah, would become the global CEO of WhatsApp, the Indian internet went predictably delirious. LinkedIn filled with tributes. Venture capitalists took victory laps. Across Southeast Asia, the story landed as another chapter in the South Asian diaspora’s march through Silicon Valley’s upper echelons.

But after more than a decade covering startup ecosystems across India and Southeast Asia, I have learnt one thing: the most important story is rarely the one generating the most LinkedIn posts.

The acquisition behind the appointment

The sequencing here is enormously crucial, and most celebratory coverage has glossed over it entirely. Meta did not simply hire Shah but it acquired his loyalty and credit-card management platform CRED for US$4.5 billion, with US$900 million injected as fresh capital. The CEO title came bundled with the deal. These two events are inseparable.

Also Read: China blocks Meta’s AI bet on Manus: What it means next

Founded in 2018, CRED raised over US$1 billion in VC funding and posted net losses of approximately US$175 million in its most recently reported financials. Its core product, a rewards platform for credit card holders, was never a conventional revenue-generating business. What it built, meticulously over the years, was something far more valuable to Meta: roughly 25 million verified, curated profiles of affluent, creditworthy Indians.

At US$4.5 billion, that works out to approximately US$180 per user or, stripped to essentials, around US$36 per high-quality financial profile. Meta did not buy an app but bought a dataset and a monetisation shortcut.

WhatsApp’s long-standing India problem

To understand why that dataset matters so urgently, consider WhatsApp’s peculiar India paradox. The county is WhatsApp’s largest market, accounting for approximately 26 per cent of its global user base, with around 15 million active WhatsApp Business accounts. By every measure of adoption, India is a triumph.

By when it comes to revenue, it is an embarrassment. WhatsApp contributes less than 2 per cent of Meta’s total global revenue, and India’s contribution to even that meagre figure is disproportionately small.

WhatsApp Payments, launched in India in 2018 amid breathless predictions that it would render the entire Indian fintech industry obsolete, never came close to delivering. PhonePe and Google Pay dominate UPI transactions. The failure was never about Indian consumers — they adopted digital payments with extraordinary enthusiasm — but about Meta’s inability to commit to the local execution focus the market demanded.

Also Read: Meta × Manus: The misread AI deal

That is the mandate Shah has actually been handed: fix the India monetisation problem, then export the playbook to Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, and every other large emerging market where WhatsApp dominates daily communication.

The question nobody is asking

This is where the celebration deserves serious scrutiny.

If CRED’s core asset is 25 million verified financial profiles of affluent Indians, what exactly happened to those profiles when the acquisition closed? India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 requires explicit user consent before personal financial data is transferred to any third party. It restricts cross-border data transfers to countries on an approved whitelist, a list that remains unfinished, with the United States not yet on it.

Did CRED’s 25 million users individually and knowingly consent to their credit profiles being transferred to an American technology conglomerate? Or did nobody check?

Not a single Indian regulator publicly raised this question, nor a parliamentary inquiry was filed. The mainstream Indian press was too busy writing about a middle-class founder’s inspiring journey.

The contrast with how China handled a structurally similar situation is striking, not because Beijing’s authoritarian methods are worthy of admiration, but because the underlying principle is worth acknowledging.

When Meta reportedly invested US$2 billion in Manus AI, a Chinese startup that had relocated to Singapore, Beijing forcibly unwound the deal and called it a national security matter. Citizen data, it declared, is sovereign infrastructure. One need not endorse Beijing’s governance to recognise that this position is increasingly mainstream in serious technology policy circles, from Brussels to Singapore itself.

What the ecosystem is choosing not to see

Shah’s earlier venture, Freecharge, was sold to Snapdeal in 2015 for approximately US$400 million. Snapdeal offloaded it to Axis Bank two years later for around US$53 million, an 87 per cent write-down. As recently as FY25, Freecharge was still posting net losses of approximately US$5.6 million. One LinkedIn commentator put it bluntly: the business was never real. The exit was.

CRED followed a similar arc. Enormous capital raised, persistent losses, and then a multi-billion-dollar exit priced not on business fundamentals but on the future value Meta believes it can extract from the underlying data.

Shah, to his credit, is one of Indian startup culture’s more intellectually honest voices, and his elevation carries genuine symbolic weight. The critique here is not personal but systemic. He played by the rules the ecosystem created. The real question is why nobody changed those rules.

Two cheers, with conditions

For readers across Southeast Asia, the lesson is clear: the most consequential technology policy is the kind enforced before a deal closes, not debated after the data has already moved.

Also Read: Autonomous agents in performance marketing: A critical look at Meta’s US$2B Manus AI

Shah may yet prove to be exactly the leader who turns WhatsApp into the financial services giant Meta desperately needs. That possibility is genuinely exciting. But enthusiasm is not a substitute for accountability. And a good story is not the same thing as the whole story.

The post WhatsApp’s new CEO is the headline. India’s data is the story appeared first on e27.

What does it take to tell a winning story? Through my experience working in public relations, insights management, and tech entrepreneurship, I’ve come to see that storytelling isn’t a soft skill. In 2026 and beyond, it’s analytical output.

The big companies know this. Job listings mentioning “storytelling” as a skill or headlined with titles like Head of Storytelling or Narrative Strategist now feature on Indeed at a growing rate, instead of the traditional communications manager or head of marketing titles. Job postings featuring the word “storyteller” have grown significantly.

Rapid growth of AI content has shifted messaging into a new territory: one where good-quality messaging has a chance to stand out in a pile of ever-growing AI slop.

Through my own successes and failures in business and entrepreneurship, I’ve realised that to communicate persuasively, to investors, customers, or partners, you cannot rely on surface-level messaging. When many businesses compete in trying to tell the same story, sell similar products, and stand out in a cluttered market, my advice is to follow one simple rule: be the most reliable.

For SMEs and startups, this can seem challenging. How can a small business seem more reliable than a large player?

How do we stand out in the noise of everyone yelling, “I’m the best!”?

The rise of AI sloppytelling

The harsh truth is that most businesses were not strong communicators to begin with, so many of us now turn to AI to write a convincing pitch deck, transform our slide headlines into winning mantras, or write our business plans for us: the one-click-win. We’ve come to depend on it because AI messaging is better than no messaging, right?

As a result, inauthentic AI-devised content is taking over. Much of this output lacks focus and conviction to make audiences feel at ease. A generic story doesn’t do the job of putting prospective customers at ease, especially when your competitor is larger, has bigger teams, a longer runway, or more experience.

Using AI to write your story will not make you reliable or convincing. It will make you unremarkable. I call it Sloppytelling!

AI produces stories that often lack impactful key messages. The one-liners that make people stop and think, evoke nodding heads, and build confidence in your offer. This is because AI is based on analysis of past collections of vast generic data sets, and your story is based on your data and yours alone. It comes from the conversations you’ve had with clients who signed on the dotted line, and from those who opted not to.

Also Read: The storytelling myth: Why narrative-first leadership is overrated

AI is also not a replacement for real stakeholder or customer feedback. The actual data about your product or service shapes the story you tell. Remember: storytelling is analytical.

Finally, I argue that you should not use AI for developing well-structured responses to tough questions. Tough questions almost deserve their own section here, but we know them well from job interviews, investor meetings, and our business development presentations. It’s the questions that broke us.

Strong storytelling is as much about creating those powerful one-liners as it is about building our defensive comebacks, the fortress of words that protects our business from scrutiny.

A framework for analytical storytelling

Storytelling that can change minds or close deals is usually built on lessons accumulated over time, often through difficult experiences with customers and stakeholders. We start to form an idea of the optimal story through our repeated encounters with the word “no.”

After nearly two decades in business, listening and learning from strong storytellers, my consultancy focuses, among other things, on helping SMEs learn to tell their stories well and build lasting connections through their words and messaging. I argue that there are ways to bypass the painful rejections, the time spent hearing our least favourite word, through approaching storytelling in a structured and analytical way.

As mentioned earlier, the first part of this is to focus on insights, specifically around answering three questions about your business:

• What makes our proposition unique?
• Why do we do this better than others?
• Which questions will kill our business?

While most companies focus on the first two questions, many fail to focus on the final question. This one is complicated because there are many questions that can kill us, and our stakeholders ask different questions based on their needs or concerns. You have strong storytelling when your pitch incorporates the answers to these questions, not just once, but repeatedly, until this is what your audience remembers.

How AI can support your storytelling

You should certainly use AI to build your story! The tools are there to make our work more efficient and save us time. The strongest value AI can provide is to support the analytical work and insights generation that feeds your story, the legwork you need to do before formulating your winning pitch. It can also help dot the i’s and cross the t’s after your story is written.

Also Read: How brands are crafting communities through the art of visual storytelling

Here is how I propose you use AI in your storytelling process:

• To get clarity into your business and support analytical insights
• To filter your content and spot patterns behind your key messaging
• To devise questionnaires for stakeholders or customers to uncover weaknesses
• To clean up grammar and phrasing

AI can save you time and handle some of the legwork, but it can’t get you all the way there in answering the three core questions.

The takeaway

Many people still think of storytelling as something soft, artistic, or nostalgic: a campfire, a childhood book, a good writer’s craft. But in business, storytelling is not a cosy blanket. It is the bare-bones framework that holds your relationships with stakeholders, customers, and prospective clients in place. For SMEs and startups, it can be one of the most powerful tools for competing with larger players.

In a market saturated with generic, AI-assisted messaging, the winners will not be the companies producing the most content. They will be the ones whose stories make a lasting impact. That starts with investing in analytical storytelling today.

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The post Why storytelling is no longer a soft skill but analytical output appeared first on e27.