Month: August 2026

A few weeks ago, an SME CEO shared his frustration with me over coffee.

His company had invested heavily in AI tools over the past year. Licences were purchased. Teams attended workshops. Managers were instructed to integrate AI into workflows. Like many businesses today, the organisation moved quickly because it feared falling behind.

Yet despite the investment, adoption remained uneven.

Some teams were using AI aggressively while others barely touched it. Junior employees were often highly fluent with the tools but lacked the business judgment to evaluate outputs critically. Senior staff possessed deep domain expertise but were slower, more cautious, and at times resistant to AI-assisted workflows.

At one point, the CEO leaned back and said something I have heard increasingly often lately.

“The problem is my people. The tools are only as good as the people using them.”

At first glance, this sounds entirely reasonable. Most organisations still approach AI implementation as a capability problem. The assumption is straightforward: train employees, improve prompting skills, close the competency gap, and adoption will follow.

But as he continued speaking, something more interesting began surfacing beneath the frustration.

What he was describing was not merely a people problem. It was a human environment problem.

Because before people make decisions, before teams collaborate, before judgment becomes visible, something else quietly shapes the conditions under which those decisions form.

The environment.

And AI is redesigning that environment far more profoundly than most organisations realise.

Recent research into AI-augmented teams suggests that AI is no longer functioning merely as a passive software tool. Increasingly, it behaves more like an active participant inside the decision environment itself, summarising discussions, synthesising opinions, generating recommendations, shaping meeting outputs, and influencing what becomes visible to the group.

That distinction matters enormously.

Because most organisations still operate with an outdated assumption: humans think, AI assists. But what happens when the environment itself begins participating in thought formation?

Also Read: AI agents could help Southeast Asian firms untangle cross-border payment costs

As the CEO continued describing the tension inside his company, a pattern emerged. Junior staff often moved faster with AI because they were more comfortable experimenting. They generated outputs rapidly, contributed confidently in meetings, and adapted quickly to AI-driven workflows.

Senior employees behaved differently.

They questioned outputs more carefully. They noticed contextual gaps. They distrusted overconfident synthesis. They understood where nuance could disappear. Years of experience had trained them to recognise ambiguity, political complexity, and hidden operational realities that AI-generated summaries could flatten.

Ironically, the very people with the strongest judgment were often the slowest adopters.

This dynamic aligns closely with what researchers are beginning to call the “Expertise Paradox.” Studies increasingly suggest that while AI significantly boosts novice performance, experts often engage more cautiously because they are more sensitive to inaccuracies, overgeneralisation, and the erosion of tacit expertise.

Most organisations interpret this as resistance. But that may be a dangerous misreading. Because what looks like resistance may actually be discernment.

At the same time, a growing movement around “vibe teaming” is accelerating inside AI-enabled workplaces. The idea is deceptively simple: humans and AI collaborate in fluid, fast-moving loops where AI captures conversations, synthesises insights, drafts outputs, and accelerates execution. Researchers at the Brookings Institution recently demonstrated how teams could produce sophisticated strategic briefs in under 90 minutes using these approaches.

On the surface, this appears highly efficient. And in many cases, it is. But it also introduces a deeper organisational tension.

The systems that make collaboration faster may also reshape the conditions under which judgment, disagreement, expertise, and strategic clarity emerge.

As AI continuously summarises discussions and smooths complexity into coherent outputs, organisations can begin drifting toward what might be called consensus acceleration: the compression of disagreement through AI-mediated coherence.

Minority viewpoints become easier to flatten. Nuanced expertise risks being compressed into “clean” strategic summaries. Teams may begin mistaking rapid synthesis for deep understanding.

This is where many AI implementation conversations become too shallow.

The real issue is not whether employees possess enough AI skills. The deeper issue is whether organisations understand the human systems surrounding those skills.

Because every organisation operates inside invisible conditions, conditions that shape confidence, authority, participation, visibility, legitimacy, and interpretation. AI amplifies all of these dynamics. Sometimes positively. Sometimes dangerously.

This means the future leadership challenge may no longer be simply, “How do we get our people to use AI?”

The more important question may become: “What kind of decision environment are we creating around human judgment itself?”

Because the future bottleneck may not be AI capability. It may be organisational interpretive capacity. The ability of teams to distinguish signal from noise, preserve nuance under pressure, challenge false coherence, and maintain cognitive quality while operating at speed.

That changes the leadership conversation entirely.

Also Read: Securing Agentic AI for Singapore enterprises: A reference architecture

The companies that succeed in the next phase of AI transformation will likely not be the ones with the most tools. They will be the ones that consciously design environments where expertise is protected rather than flattened, where disagreement survives long enough to improve thinking, where AI accelerates exploration without replacing discernment, and where senior employees become stabilisers of strategic clarity rather than perceived obstacles to innovation.

Research increasingly supports this direction. Emerging work in human-AI complementarity suggests that the highest-performing organisations are not those replacing human judgment, but those deliberately designing collaborative structures where humans and AI contribute different cognitive strengths.

In practical terms, this means organisations must stop treating AI implementation purely as a technology rollout. It is a human environment redesign challenge.

Leaders may need to rethink meeting structures, decision-making rhythms, mentoring systems, review processes, and how authority itself operates inside AI-enabled teams.

Some teams may require deliberate environmental friction where strategic decisions cannot be finalised immediately. Others may require structured dissent loops where minority viewpoints are protected instead of compressed by rapid synthesis. Experienced employees may need to operate not merely as contributors, but as stewards of cognitive quality inside accelerated systems.

Because the future advantage of organisations may not belong solely to those who move fastest. It may belong to those who can preserve discernment while operating under acceleration.

The most important transformation happening inside AI-enabled companies is not technological. It is environmental.

And the real competitive edge may no longer come from AI alone. It may come from the ability to consciously design the human environments operating upstream of decisions themselves.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. You can also share your perspective by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of e27.

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The post The hidden problem inside AI teams isn’t skills — it’s the human environment appeared first on e27.

Late last year, a regional bank in Southeast Asia received an unusual email. Not from the attackers, but from their regulator. The supervisor had received an anonymous tip claiming the bank had suffered a major data breach two weeks earlier, with sample customer records attached as proof. The breach had happened. The bank had not yet finished its internal investigation, let alone disclosed it.

The attackers had taken the disclosure decision out of the institution’s hands.

That scenario, repeated quietly across the region in the past eighteen months, is the part of the ransomware story most ASEAN bank defences are not built for. The playbook the attackers are running today is not the playbook the banks have been training against, and the consequences are starting to show up in regulatory fines, customer notification disasters, and senior executive resignations that were preventable.

What the old playbook looked like

For most of the past decade, ransomware against banks worked in a predictable shape. Attackers gained access through phishing or unpatched vulnerabilities. They moved through the network. They encrypted critical systems. They demanded payment in cryptocurrency in exchange for a decryption key. The institution restored from backups when it could, paid quietly when it could not, and disclosed when it had to.

The defensive playbook was built around this model: offline backups, phishing training, network segmentation, ransom-payment policy, cyber-incident responder relationships. Most major banks across ASEAN have invested heavily here over the last five years. The investments were sound. They are not sufficient anymore.

Also Read: Singapore’s cybersecurity paradox: Leading in digital, lagging in defense

What changed in 2024-2025

Three shifts have happened, and they compound.

Data first, encryption second. Modern ransomware operators no longer begin with encryption. They begin with months of quiet exfiltration. By the time encryption runs, the attackers already hold a complete copy of the institution’s most sensitive data, customer records, internal communications, board materials, sometimes regulatory correspondence. Restoring from backup solves the operational disruption. It does nothing about the data the attackers still have.

Triple extortion. The single threat of decryption has become three threats in parallel. Pay or the data is released publicly. Pay or we sustain a denial-of-service against your customer-facing systems. Pay or we contact your most important enterprise clients directly. Each vector runs independently. Each has a different remediation cost. Banks built to negotiate against one threat are now negotiating against three.

Regulatory weaponisation. This is the shift most ASEAN supervisors are not yet talking about openly. Attackers have started using the institution’s own disclosure obligations as leverage. They contact the supervisor before the bank does. They release sample data publicly to force a notification clock. They threaten to alert the press, the regulator, and major enterprise customers simultaneously, knowing that the regulatory fine for delayed disclosure may exceed the ransom. The disclosure decision has effectively been transferred from the institution’s risk committee to the attacker’s keyboard.

Why ASEAN banks are more exposed

Three regional factors sharpen the exposure here.

Outsourced perimeter. Most ASEAN financial institutions have moved meaningful portions of their operational stack into third-party platforms over the past decade. The attackers have noticed. The entry point into a major bank now often runs through a smaller vendor with weaker security, and the dwell time inside the network is long enough that the attack is well-staged before the bank knows it has been compromised.

Disclosure rule asymmetry. Indonesia’s disclosure framework is lighter and more recently codified than Singapore’s. The Philippines and Vietnam are still building theirs. Attackers selecting targets can choose jurisdictions where regulatory pressure is high enough to weaponise but defensive cyber budgets are not at Singaporean levels.

Supervisor capacity. Banking supervisors and central banks across ASEAN have built cyber risk capability steadily but unevenly. Few of them have a standing capability to receive and triage attacker-initiated disclosures, which is exactly the channel the new playbook depends on.

What is starting to work

A few institutions are responding ahead of the curve.

Pre-staged disclosure plans. The banks handling this best now have legal, communications, regulatory, and executive escalation pre-staged for a scenario where disclosure is forced by an external actor rather than chosen internally. The plan does not eliminate the damage. It reduces the cost of the first seventy-two hours.

Adversary-aware tabletop exercises. The most useful incident response exercises I have seen in the past year simulate not just the technical attack but the multi-front pressure campaign that comes with it. The institutions running these exercises with their boards and regulators are surfacing gaps that purely technical drills do not.

Vendor risk visibility. The institutions tracking which vendors hold their data, with what controls, and under what notification obligations are catching threats earlier than those still treating vendor risk as a procurement question.

Also Read: The demand for SMB cybersecurity is inevitable, the supply was never built correctly

What needs to happen

Three moves would meaningfully shorten the gap.

Update incident response playbooks for forced disclosure. The assumption that the institution controls the timing of its own breach disclosure is no longer reliable. Plans should assume the attacker may move first, and rehearse for that scenario.

Harden the supervisory channel. Regulators should publicise a standardised process for attacker-initiated disclosures, and require banks to reciprocate with internal escalation triggers. The current ambiguity benefits the attackers.

Treat vendor security as systemic. The cyber resilience of a major bank is now functionally a property of the weakest critical vendor it depends on. Vendor risk and cyber risk are no longer separate problems.

The macro stakes

The ransomware threat against ASEAN financial institutions has moved out of the IT department and into the regulatory, legal, and reputational layers that sit above it. The defensive playbook still sits, in most institutions, with the technical teams. The next significant ransomware event in this region is unlikely to be lost in the data centre. It will be lost in the seventy-two hours after the attacker emails the supervisor.

The banks that win those seventy-two hours will be the ones whose CROs, CISOs, general counsels, and communications heads have already run the scenario together. The banks that lose them will be the ones still treating ransomware as an IT problem.

The playbook has changed. The defence needs to change with it.

—

The post The new ransomware playbook: Why ASEAN banks are losing the disclosure war appeared first on e27.

In much of Southeast Asia, heat has stopped being a seasonal inconvenience and become an infrastructure problem. Parked cars can hit cabin temperatures of 70 to 90 degrees Celsius within minutes, air-conditioning strains power grids at peak demand, and concrete-heavy cities from Bangkok to Jakarta trap heat well into the night.

ZERC, a deeptech startup spun out of Korea University in November 2022, believes part of the solution could be as simple as a coat of paint. Founded by materials science professor Lee Heon, the company has developed a water-based radiative cooling paint that reflects 96 per cent of sunlight and radiates over 93 per cent of absorbed heat back into space, lowering surface temperatures without consuming any electricity.

Also Read: Korean startup ZERC develops paint that cools roofs, vehicles, and helmets

Unlike many competitors that rely on toxic, solvent-based formulations, ZERC’s paint uses polymers, water, and ceramic pigments, eliminating volatile organic compound emissions at the source. The company is targeting rooftops, vehicles, ships, industrial equipment, and even safety helmets, positioning paint as a cheaper, more versatile alternative to radiative cooling panels and films.

We spoke to Lee about ZERC’s Southeast Asia (SEA) strategy, the true economics of the technology, and the obstacles standing between the startup and its first large-scale commercial deployment in the region.

Edited excerpts:

SEA looks like your toughest and most promising market. What’s the actual go-to-market plan? Direct sales, licensing, or partnerships?

We’re keeping all three options open. Our initial strategy is to export the finished product into Southeast Asia, establish its performance and credibility there, and then expand with local partners. Ultimately, we envision local production through licensing agreements with regional paint manufacturers.

SkyCool uses panels, SpaceCool uses film, RadiaCool focuses on EVs. You’ve bet everything on paint. Where might that bet lose?

Paint is the most versatile, commercially applicable format of radiative cooling technology. It has a relatively low manufacturing cost, can be applied easily over very large areas, and works on curved or irregular surfaces where panels and films are more limited. Installation costs are also significantly lower than film.

For these reasons, I believe cooling paint has the potential to dominate the radiative cooling materials market. Its main weakness is that manufacturing cost is still higher than conventional paint, though that additional cost is typically recovered within one to two years through energy savings.

Water-based formulations are often criticised for weaker adhesion and shorter lifespans than solvent-based ones. How did you solve that trade-off?

Water-based paint is more environmentally friendly, but its coating durability is generally inferior to oil- or solvent-based paint. So I expect solvent-based cooling paints to gain market adoption first.

Also Read: 5 Seoul startups made their Southeast Asia debut at Echelon Singapore 2026 under the SBA pavilion

In the longer term, however, as water-based formulations improve and environmental regulations tighten, I expect water-based radiative cooling paints to become increasingly important.

You claim that the cooling effect can last for more than five years. Has this claim been validated through multi-year field testing in tropical conditions, or is it extrapolated from lab ageing tests?

It’s currently an estimate based on standard accelerated ageing tests. In harsher environments, actual lifespan could be shorter. Put another way: we expect performance comparable to conventional solvent-based exterior paints. If a conventional paint can maintain its coating for five years under a tropical monsoon climate with strong UV exposure, we expect our cooling paint to last just as long, or longer.

Walk us through the actual numbers — cost per square metre versus electricity savings for a mid-sized warehouse roof in Manila or Jakarta.

The paint costs around US$10 per square metre. Incoming sunlight carries over 1,000W/m² of energy; conventional paint reflects only 30 to 80 per cent of it, while ours reflects over 95 per cent. That means our coating absorbs roughly 500-600 watts less solar energy per square metre than conventional paint.

Assuming only half of that reduced heat load translates into lower cooling demand, and that a cooling system runs eight hours a day for 300 days a year, that works out to around 600 kWh of reduced heat load annually. With a cooling system coefficient of performance (COP) of 3, that equates to roughly 200 kWh saved per square metre each year. At about US$0.12 per kWh, that’s approximately US$24 in annual savings per square metre, meaning the paint’s additional cost can potentially be recovered within the first year.

Safety helmets are a strikingly different category from rooftops and ships. Genuine commercial priority, or proof-of-concept?

It’s essentially a proof of concept, though it could bring real benefits to outdoor workers enduring hot conditions. It demonstrates that the technology works not only on large structures, but also on small, irregularly shaped objects directly exposed to sunlight, solving the discomfort of sweat trapped inside a helmet.

Turning smelting slag into a cooling pigment is compelling, but industrial byproducts vary batch to batch. How do you guarantee consistent optical performance?

The slag-based paint, developed with South Korean steel manufacturer POSCO, is primarily a demonstration of sustainability and circularity potential rather than the core of our commercial strategy. In fact, without slag, we can produce a higher-performance radiative cooling paint. It shows how industrial waste can be upcycled into a functional material, rather than defining our product roadmap.

Which country are you targeting first for regulatory approval, and what’s been the biggest bureaucratic surprise?

We haven’t yet obtained certification in Southeast Asia –only in Korea so far. We expect regional requirements to be broadly similar, so we don’t anticipate certification being a major obstacle once we begin expanding in earnest.

EV battery-range preservation requires OEM-level integration, not just aftermarket application. Are you in talks with any EV or fleet manufacturers in the region?

Our initial EV application isn’t passenger cars; we’re testing the paint on electric bus roofs, running joint experiments with a global automobile manufacturer, with very promising results so far. We haven’t yet discussed this application with Southeast Asian EV or fleet companies, but we’d be very interested in joint testing with regional partners.

Also Read: Korea’s startup ecosystem is training founders, not just funding them

What’s the single biggest obstacle to ZERC’s first large-scale commercial deployment in Southeast Asia?

To launch large-scale projects there, our first priorities are securing sufficient funding and expanding our team. We’ll also need reliable local distribution and business partners. Manufacturing, however, isn’t likely to be the bottleneck; our facility in Ulsan, Korea, can already produce up to around five tonnes a day, and scaling further by using existing paint manufacturing facilities in Korea or Southeast Asia should be relatively straightforward. Our biggest immediate challenge is securing the funding, people, and local partners needed to accelerate commercialisation in the region.

The post No fans, no fridges, just paint: ZERC’s founder on cracking SEA’s cooling crisis appeared first on e27.

When a resident faces a difficult problem, a community volunteer is often the first person willing to listen.

The issue may involve housing, employment, financial hardship, healthcare, family concerns or a neighbourhood dispute. What begins as a simple conversation can quickly become a complicated process involving documents, appeals and coordination with government agencies, social-service organisations or non-profit groups.

Volunteers step forward because they care. Yet goodwill alone cannot carry an unlimited workload.

Community needs will continue to grow, and not every problem can be resolved quickly. If programmes depend mainly on personal dedication and informal knowledge, even committed volunteers may become overwhelmed.

The real question is not how to persuade volunteers to put in more effort. It is how to ensure that every hour they contribute creates meaningful and sustainable impact.

Goodwill is not an operating system

Many volunteer initiatives are built on an admirable belief: when people care enough, they will find a way to help. That works until problems become more complex.

A volunteer may need to identify the responsible organisation, gather documents, prepare an appeal, explain the resident’s circumstances and follow up several times.

Without a clear workflow, experienced volunteers often carry the heaviest burden because they know the procedures and contacts. New volunteers may hesitate because they fear giving incorrect advice. Residents may repeat the same story to different people, while volunteers may duplicate one another’s work.

This is not a lack of commitment. It is a system-design problem.

Employees cannot perform consistently without clear processes, appropriate tools and defined responsibilities. Volunteer organisations are no different.

Define the volunteer’s role

Volunteers are most effective when they understand both their responsibilities and their limits.

They can listen, clarify the main concern, gather essential information, explain available support, make referrals and help residents communicate with the relevant organisation. However, they should not be expected to replace social workers, lawyers, healthcare professionals, counsellors or government officers.

Also Read: Why building a people-first work culture in HR tech matters more than ever in Southeast Asia

Clear boundaries protect both the volunteer and the resident.

A volunteer should never feel pressured to promise an outcome that depends on eligibility rules or an agency’s decision. Matters involving immediate danger, family violence, serious mental-health concerns or severe financial distress should be escalated promptly to qualified professionals.

A three-level system can help: routine enquiries are handled by trained volunteers, complex cases are referred to experienced coordinators, and urgent or specialised matters are transferred to professional support.

Make the work visible

One of the most effective improvements is a shared case-management process.

A secure system should record the resident’s concern, documents received, organisations contacted, actions taken, responses obtained, the next step and the person responsible for follow-up.

This prevents cases from being lost when a volunteer becomes unavailable. It reduces repeated explanations and allows another team member to continue the work. It also turns individual experience into organisational knowledge.

If applications are delayed because the same document is missing, the organisation can improve its checklist. If cases are repeatedly sent to the wrong department, the referral guide can be updated. If residents often misunderstand a process, volunteers can be given clearer communication materials.

Technology can support this, but the solution need not be expensive. A small group may begin with a secure digital form and controlled-access tracker. A larger organisation may require a case-management platform with reminders, permissions and audit records.

The aim is not to automate compassion. It is to remove administrative friction so volunteers can spend more time helping people.

Train for real situations

Volunteer orientation often focuses on values, expected behaviour and programme objectives. These matter, but volunteers also need practical skills.

They should know how to conduct a structured conversation, identify the central issue, ask for relevant information and distinguish confirmed facts from assumptions.

They should also learn to write concise appeals. A strong appeal explains the resident’s circumstances, assistance already sought, supporting documents available and the specific action requested.

Other essential areas include privacy, conflict management, respectful communication and emotional boundaries.

Scenario-based training is especially useful. Volunteers can practise realistic cases, identify missing information, decide which organisation should be approached and recognise when escalation is necessary.

Experienced volunteers can serve as mentors, but this role should not be assigned automatically. A person may be knowledgeable without knowing how to guide others. Effective mentors explain their reasoning, demonstrate good practices, observe newer volunteers and provide constructive feedback.

Build stronger agency partnerships

Many volunteers become frustrated not because they are unwilling to help, but because they must navigate multiple organisations with unclear responsibilities.

Public agencies, social-service organisations and non-profit groups can support volunteers by providing updated referral guides, designated contact channels and clearer explanations of eligibility requirements.

Where several organisations are involved, someone should coordinate the next step. Repeatedly redirecting a resident may be procedurally correct, but it can create the impression that nobody owns the problem.

Even a basic referral-status system could help. Volunteers may not need access to confidential details, but confirmation that a referral has been received, assigned or completed would reduce repeated calls and emails.

Sometimes the most useful innovation is ensuring that the correct information reaches the correct person at the correct time.

Also Read: Human value in the AI era is not what most people think

Measure contribution fairly

Volunteer effectiveness should not be judged only by the number of cases resolved. Many outcomes depend on regulations, eligibility criteria, funding and decisions beyond a volunteer’s control.

Better measures include response time, referral accuracy, documentation quality, communication, teamwork and whether the resident understands what will happen next.

Organisations should also monitor volunteer wellbeing. Warning signs include a small number of people handling most difficult cases, frequent late-night follow-ups, rising frustration and volunteers gradually withdrawing.

Recognition should be specific. Leaders can acknowledge a volunteer’s patience, accurate record-keeping, sound judgement, teamwork or ability to manage a difficult conversation respectfully.

Residents must be partners too

Community assistance cannot be completely one-sided.

Residents should provide accurate information, prepare necessary documents, attend appointments and allow reasonable time for organisations to respond. Volunteers should explain these expectations early so residents understand that assistance is a partnership, not an unlimited service.

There will also be cases where the requested outcome cannot be achieved. Volunteers should then provide an honest explanation and, where possible, suggest another pathway.

Sustainable volunteerism should not depend on heroes

Communities often celebrate volunteers who go far beyond what is expected. Their dedication deserves appreciation.

However, a strong volunteer programme should not depend on a few individuals repeatedly sacrificing their time, energy and wellbeing.

A sustainable model shares knowledge, documents cases, trains volunteers, defines escalation routes and builds reliable working relationships with agencies. It allows experienced volunteers to take a break without leaving residents unsupported and gives new volunteers confidence to contribute effectively.

The best volunteer is not necessarily the person who handles the most cases alone. It is the person who works responsibly within a trusted system, collaborates with others and helps residents move from uncertainty towards a practical next step.

Volunteerism will always begin with goodwill. But goodwill creates greater impact when it is supported by sound operations, useful technology, practical training and shared responsibility.

Volunteers do not need endless demands for more effort. They need systems that ensure their effort truly matters.

—

Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. You can also share your perspective by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of e27.

Join us on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, X, and LinkedIn to stay connected.

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Cryptocurrency ecosystems currently present a fascinating study in shifting momentum and changing investor psychology. At the time of writing this analysis, the flagship digital token trades at US$63,480.75. Over the last 24 hours, the financial environment experienced microscopic upward movement.

The primary cryptocurrency advanced 0.01 per cent to reach US$63,730. Concurrently, daily transaction volume increased by 1.27 per cent to reach US$22,340,000,000. These marginal shifts mask deeper structural fatigue gripping the broader speculative landscape. Buying momentum weakened significantly throughout August.

I closely monitor the 200-week simple moving average. This specific metric serves as a critical indicator of cyclical bottoms for long-term holders. The benchmark frequently marks accumulation zones during extended bear phases. Prices holding above this threshold typically signal bullish sentiment across the board. A decisive break below this line unleashes severe downward pressure.

The current technical setup places this vital support level under immense strain. Historically, the metric provided strong buying pressure around July. That strength helped prices stage a modest rebound during the summer months. I made a specific forecast six weeks ago that perfectly captured this dynamic. They predicted the benchmark would only provide short-term support in July and trigger a minor bounce.

Those experts cautioned about the distinct risk of a medium-term breakdown. Their warning proved entirely accurate. The digital coin found support last month. August brought no clear buying catalyst to sustain the previous momentum. The effectiveness of that foundational support markedly waned as weeks progressed.

The post Pokemon cards gained 22.8% while Bitcoin lost 20.7% and that gap should worry every investor appeared first on e27.

For all the excitement around AI-assisted coding, a stubborn gap remains: building a demo has become easier, but turning that demo into a reliable product is still hard.

That is the problem GENCOW, a South Korea-based AI service development platform, is trying to solve. Founded by Kevin Choi, a former Samsung Electronics executive with more than 15 years of experience building global software products, the company sits in a fast-growing category of tools that promise to help founders and developers move from idea to working application with less backend engineering.

Also Read: No fans, no fridges, just paint: ZERC’s founder on cracking SEA’s cooling crisis

Choi’s view is blunt: AI will not make developers obsolete. Instead, he believes it will create many more of them.

“Many people believe AI will eliminate software developers. I see the exact opposite,” he said. “AI isn’t taking developers’ jobs away. It’s enabling millions more people to turn their ideas into real products.”

It is an argument increasingly heard across startup ecosystems, including Southeast Asia, where engineering talent remains expensive, technical co-founders are hard to find, and many early-stage ideas never progress beyond slides or mock-ups. AI coding tools have changed what is possible at the prototype stage. The next challenge is whether they can also lower the cost and complexity of launching real services.

The hidden work behind every app

GENCOW’s starting point is not the visible side of software: slick interfaces, chatbots, dashboards or mobile screens. It is the infrastructure beneath them.

Before founding the company, Choi spent more than a decade and a half at Samsung Electronics, where he led the development of international software products and worked on large-scale launches. Over time, he noticed a pattern. As deadlines approached, backend engineers were often the ones working the latest nights.

That is because every new digital service requires far more than the feature a user sees. Teams must set up servers, databases, authentication, payments, APIs, cloud infrastructure, deployment systems and security controls. For AI products, there is another layer: connecting to models, managing data flows and ensuring the service can operate reliably outside a test environment.

“The polished applications users see are supported by countless hours of invisible engineering,” Choi said. “I watched talented colleagues spend nights and weekends handling repetitive infrastructure work.”

GENCOW was built around that pain point. Its platform provides common building blocks such as user authentication, database management, payment integration, AI connectivity and operational infrastructure. The idea is to let developers and founders focus on what makes their product distinct, instead of repeatedly rebuilding the same backend systems.

The company describes its approach as “Prompt to Production”, a phrase that captures a broader shift in software creation. Natural-language prompts can now produce code and functional prototypes. GENCOW wants to extend that process to services that can actually run in the market.

Why this matters in Southeast Asia

The timing is relevant for Southeast Asia’s startup market. Across Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, founders are experimenting with AI products in education, logistics, finance, healthcare, agriculture and customer service. But many face the same constraint: it is easier to identify a problem than to assemble the technical team needed to solve it.

This is especially true outside major hubs such as Singapore, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok. A founder in agritech, for example, may understand crop supply chains deeply but lack access to engineers who can build a scalable platform. A teacher may know exactly where learning gaps exist but be unable to turn that insight into a usable AI tutoring product. Local operators often have strong domain knowledge, but software development costs can block them before they test demand.

That is where platforms like GENCOW could become relevant. If AI lowers the technical barrier to product creation, Southeast Asia may see more startups emerge from industry practitioners rather than only from traditional software teams.

Choi sees this as a redefinition of who gets to be a developer.

“In the future, being a developer won’t be limited to people with computer science degrees,” he said. “Entrepreneurs, designers, marketers, researchers, educators, anyone with expertise in solving real-world problems will be able to build software with AI.”

Also Read: 5 Seoul startups made their Southeast Asia debut at Echelon Singapore 2026 under the SBA pavilion

The claim should not be overstated. Production software still requires judgement, security awareness, product thinking and operational discipline. A badly designed fintech or healthtech tool can do real harm. But the direction of travel is clear: the early stages of software creation are becoming more accessible.

From coding assistance to company creation

GENCOW is not alone in chasing this opportunity. Globally, the market includes infrastructure and app development tools such as Google’s Firebase, AWS Amplify, Supabase, Vercel, Replit, Bolt and Lovable, each attacking different parts of the software-building workflow. Some focus on backend infrastructure, others on AI-assisted coding or front-end app generation. GENCOW’s challenge will be to show that its combination of AI service development and production infrastructure offers enough value in a crowded field.

For founders, the difference between these tools matters. A prototype builder helps create a working demo. A backend-as-a-service platform removes some infrastructure work. A deployment platform helps teams ship and scale. The next generation of AI development platforms is trying to combine these steps into a more continuous workflow, reducing the handoff between idea, code, backend setup and live product.

GENCOW has already found one route into the market through South Korea’s government-backed “Startup for Everyone” initiative, where it was selected as an official AI solution provider. Through the programme, the company works with aspiring entrepreneurs and early-stage startups building AI-powered services.

Choi said the ideas he sees range from agriculture and education to local community problems. In the past, many such concepts would have struggled to move forward because hiring developers was too expensive or difficult. Now, he argues, founders can test ideas faster and with fewer resources.

“In the past, building a new service often required months of development,” he said. “Today, with AI, teams can build prototypes in days, validate ideas quickly, and iterate much faster.”

The future developer may not look like one

The biggest question hanging over AI development tools is whether they reduce the need for engineers or simply change what engineers do.

Choi is firmly in the second camp. His argument is that developers will spend less time assembling routine infrastructure and more time solving harder problems: architecture, security, product quality, data governance and user experience. In other words, AI may not remove technical work, but it could push human effort higher up the value chain.

That matters in markets where engineering teams are stretched thin. A small startup in Southeast Asia rarely has the luxury of dedicated backend, DevOps, security and AI infrastructure specialists. If common technical work can be automated or packaged, lean teams can attempt products that previously required larger budgets.

There is also a human dimension to Choi’s thesis. He frames GENCOW not only as a productivity tool, but as a way to reduce the late-night burden on developers.

“I want software developers to spend less time on repetitive infrastructure work and more time solving meaningful problems,” he said. “I want them to leave the office earlier, have dinner with their families, and focus on innovation instead of rebuilding the same backend systems over and over again.”

That may sound idealistic in an industry known for tight deadlines and compressed launch cycles. But it points to a real shift. If AI can absorb more of the repetitive work, software creation could become less about who can grind through infrastructure fastest and more about who understands the problem best.

Also Read: Korea’s startup ecosystem is training founders, not just funding them

For Southeast Asia, where the next wave of digital products will need to solve local, fragmented and often offline problems, that shift could be significant. The region does not just need more apps. It needs more people with direct knowledge of real-world problems to have a practical path to building them.

GENCOW’s bet is that AI will make that possible — not by replacing developers, but by multiplying the number of people who can create software at all.

The post From Samsung to startups: Kevin Choi’s bet on AI-powered software creation appeared first on e27.

Malaysia’s push to build more home-grown technology champions is gaining a fresh injection of capital, this time across three very different but strategically important areas: warehouse automation, medical technology commercialisation, and assistive digital tools for the visually impaired.

VentureTECH, a Malaysian government-backed impact investment company, has invested US$7 million in three Bumiputera-led high-growth, high-value companies: Move Robotic, Recove Group, and Edote.

The investments come as Malaysia tries to deepen local participation in advanced industries, not merely as a consumer of imported technologies but as a builder of solutions that can serve domestic needs and eventually regional markets. For Southeast Asia, where many countries face similar challenges around industrial productivity, healthcare access, and digital inclusion, the bet is also about whether locally developed technologies can scale beyond national borders.

Also Read: Malaysia’s unicorn hunters: The startups raising millions and scaling fast

VentureTECH said the three companies were selected for their differentiated technologies, scalable business models, and commercial potential. The broader aim is to support Bumiputera companies that can contribute to Malaysia’s industrial competitiveness while delivering measurable socio-economic impact.

“At VentureTECH, we invest in companies with innovative technologies that solve real-world challenges, strengthen strategic industries and have the potential to scale sustainably,” said VentureTECH CEO Azizan Jaafar. He added that Move Robotic, Recove, and Edote represent the kind of companies the firm wants to back: commercially promising businesses that also address national development priorities.

The capital is also aligned with Malaysia’s Bumiputera Economic Transformation Plan 2035, or PuTERA35, which seeks to strengthen Bumiputera participation in higher-value economic activities.

Making automation easier to adopt

Among the three investees, Move Robotic addresses a pain point that is becoming more urgent across Southeast Asia: how businesses can automate warehouses and logistics operations without taking on large upfront costs or stitching together disconnected systems.

The company provides a warehouse and logistics automation ecosystem that combines Autonomous Mobile Robots, autonomous material-handling systems, Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems, pallet shuttle systems, and software tools such as its Warehouse Management System and Robot Fleet Manager.

In simple terms, this means Move Robotic is not just selling robots. It is trying to provide the hardware and software layer needed to help warehouses move, store, track, and retrieve goods more efficiently.

That matters in a region where e-commerce, third-party logistics, electronics manufacturing, and cold-chain distribution are all expanding. Many operators want to automate but face barriers such as high capital expenditure, uncertain integration timelines, and a shortage of in-house robotics expertise.

Move Robotic’s robot-as-a-service model is designed to reduce that friction. Instead of buying equipment outright, customers can adopt automation through a bundled subscription that includes implementation and ongoing use. The company aims to become Malaysia’s first provider of a fully bundled Robot-as-a-Service solution.

The model mirrors a wider shift in industrial automation globally, where manufacturers and logistics operators increasingly prefer usage-based or service-based systems rather than heavy one-off purchases. For Malaysia, having a local provider could also reduce dependence on foreign vendors and make customisation easier for domestic industries.

Turning medical research into market-ready products

Recove Group operates in a different but equally difficult part of the innovation chain: bringing healthcare research out of universities and laboratories and into hospitals, clinics, and patient care.

The company describes itself as a medtech commercialisation platform. It works with universities, researchers, and medical specialists to develop research-driven healthcare innovations into market-ready medical technologies.

Also Read: “Data, not hardware, is the real bottleneck in humanoids”: Matrix Robotics CEO Allen Zhang

This is a familiar bottleneck across Southeast Asia. Universities and hospitals often produce promising medical research, but many inventions fail to reach the market because researchers lack access to regulatory expertise, product development support, manufacturing partners, distribution channels, or commercial capital.

Recove’s role is to close that gap. One of its commercialised products is NEORUBIN, a non-invasive newborn jaundice screening device. Jaundice is common among newborns, and early screening is important to prevent complications. Non-invasive tools can help reduce discomfort for infants while allowing healthcare workers to screen more efficiently.

With VentureTECH’s investment, Recove plans to accelerate product commercialisation and advance additional medical technologies in its pipeline. If successful, the company could become part of a broader effort to build a stronger medical device industry in Malaysia, where healthcare demand is rising alongside an ageing population, higher chronic disease burden, and growing expectations for affordable care.

For Southeast Asia, medtech commercialisation has regional relevance. Many markets in the region face similar healthcare access issues, especially outside major cities. Locally developed devices that are affordable, practical, and designed around regional clinical workflows may stand a better chance of adoption than imported solutions built for very different health systems.

Digital inclusion for the visually impaired

The third company, Edote, focuses on assistive technology for the visually impaired community. Its flagship product, eBrelle, is described as the first standalone Braille laptop in Malaysia and Southeast Asia.

The device allows visually impaired users to access, create, and interact with digital content independently. Edote has integrated proprietary hardware, software, and accessibility-focused applications into a single platform.

The problem it is trying to solve is both social and economic. Digital tools are now central to education, employment, government services, and everyday communication. Yet many visually impaired people still face barriers in accessing mainstream technology, particularly when devices are expensive, poorly localised, or require multiple add-ons to function effectively.

By developing a standalone Braille laptop, Edote is attempting to make digital participation more practical and self-directed. VentureTECH said its support will help the company expand manufacturing capabilities, strengthen its product portfolio, and reach more users in Malaysia and across the region.

The opportunity is not limited to Malaysia. Across Southeast Asia, assistive technology remains underdeveloped, despite large populations of people with disabilities and rising policy attention on inclusion. If Edote can balance affordability, durability, localisation, and distribution, it could address a market that has often been overlooked by mainstream consumer technology companies.

Capital with a policy purpose

VentureTECH’s investment is not a conventional venture capital bet based purely on financial upside. As a government-backed impact investor, its mandate includes strengthening strategic industries and supporting companies that can deliver broader economic value.

That dual mandate is increasingly visible across Southeast Asia, where governments are using capital, procurement, grants, and policy frameworks to nudge domestic companies into higher-value technology sectors. The challenge is ensuring that such support produces companies that can compete commercially, not just survive through policy protection.

Also Read: China builds robot armies while the West chases robot brains

For Move Robotic, Recove, and Edote, the test will be execution: converting capital into stronger products, wider adoption, and regional market access. Each operates in a sector with clear demand, but also with long sales cycles, integration challenges, regulatory hurdles, or affordability constraints.

Azizan said VentureTECH’s role goes beyond providing funding. The firm works with investee companies to strengthen capabilities, unlock market opportunities, and scale sustainably.

That hands-on support could prove important. Malaysia has no shortage of technical talent or research output, but turning innovation into exportable companies remains a long-term task. By backing three Bumiputera-led firms in sectors tied to industrial productivity, healthcare, and inclusion, VentureTECH is placing a targeted wager: that the next generation of Malaysian technology companies can be both commercially viable and socially useful.

Whether these companies can move from national promise to regional relevance will determine the true impact of the investment.

The post Malaysia’s VentureTECH backs Move Robotic, Recove and Edote with US$7M appeared first on e27.

Oracle NetSuite’s SuiteWorld 2025 in Las Vegas opened with a slogan built for a keynote stage: “No Limits.” But strip away the staging and the roughly 8,000 attendees packed into the venue, and what emerged from three days of product reveals and executive interviews was a more measured story — one about data plumbing, conversational interfaces, and the uneven pace of digital adoption across emerging markets, including Southeast Asia.

e27 sat down with NetSuite Founder and Executive Vice President Evan Goldberg and Asia Head Amit Suxena on the sidelines of the conference. Between the two conversations and the keynote itself, three themes stood out, each with implications for founders and operators far beyond Las Vegas.

Learning one: AI is only as good as the data beneath it

The loudest applause line of Goldberg’s keynote wasn’t about a flashy new feature. It was a claim about architecture. NetSuite, he argued, was built 27 years ago around transactions — sales, orders, payments — rather than accounting entries after the fact.

Also Read: ChatGPT, commerce, and cloud: How NetSuite sees the future of work and business

“Transactions are the atomic unit of business,” Goldberg said, describing why this matters for AI. “AI doesn’t just guess; it starts from the source because your data is unified. AI understands your full context… it sees deep into your business, not just the surface.”

This is a subtler argument than it first appears. The enterprise software industry has spent the past two years bolting AI copilots onto existing systems. NetSuite’s pitch is that a copilot is only as useful as the data model sitting underneath it — and if that data lives in silos, spreadsheets, and reconciled-after-the-fact ledgers, AI is reduced to generating plausible-sounding guesses rather than grounded answers.

That’s the reasoning behind Ask Oracle, NetSuite’s conversational layer, which the company describes less as a chatbot and more as a connective tissue across a single data model. Responses come with drill-downs linking every number back to its source transaction, and “EXPLAIN” traces that show how an answer was derived, an attempt to make AI outputs auditable rather than opaque.

Suxena framed the shift in terms of what a finance leader can now do without touching a spreadsheet. “If you’re a CFO today, you no longer need to dig through ledgers or reconcile spreadsheets manually. You can simply ask, ‘where are my profits coming from?’, and the system gives you an intelligent, data-driven answer,” he said. “We’re moving from finance tools to business intelligence partners, from procurement systems to decision-support systems.”

The caveat, which both executives were careful to underline, is that none of this replaces judgement. “AI should never replace human judgment; it should augment it,” Suxena said. “AI tells you what’s happening and what could happen, but the why and what to do about it are still human calls.”

Learning two: Commerce is going conversational and nobody has fully worked out what that means for brands

The second theme to emerge was more speculative, and Goldberg was refreshingly candid about the uncertainty. Asked about e-commerce integration with ChatGPT, a feature NetSuite previewed during the keynote, he didn’t offer a tidy roadmap.

“No one has a clear answer to this question yet,” he admitted. “What’s clear is that commerce is moving into conversational interfaces.” He pointed to OpenAI’s “agentic commerce” push, which lets users complete purchases directly inside a chat window, as an early signal of where retail interactions might be heading.

Also Read: ‘AI sees deep into your business, not just the surface’: NetSuite’s Evan Goldberg

NetSuite is working with partners including Shopify to plug order flows into this emerging channel, but Goldberg was upfront about the tensions this creates. If a purchase happens entirely within a chatbot, how does a brand preserve its identity when the storefront — the visual language, the tone, the merchandising — is stripped out of the transaction? How does a smaller retailer differentiate itself when SEO and a distinctive website may carry less weight than they once did?

Goldberg brought the question home with a personal example: his wife runs a small business on NetSuite, and her chief worry mirrors the industry’s broader anxiety. “Her biggest concern is exactly that: ensuring her brand’s personality still comes through in how products are presented,” he said.

His answer, unsurprisingly, circles back to infrastructure rather than storefronts. Regardless of whether a sale originates in a browser or a chatbot, someone still has to manage inventory, coordinate shipping, and maintain real-time visibility across the order lifecycle. That backend discipline, he argued, is what will matter most as the front end of commerce keeps shifting.

Learning three: In SEA, the opportunity is timing, not budget

The third and most regionally relevant theme came from Suxena, who has spent years working with small and mid-sized businesses across the Philippines, Indonesia, and India. His observation cuts against a common assumption in enterprise software circles — that AI and cloud adoption in emerging Asian markets is primarily a cost or infrastructure problem.

“Many SMEs are still unsure where to start,” Suxena said. “They often ask, ‘Where should I use AI? I’m not in the business of technology.’ Our job is to take that uncertainty away.”

The bigger structural issue, in his view, is that founders treat digitalisation as a reward for reaching scale rather than a precondition for it. “Startups often make what I call ‘milestone decisions’ about digitalisation,” he explained. “They say, ‘When we hit 100 people, we’ll get an HR system,’ or ‘When we reach 500 customers, we’ll implement CRM.’ That’s backward.”

His advice, delivered without much room for nuance, was to digitalise from day one, not because scale demands it eventually, but because early automation compounds. “It’s not about when you reach those milestones; it’s about how fast you get there,” he said. “Waiting until you’re big enough often means you’re already struggling with inefficiency.”

Also Read: OpenAI calls for ‘AI infrastructure revolution’ to reboot Japan’s growth

Suxena also pointed to a geographic gap that’s easy to miss from Singapore or Jakarta, where SaaS adoption is now mainstream. The real headroom, he argued, sits in tier-two and tier-three cities across the region, where business owners are increasingly digital-native but haven’t yet been offered tools that are both accessible and affordably priced. “We’re seeing a democratisation of technology,” he said. “Cloud and AI are no longer just enterprise tools; they’re becoming everyday business essentials for the corner retailer, the logistics startup, the family-owned manufacturing firm.”

The common thread

Strip away the keynote choreography and NetSuite’s pitch at SuiteWorld 2025 rests on a fairly unglamorous premise: AI’s value is bounded by the quality and unity of the data it’s built on, whether that data sits inside a Las Vegas-built ERP system or a family manufacturing business in provincial Indonesia. The interfaces will keep evolving — conversational, agentic, embedded inside chat windows nobody had heard of two years ago. But for founders in Southeast Asia weighing when and how to invest in automation, the more durable lesson from this year’s SuiteWorld may simply be: start earlier than feels comfortable, and get the underlying data right before chasing the next AI feature.

The post Three key learnings from SuiteWorld 2025: Why context, not automation, is the real AI prize appeared first on e27.

As AI agents start searching for suppliers, negotiating terms, and initiating payments on a company’s behalf, the old assumption that a human approves every transaction is breaking down. A new report from Sunrate and Mastercard, Beyond Automation: Defining Agentic Global Payments, argues that speed alone will not make this shift viable — businesses will need what it calls a “Trust Layer”: infrastructure that verifies an agent’s identity, defines its authority, and records what it actually did.

The report frames this as fintech’s move from Know Your Customer to Know Your Agent, or KYA, built on three pillars: protecting credentials so agents never handle raw account details, capturing the intent behind a transaction, and enforcing governance that can authenticate an agent and revoke its permissions when needed.

The stakes are especially high for Southeast Asia, where startups juggle multiple currencies, jurisdictions and compliance regimes, and where, according to Gartner, half of all AI projects are abandoned after the pilot stage, often over unresolved risk controls. The report’s wager is that the winners in agentic payments will not be the startups with the flashiest AI interface, but those that can prove to banks, auditors and regulators that their agents’ actions were authorised, limited and traceable.

REGIONAL

SEA tech funding surges to 12-month high in July: Tracxn data shows the region’s startups closed 17 rounds last month, a 25.53% jump from June and 180.9% higher than a year earlier, as capital concentrated into fewer mega-deals.

Graas raises US$17M, buys Trustana for retail AI agents: The Singapore retailtech firm’s acquisition adds product-attribute and inventory data to its AI agents, aiming to close the gap between chatbots and SKU-level accuracy for online sellers.

K2 Therapeutics raises US$50M for global biotech push: The fresh funding positions the Singapore-based drug developer to compete internationally, addressing a gap in the city-state’s biotech scene: a steady pipeline of venture-backed drug developers built from day one.

Touchstone backs Vietnam’s N2TP AI research infrastructure: Unlike Vietnam’s earlier wave of consumer apps and fintech platforms, N2TP is building infrastructure for scientific research, where success is measured in hypotheses, experiments and patents rather than clicks.

Morph bets on stablecoins as the next rail for digital commerce: The Singapore firm argues stablecoins have outgrown their crypto-trading roots, offering freelancers and cross-border teams a faster, cheaper settlement rail than traditional banking channels.

What PayNow Gen 2 gets right, and what it risks under-valuing: The proposal to attach structured data to payments could let businesses reconcile transactions automatically, a back-office upgrade the columnist argues is more consequential than QR-code convenience.

Why Singapore’s AI finance race is now about data, not models: A new Forrester-cited analysis argues Singapore’s finance chiefs have moved past testing AI tools and now face a harder problem: making models work across messy, fragmented regional finance data.

Ryde taps HERE to improve ride-hailing routes and ETAs in Singapore: The tie-up with the mapping and location-data provider targets the “invisible layer” behind the app — traffic data, dispatch logic and arrival estimates — where rides are often won or lost.

Singapore’s next test in online child safety policy: As Australia, the EU and UK shift child protection into a political frame of its own, the columnist argues Singapore’s social media rules must evolve accordingly.

SEA’s biggest-market-first expansion logic is dead: Ranking markets by size and entering the largest first no longer works, the columnist argues, as founders increasingly need to sequence expansion by regulatory readiness and customer fit instead.

Vietnam’s born global startups are rewriting the playbook: Capital flowing into Vietnam-founded startups with global operations hit an all-time high in 2025, as founders increasingly skip the “win at home first” stage altogether.

Filipino virtual assistants are winning the remote-work race: Drawing on years in customer service and support, the writer argues the Philippines’ “I’ll try” work culture — not just cost — explains its outsized share of the global VA market.

Malaysia’s ZUS Coffee explores IPO to raise US$245M: Owner Zuspresso is working with financial advisers on a possible Bursa Malaysia listing that could value the coffee chain at around RM4 billion, with the offering potentially landing as soon as mid-2027.

Maybank: Shopee margins have bottomed, growth ahead: Sea Limited’s results reinforced the view that Shopee margins have bottomed, with management now expecting e-commerce adjusted EBITDA to surpass US$1 billion this year on rising ad take rates and VIP contribution.

Sea’s Q2 revenue jumps 48% to US$7.8B, income up 11%: Shopee and Monee drove the beat, with Shopee GMV up 28% and Monee’s loan book surging 62% to US$11.1 billion.

MSCI drops GoTo from Indonesia index over liquidity: The index provider cited low liquidity after GoTo’s shares stayed pinned near the exchange’s minimum tradable price for months, a technical call the company says is unrelated to its business performance.

U Mobile taps OpenAI to become an AI-enabled telco: The Malaysian telco gets early access to OpenAI’s frontier models across customer service, network operations and cybersecurity, marking OpenAI’s first telecoms partnership in Malaysia.

INTERVIEWS & FEATURES

ZERC’s founder on cracking SEA’s cooling crisis with paint: Parked cars in the region can hit cabin temperatures of 70-90°C within minutes — the radiative-cooling startup’s founder explains why a coat of paint, not air conditioning, is the fix.

The photographer who bet his business on AI, not against it: Rather than defend the craft against generative AI, SnappyFly founder Vincent Chow chose to drive the technology’s use in product photography himself, betting his Singapore firm on the shift.

INTERNATIONAL

Kospi enters bull market as crypto risk appetite fades: The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both rallied on AI-linked namessuch as CoreWeave and Super Micro, while Asian equities mirrored the optimism even as digital-asset markets lost momentum, the columnist notes.

Does US$1,780 support hold the key to an Ethereum rally: Ethereum developers are pushing an aggressive roadmap toward 10,000 transactions per second alongside quantum-safety upgrades, technical shifts the columnist ties directly to the coin’s next price move.

Is US$63,750 the only line between Bitcoin and US$62,000?: Total crypto market capitalisation fell 1.24% in 24 hours, a move the columnist reads as investors treating digital assets through a strictly macroeconomic lens rather than a technical correction.

5 US VC shifts every SEA founder should be tracking: While a Silicon Valley founder can get a term sheet within a week of a warm introduction, the piece argues SEA founders face a slower, more institutional fundraising process worth understanding.

Investors sue Selena Gomez over mental health startup: Plaintiffs who invested nearly US$1.2 million in Wondermind allege the singer and her mother committed securities fraud, claiming promised partnerships never materialised.

OpenAI hires Wiz’s Dali Rajic as CRO amid shake-up: Dali Rajic takes over sales after Denise Dresser’s nine-month tenure, the latest in a run of executive departures including COO Brad Lightcap and Fidji Simo.

Accel closes oversubscribed US$550M India fund in weeks: The firm still holds 55%+ of its previous fund undeployed, betting on AI applications, consumer internet, fintech and manufacturing.

Bluehill.VC closes maiden US$42M India deeptech fund: The Chennai firm’s debut fund will build a portfolio of 15-16 companies across defence, semiconductors and space.

CYBERSECURITY

The new ransomware playbook exposing ASEAN banks’ gaps: A regional bank learned of its own data breach from a regulator, not the attackers, a disclosure failure the piece says is becoming the norm across Southeast Asian financial institutions.

Education, energy, travel see rising cyber attack volumes: Organisations faced an average of 2,336 attacks per week in July, up 3% from June and 16% year-on-year, according to new Check Point Research data cited in the piece.

Crypto’s new threat is not a hack, but a knock at the door: A new Chainalysis report estimates more than US$30M lost to physical attacks on crypto holders, as Thailand and its neighbours become fronts in a distinctly offline category of crime.

Uber Freight probes breach claimed by hacking gang: The Helix group claims to have exfiltrated mailboxes, cloud storage and dispatch documents from the logistics subsidiary.

AI

Moving past the chatbox: agentic AI’s hidden enterprise risks: As APAC enterprises graduate from simple chatbots to fully autonomous AI agents, the piece warns that Model Context Protocol integrations bring governance and security risks many teams are unprepared for.

The hidden problem inside AI teams isn’t skills, it’s culture: An SME chief executive’s frustration over stalled AI adoption points to a workplace-culture gap that the writer says tools alone cannot fix.

From KYC to KYA: how AI agents are reshaping payment risk: As businesses deploy AI agents that can search, negotiate and pay suppliers autonomously, “know your agent” checks will soon matter as much as knowing your customer.

AI is not the beginning of drug discovery, it is the accelerator: Computational drug discovery predates generative AI by decades, tracing a lineage from molecular docking and QSAR modelling to today’s large models.

The language tax: Why AI skips your startup when buyers ask in Thai: AI assistants answer fluently in Thai, Vietnamese and Bahasa Indonesia but only recommend firms visible in those languages’ own sources, leaving startups invisible to their own regional buyers.

From chatbots to payment agents: AI’s next role in SEA commerce: A new report examines AI’s harder test in payments, where compliance failures are costly, once agents are plugged into real transaction workflows.

Sovereign AI starts long before the AI model: Infrastructure debates once about latency and cost are increasingly about where data can legally reside, shaping AI strategy before a single model is chosen.

The diagnosis is becoming free, the operation is not: AI will make differential diagnosis widely accessible, but the treatment that follows will remain expensive and unevenly distributed.

If AI can’t find your startup, does your startup exist?: Founders are increasingly asking ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude what they know about their own companies, a new front in startup PR.

The scarcity mindset is killing creativity, not AI: At Upscale Conf in San Francisco, speakers argued a scarcity mindset inherited from pre-AI resourcing constraints, not AI, is what’s limiting creative work.

The next AI payments boom may happen in the back office: The bigger AI shift is unfolding quietly inside finance teams, procurement departments and treasury desks few outsiders see.

How to choose the right AI marketing agency: Unlike traditional agencies, AI-driven ones work with real-time data and continuous experimentation, promising shorter cycles and lower costs.

SEMICONDUCTOR 

NXP breaks ground on expanded Malaysia chip factory: Dutch chipmaker NXP is building a900,000 sq ft facility in Malaysia, deepening Southeast Asia’s role in global semiconductorsupply chain diversification away from China.

Singapore chip parts maker UMS posts 90% Q2 profit jump: UMS Holdings beatexpectations on surging demand for semiconductor components, reflecting a broadrecovery in the chip equipment cycle that benefits Singapore’s precision engineering sector.

Nvidia’s US$500B manufacturing plan: risky but calculated: The chipmaker’s massivedomestic production bet hinges on repurposing ageing GPUs into a supply chain asset, amove with downstream implications for AI infrastructure buyers across Southeast Asia.

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

How to make volunteer efforts actually sustainable: What starts as a simple conversation often spirals into paperwork, appeals and multi-agency coordination — a structural strain that burns out community volunteers.

Platform illusions: When ‘ecosystem’ is just a feature bundle: The word “ecosystem” appears in investor decks with near-magical confidence, even when what’s built is little more than bundled integrations and a marketplace tab.

You can’t force a tailwind, you can force your readiness for one: A decade into building, annual planning cycles stop being useful, since money arrives in bursts rather than evenly — making readiness the more valuable discipline.

The hidden cost of ‘gray work’ draining your team: Employees hired for one function increasingly find themselves buried in overlooked administrative tasks that compound quietly over time.

Good ideas are everywhere, venture capital isn’t: Airwallex’s decision to headquarter in Singapore rather than Melbourne was about more than location, since investors back the surrounding environment as much as the founders.

The system behind the smile: making volunteer efforts sustainable: Volunteer-driven community initiatives fail without structural support; the piece outlines frameworks for turning goodwill into durable, scalable operations.

The post Ecosystem Roundup: Why “Know Your Agent” will matter as much as KYC in payments appeared first on e27.