The Jakarta High Court has increased the prison sentence of Ibrahim Arief, a former technology consultant linked to ex-education minister Nadiem Makarim and former VP (Engineering) at OVO, in a corruption case tied to the procurement of Chromebooks for Indonesian schools, according to Kompas.com.

A panel of judges sentenced Arief to five years in prison, one year longer than the four-year sentence handed down earlier by the Jakarta Corruption Court. The appeal ruling, read by Judge Catur Irianto on Monday, also ordered Arief to pay a fine of around US$30,800 and compensation of about US$308,000.

Also Read: Nadiem Makarim sentenced to 10 years in Chromebook corruption case

The case has drawn attention in Indonesia not only because it involves public-sector technology procurement, but also because of its proximity to one of Southeast Asia’s most recognisable technology figures. Makarim, who co-founded ride-hailing and super-app giant Gojek before assuming the role of the Education Minister, became a symbol of Indonesia’s digital economy ambitions. The Chromebook case, however, has put a different spotlight on the intersection of technology, education policy and state spending.

A heavier ruling on appeal

According to Kompas.com, the Jakarta High Court panel accepted appeals filed by both the public prosecutor and Arief’s defence team. The judges then amended the earlier decision of the Jakarta Corruption Court, particularly on the main prison sentence and the additional punishment related to replacement money.

“Declaring that the defendant Ibrahim Arief alias Ibam has been legally and convincingly proven guilty of committing a criminal act of corruption committed jointly as in the indictment of the public prosecutor’s subsidiary,” the verdict stated, as quoted by Kompas.com.

The judges imposed a five-year prison sentence and a fine of around US$30,800. The fine must be paid within one month, with a possible extension of up to one more month, after the decision obtains permanent legal force.

More significantly, the court ordered Arief to pay compensation of around US$308,000. If he fails to pay within one month after the ruling becomes final and binding, prosecutors may seize and auction his assets to recover the amount. If his assets are insufficient, he faces an additional four years in prison.

The court also said that if Arief pays only part of the compensation, the amount paid will be taken into account when calculating the additional prison term. His time under city detention will be deducted from the sentence, and the court ordered that he remain under city custody.

The lower court split

The appeal ruling builds on an earlier verdict from the Jakarta Corruption Court, which had sentenced Arief to four years in prison and imposed the same fine of around US$30,800. At that stage, he was found guilty of violating provisions under Indonesia’s Corruption Law, in conjunction with Article 55 paragraph 1 of the old Criminal Code, which concerns participation in criminal acts.

Also Read: Nadiem Makarim indicted in US$125M Chromebook graft case

But the lower court decision was not unanimous. Two judges, Eryusman and Andi Saputra, issued dissenting opinions. They argued there was no evidence of malicious intent, no direct role in lobbying, and no proof that Arief had received illicit gains.

According to the dissenting judges, Arief acted only as an information technology consultant and did not have decision-making authority within the Ministry of Education and Culture. They also found no strong causal link between his actions and the criminal acts charged.

Kompas.com reported that, in the court’s deliberations, Arief was said to have pointed out weaknesses in Chromebooks and recommended the use of Windows-based devices for schools. That detail is important because it complicates the usual picture of a procurement case: rather than being portrayed as a simple advocate for the purchased product, Arief was described by the dissenting judges as someone who had raised concerns about it.

The High Court, however, took a different view and concluded that the evidence supported a conviction and a heavier sentence.

Why the case matters beyond Indonesia

For Southeast Asia’s technology ecosystem, the case is a reminder that digitisation is not just about startups, software and adoption curves. It is also about public trust, procurement design and accountability.

Across the region, governments have poured money into digital education, cloud systems, national identity platforms, healthtech infrastructure and AI readiness programmes. These projects often require collaboration between ministries, consultants, vendors and technology providers. When governance is weak or roles are blurred, the risks multiply.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest digital economy, has been especially ambitious in using technology to modernise public services. The education sector is a major part of that agenda, given the country’s vast geography and uneven access to quality learning tools. Devices such as Chromebooks are attractive to governments because they can be relatively affordable, cloud-based and easier to manage at scale. But hardware procurement for schools is also vulnerable to controversy: specifications, operating systems, vendor choices, distribution and after-sales support can all become points of dispute.

That makes the Arief case relevant beyond the courtroom. It raises questions about how governments evaluate technology recommendations, how consultants’ roles are defined, and how responsibility is assigned when procurement decisions later face corruption allegations.

For founders and investors in Southeast Asia, particularly those selling to governments, the message is clear. Govtech and edutech contracts can offer scale, but they also require stricter compliance, cleaner documentation and a sharper understanding of public-sector accountability. A consultant’s advice, a vendor’s pitch or a ministry’s technical decision may later be scrutinised not as part of a commercial negotiation, but as evidence in a criminal case.

The shadow of Makarim’s legacy

The mention of Makarim gives the case wider resonance. Before entering politics, he helped build Gojek into one of Southeast Asia’s defining startups, proving that a local platform could compete at massive scale and reshape daily life in Indonesia. His appointment as education minister was seen by many as a sign that startup thinking could be brought into government.

But public administration operates under different rules from startup execution. Speed, experimentation and vendor partnerships may be praised in the private sector, but government projects must also satisfy procurement law, audit trails and public scrutiny.

Also Read: The VCs writing off Indonesia are making a US$300B mistake

The case involving Arief does not erase the broader digital reforms attempted in Indonesian education, but it does show how politically and legally sensitive such reforms can become. Technology choices in schools are not neutral. They affect budgets, vendors, teachers, students and the credibility of government institutions.

For now, the legal focus is on Arief’s conviction and the High Court’s decision to increase his sentence. Whether further legal steps follow will determine how final this chapter is. But the broader lesson is already visible: in Southeast Asia’s push to digitise the state, governance may prove just as important as the technology itself.

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For much of the past decade, Southeast Asia’s venture capital story was sold as a regional one. Singapore provided the capital base, legal infrastructure and headquarters location; Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand supplied the young consumers, rising digital adoption and growth markets.

That framing now looks increasingly out of date.

Also Read: “Not a bank, not a gamble”: Chocolate Finance wants your business’s spare cash

The “Southeast Asia Startup Funding Report” for 2025 by DealStreetAsia and Kickstart Ventures points to a sharper split in the region’s venture market. Capital has not simply become more cautious after the exuberance of 2021 and 2022. It has become more concentrated. Investors are no longer spreading money evenly across Southeast Asia’s major startup ecosystems.

Instead, they are clustering around Singapore, the market they consider safest when exits are scarce, valuations are under pressure and governance risks sit higher on the investment checklist.

The result is a Singapore-centric funding map: one highly capitalised hub surrounded by neighbouring markets facing weaker early-stage activity, fewer late-stage rounds and a slower path to recovery.

Singapore pulls away

The numbers show how pronounced the divide has become.

In 2025, Singapore accounted for 61.4 per cent of Southeast Asia’s equity deal volume, with 283 transactions. More strikingly, it captured 78.1 per cent of total equity funding value, or US$4.20 billion. Vietnam followed with US$360 million, Indonesia with US$340 million and Malaysia with US$260 million. The rest of the region together accounted for only US$350 million.

The concentration intensified in the second half of the year. Singapore’s equity funding value rose to US$2.99 billion in H2 2025, up more than 147 per cent from US$1.21 billion in the first half. Deal count also increased from 129 to 154.

That was not a broad-based rebound across startup stages. Much of the late-stage money went into Singapore-based or Singapore-headquartered companies with stronger institutional backing and clearer regional or global ambitions. Late-stage deal value in Singapore hit US$2.01 billion across 16 deals in H2, compared with US$400 million across seven deals in H1.

Two transactions illustrate the pattern. Payments company Thunes raised a US$150 million Series D round, while Princeton Digital Group secured US$1.30 billion. Of Southeast Asia’s four new tech unicorns in 2025, two — healthtech firm Ultragreen.ai and fintech platform Thunes — were headquartered in Singapore.

Singapore’s advantage is not only about being richer. It has deeper capital markets, a more predictable regulatory environment, stronger legal structures and a greater concentration of regional headquarters. In a bull market, investors may be willing to absorb more uncertainty in exchange for growth. In a correction, those institutional comforts matter more.

Neighbours struggle for momentum

The contrast with other Southeast Asian markets is stark.

Indonesia, the region’s largest consumer market, remained active but subdued. It accounted for 14.3 per cent of deal volume, with 66 transactions, but only 6.3 per cent of total regional funding value, or US$340 million. In H2 2025, investors deployed US$260 million across 32 deals. Late-stage capital returned selectively, with six deals worth US$160 million after none in the first half, but the market appears to have stabilised at a lower level rather than regained real momentum.

Vietnam saw an even harder reset. Its startup ecosystem recorded only US$90 million across 13 equity deals in H2, down from US$280 million across 23 deals in H1. Early-stage dealmaking fell to just 12 transactions in the second half, compared with 21 in the previous semester. For a market once viewed as one of Southeast Asia’s most promising next-generation tech hubs, the slowdown is significant.

Also Read: Southeast Asia startup funding finds a floor, but not a rebound

Malaysia also continued to lose pace. Equity funding slipped to US$61 million across 16 deals in H2. Early-stage volumes declined to 16 deals, down from 23 in H1 2025 and 34 in H2 2024. The US$155 million growth equity round by Ashita Group stood out, but it did not change the broader picture of thinning startup activity.

The Philippines remained constrained by the absence of later-stage capital. Funding fell for two consecutive semesters, reaching US$33 million across nine deals in H2. Late-stage funding was absent for the past two semesters. The country’s digital economy has produced large platforms, but many are closely linked to corporate groups rather than independent venture-backed companies. That limits the pipeline of startups that can raise large growth rounds, pursue IPOs or deliver venture-scale exits.

Thailand was the exception, though from a low base. Funding rose to US$66 million across seven deals in H2, compared with US$10 million in H1. Fintech accounted for nearly 90 per cent of the country’s startup funding, suggesting that the improvement was narrow rather than ecosystem-wide.

Why investors are crowding into safety

The deeper issue is not only that funding has slowed. It is that the risk calculation has changed.

Edgar Hardless, CEO of Singtel Innov8, pointed to a problem that has shadowed Southeast Asian venture capital for years: exits. “One of the biggest challenges is the lack of exits, creating higher uncertainty of returns for investors in this region,” he said.

That matters because venture capital relies on liquidity. Startups can raise multiple rounds, but investors ultimately need companies to list, be acquired or provide secondary-sale opportunities.

In Southeast Asia, those exit routes remain limited. Valuations set during the 2021 and 2022 boom have also made acquisitions harder, as potential buyers are often unwilling to match old expectations.

This dynamic hits younger ecosystems hardest. Minette Navarrete, President and Managing Partner of Kickstart Ventures, noted that the Philippines still has room to mature. “The ecosystem is still relatively young and has room to grow; the Philippines has yet to produce an independent unicorn, and firms often struggle to raise funding beyond Series B,” she said.

The governance question has also become more central. After a series of corporate governance failures and fraud cases in the region, investors are applying tougher filters to both startups and funds. Navarrete described governance as “a new competitive advantage for startups and venture capital firms”.

That shift favours companies with cleaner reporting, stronger controls and more transparent operations. It also favours Singapore, where regulatory trust and institutional infrastructure are part of the market’s selling point.

A fractured regional future

The danger is that Southeast Asia’s venture ecosystem becomes less regional in practice, even as founders continue to talk about regional expansion.

If more than three-quarters of equity funding value is concentrated in one market, promising companies in Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia may struggle to raise the capital needed to move beyond seed and Series A. That could create an innovation drought outside Singapore, where startups exist but fewer have the runway to become regional challengers.

The answer is not for neighbouring markets to imitate Singapore wholesale. Their strengths are different: Indonesia has scale, Vietnam has technical talent, the Philippines has digitally engaged consumers, Malaysia has cross-border operating depth, and Thailand has sector-specific opportunities. But these markets need stronger exit pathways, better governance standards, more local institutional capital and clearer rules for scaling businesses.

Also Read: Growing SEA startups with Kickstart Ventures

Founders, too, face a changed environment. The old “grow fast at all costs” model is no longer enough. Investors now want disciplined unit economics, credible paths to profitability and evidence that companies can survive without endless external funding.

Southeast Asia is still a compelling startup region. But in 2025, its funding landscape stopped looking like a single rising tide. It became a map of divergence, with Singapore as the safe harbour, and the rest of the region fighting to bring capital back to shore.

The post The end of Southeast Asia’s unified startup funding story? appeared first on e27.

The global economic landscape faces numerous structural challenges. Apart from specialized sectors like education, finance, and government, most mainstream industries are experiencing significant headwinds. In corporate boardrooms across the region, “cost cutting” has transitioned from a seasonal strategy to a daily operating baseline.

As a result, once deep-pocketed businesses are striving to find cheaper alternatives across various nodes of their operations. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software often comes under the radar during these efficiency drives. Because ERP systems represent one of the largest IT capital expenditures for an enterprise, the temptation to slash this line item is understandable. However, reducing a strategic digital transformation to a mere budget-slashing exercise carries profound operational risks.

The Singapore ERP Market Landscape

The Singapore ERP ecosystem has traditionally followed a distinct structure. The market for mega-cap corporations is primarily led by established international giants such as SAP and Oracle, known for robust architecture and compliance frameworks. Meanwhile, tier-2 brands—including Microsoft Dynamics 365, NetSuite, and specialized regional players like Multiable—serve as the frontrunners in the mid-tier enterprise market. For entry-level market, brands like Odoo and Chillaccount excels.

Interestingly, while Chinese enterprise software vendors have worked aggressively for nearly two decades to establish a foothold in Singapore, they have largely remained in a status of also-run. Despite their massive scale domestically, replicating that dominance in Southeast Asia’s leading business hub has proven highly elusive.

Famous for extreme domestic competition (“involution”) and aggressive low-cost structures, Chinese ERP vendors initially enjoyed a brief honeymoon period during this recent round of regional cost-cutting waves. Desperate to lower capital expenditure, several Singaporean enterprises turned their attention toward these highly economical software options. Unfortunately, this honeymoon phase has not lasted long.

Decoding the High Failure Rates of Discount ERP

A stark reality in enterprise technology is that a staggering percentage of ERP projects fail to meet their objectives, with a massive portion of the remaining implementations left struggling in perpetuity. For many executives, this high failure rate is surprising. After all, Chinese manufacturers—whether one likes it or not—are successfully capturing global market share in sectors like electrical appliance, Electric Vehicles (EV) or renewable energy. Why, then, can their ERP software counterparts not replicate this global success?

The answer lies in the structural design of the reseller and implementation partner program. This framework is often the primary driver of these miserable project failures.

For careful prospects who insist on a detailed Proof of Concept (POC) process before purchase, Chinese ERP vendors actually hold no sustainable cost advantage over international competitors. While the initial software license might appear cheaper, the total cost of ownership over a five-year lifecycle quickly evens out. To bypass this barrier and make the cut, some vendors deploy a sales tactic common in their home market: decoupling the software sale from the delivery by shifting total responsibility to third-party resellers. To secure the contract, the primary vendor avoids signing the direct implementation contract with the customer. Instead, independent resellers do.

The Illusion of Low-Cost Consulting

Consequently, competition among these resellers is fierce, leading to highly unsustainable bidding behaviors. Fixed-price deployment contracts or stunningly low-priced consulting rates—sometimes quoted as low as RMB 1,500 (approximately SGD 280) per man-day—are frequently observed. For a system as operationally complex and cross-functional as an ERP, businesses must ask themselves: what level of business transformation or process optimization can an enterprise truly expect from a consultant charging RMB 1,500 a day?

A simple back-of-the-napkin calculation exposes the structural flaw in this model. Based on the public financial statements of leading Chinese ERP vendors, sales, marketing, and channel acquisition expenses frequently account for around 50% of total revenue. When you subtract these heavy customer-acquisition costs, factor in a razor-thin profit margin for the reseller, and account for mandatory corporate contributions like social insurance and housing funds, the math collapses.

The front-line consultants actually assigned to serve these clients are likely earning a net salary of just RMB 9,000 per month. In the enterprise technology space, compensation directly correlates with expertise. A salary at that level typically commands junior resources who lack the macro business acumen, industry-specific knowledge, and technical sophistication required to architect a robust corporate system.

Balancing Budget and Business Risk

The logical breakdown is clear, yet many companies remain willing to try their luck. A fundamental lack of deep internal technology expertise, paired with an overly budget-minded corporate culture, represents the top two common traits among these unlucky buyers. A challenging, unfavorable business environment only strengthens their determination to gamble on a low-cost solution. Regrettably, very few of them achieve a successful return on investment in the end. Instead, they find themselves stuck with half-baked systems that disrupt supply chains, distort financial reporting, and require expensive rescue projects to fix.

This trajectory sounds remarkably familiar to seasoned IT observers. The current approach of certain low-cost enterprise software models closely mirrors the challenges previously seen with low-tier offshore (mainly India, Indonesia and Vietnam) software development frameworks that prioritized headcount volume over delivery quality.

Singapore is a global city of excellence, and Singaporean enterprises traditionally seek long-term quality, scalable architecture, and strict data governance. In the realm of digital transformation, cheap but inferior software paired with underqualified implementation partners is never the answer. True cost optimization does not mean buying the cheapest tool; it means investing in a reliable solution and an experienced partner that ensures the project succeeds the first time.

Why We Write this Article?

This piece is authored by Sam Cheong, the Principal Consultant at Synchro RKK Sdn Bhd and one of Malaysia’s most respected business software authorities. Driven by a passion for complex problem-solving, Sam fell in love with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) architecture early in his career. Following a proven track record of high-impact deployments, he successfully acquired the ERP business unit from SRKK to found Synchro ERP. Today, he leverages his deep technical expertise and strategic vision to help organizations streamline operations, scale infrastructure, and navigate digital transformation. Witnessing the rising wave of compromised implementations in the region, Sam shares these insights to guide enterprises away from costly deployment pitfalls.

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Southeast Asia’s venture capital map fractured further in 2025. Singapore alone accounted for 78.1% of the region’s equity funding value (US$4.2 billion) and 61.4% of deal volume, according to a new DealStreetAsia-Kickstart Ventures report.

The city-state’s share intensified in the second half of the year, with funding value jumping 147% and late-stage rounds such as Thunes’ US$150 million Series D and Princeton Digital Group’s US$1.30 billion raise reinforcing its pull. Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia trailed far behind with US$360 million, US$340 million and US$260 million respectively, while the rest of the region shared just US$350 million.

Vietnam suffered the sharpest reset, its H2 funding nearly halving to US$90 million. The Philippines remained starved of late-stage capital, and Malaysia’s early-stage activity kept shrinking. Only Thailand improved, though almost entirely on the back of fintech.

Singtel Innov8‘s Edgar Hardless points to the region’s chronic lack of exits as the core problem, while Kickstart Ventures’ Minette Navarrete argues governance has become “a new competitive advantage.” The result: a Singapore-centric funding map, and a harder climb for founders everywhere else in the region.

Read the full report here.

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REGIONAL

SEA venture funding stabilises but shows no real rebound: Southeast Asia closed 2025 with only 461 equity deals, the lowest annual count since 2018, a sign the region’s venture market has stopped falling but not yet rebounded.

Jakarta court lengthens sentence in Chromebook graft case: A Jakarta appeals court increased Ibrahim Arief’s prison term to five years over a corruption case tied to Chromebook procurement for Indonesian schools, linked to ex-minister Nadiem Makarim’s tenure.

Lumio Solar bags US$900K for plug-and-play solar in PH: The Philippine startup wants to make rooftop solar accessible to renters and households without property ownership, betting plug-and-play appliances can widen adoption beyond wealthier homeowners.

MAS commits US$173M to next phase of fintech innovation: Singapore’s central bank will channel US$173 million into fintech development, sustaining the city-state’s push to cement its position as the region’s leading financial and innovation hub.

Vietnam to embed AI lessons across all school grades next year: From the next academic year, AI education will be integrated into Vietnam’s national curriculum, reflecting a state-led effort to build foundational digital literacy at scale.

AI boom to keep Singapore manufacturing resilient, say economists: Surging data centre and semiconductor demand tied to the AI buildout is expected to buffer Singapore’s manufacturing sector against broader global trade headwinds, economists say.

Gojek Singapore expands Zig tie-up with GoTaxi launch: The ride-hailing partnership between Gojek and Zig deepens in Singapore, with the GoTaxi service marking a broader push to consolidate mobility options for commuters on the island.

GoTo VP Catherine Hindra resigns citing personal reasons: Catherine Hindra’s departure adds to a string of senior exits at the Indonesian tech giant as it continues restructuring amid pressure to reach sustained profitability.

FEATURES AND INTERVIEWS

Chocolate Finance eyes SMEs’ idle cash after consumer scale: Having built US$1.3 billion in assets from over 150,000 Singapore consumers, the fintech now targets small businesses’ spare cash, betting the same simple-yield pitch translates to SMEs.

INTERNATIONAL

South Korea’s President Lee says interest rate rise is unavoidable: President Lee’s remarks signal tightening monetary conditions in a key regional tech economy, with potential knock-oneffects for startup valuations and venture activity across North East Asia.

ChatGPT, Reddit, and Roblox face EU Digital Services Act rules: The EU’s DSA brings strictercontent moderation and transparency obligations to major platforms, a regulatory template SEApolicy makers are increasingly watching and replicating.

Meta executive leaves for OpenAI amid India scrutiny: A senior Meta executive’s move to OpenAI coincides with growing regulatory pressure on the social media giant in India, one of its largest and most contested markets globally.

Chinese automakers follow Tesla’s bet on humanoid robots: Chinese EV makers are integratinghumanoid robotics into their manufacturing and product road maps, intensifying competition in asector that SEA industrial players are beginning to monitor closely.

US erects barriers around drones and robots as China holds scale: Washington’s exportcontrols and procurement restrictions on drone and robotics technology are reshaping supply chains, forcing SEA buyers to pick sides in an increasingly bifurcated market.

Apple App Store chief Phil Schiller exits as Tim Cook steps down: Phil Schiller’s departure is part of a broader leadership exodus at Apple, raising questions about the company’s developer and app ecosystem strategy at a pivotal moment for mobile platforms globally.

Tim Cook’s farewell: Apple’s future lies with a product builder: In his parting message, Cook signals confidence in his successor’s product-first philosophy, a transition that will reverberate across the global app and device ecosystem that SEA developers depend on.

Crypto shrugs off Fed rate fears as stocks wobble: Digital asset market cap climbed 1.09% to US$2.64 trillion even as equities stumbled under bond-yield pressure, exposing a widening divergence between risk appetites in crypto and traditional markets.

Bitcoin sellers dig in at US$81,000 ahead of Asia open: Total crypto market value fell 0.89% to US$2.61 trillion in 24 hours, with traders citing shifting rate-hike expectations as the driver behind the pullback.

CYBERSECURITY

Ransomware hits schools via stolen logins, not malware: A new Sophos report finds identity-based attacks drove 85% of ransomware incidents against education institutions, above the 79% cross-sector average, as stolen credentials and phishing replace exotic malware.

CrowdStrike and Telkom Indonesia sign MOU on AI-driven cybersecurity: The partnership positions Indonesia’s state-owned telco to deploy AI-powered threat detection across itsinfrastructure, signalling growing enterprise-level cyber security investment in South East Asia’slargest economy.

SEMICONDUCTOR

SEA’s chip-hub ambitions collide with smuggling scrutiny: Singapore police recently froze a US$42 million bungalow tied to a fraud probe linked to Nvidia chip reseller Aperia Group, underscoring the region’s growing role as a transhipment point for restricted chips.

Nvidia’s US$3.5B MediaTek bet maps its AI chip strategy: Nvidia’s investment in MediaTek signals a push to broaden its AI silicon foot print beyond data centres into edge devices, with implications for chip supply chains across Asia.

Nvidia’s AI advantage is moving beyond the GPU: Nvidia is extending its moat into networking, software, and systems, a strategic shift that could reshape how AI infrastructure is procured and deployed across the region’s hyper scalers and cloud providers.

Chinese hyperscalers ramp AI spending but trail US rivals: Moody’s finds that Chinese cloud giants are accelerating AI infrastructure investment but remain significantly behind US counterparts in scale gap with direct consequences for SEA’s AI supply chain choices.

AI

100-plus companies call for unified action against rogue AI: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and over 100 other firms have jointly urged governments to act against unaligned AI systems, in one of the broadest industry-led AI safety coalitions to date.

India’s hiring slowdown shows AI’s early jobs impact: A survey of 651 Indian tech firms found 65% say AI has already reduced hiring, a pattern also emerging in Britain’s job market data, a warning sign for other economies.

OpenAI backs Thailand’s new eight-week AI accelerator: OpenAI and Thailand’s science ministry are running an eight-week Bangkok accelerator for ten local startups, pushing the country’s AI ambitions beyond demos into hospitals and classrooms.

Japan’s US$27.9B AI market hides tough entry barriers: Japan’s AI sector is projected to triple to US$27.9 billion by 2029, driven by an ageing population and government investment, but foreign entrants face steep structural and cultural hurdles.

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Southeast Asia’s AI edge isn’t one advantage, it’s eleven: Rather than chasing frontier labs, the author argues the region’s opportunity lies in combining imported models with local strengths across eleven distinct advantages, not one grand strategy.

Stop treating Southeast Asia as a single market, argues op-ed: Running teams across Singapore, Tokyo and New York, the author warns that treating SEA’s 680 million people as one addressable market is where expansion budgets quietly go to die.

Why the global AI marketing backlash skips Southeast Asia: While Western trend decks warn that 78% say AI ads feel less authentic, the author argues that framing doesn’t map cleanly onto Southeast Asian consumer attitudes toward AI-generated marketing.

A founder’s guide to pitching Southeast Asia’s investors: Raising capital in the region takes more than a good deck, the guide argues, offering founders a practical playbook for navigating one of the world’s most closely watched startup ecosystems.

AI speeds up global expansion but can’t fake local nuance: AI can translate, summarise competitors and prepare market analysis overnight, but the author warns that tasks once needing local specialists still require human judgement to get markets right.

Factory announcements aren’t SEA’s real manufacturing story: Beyond the plant openings, the author argues Southeast Asia’s real competitiveness will be decided by the supply-chain ecosystem — suppliers, logistics, skills — that surrounds new factories.

Southeast Asia builds specialised manufacturing hub network: Vietnam, Malaysia and Thailand are attracting investment across electronics, semiconductors and automotive supply chains, each carving a distinct role while Singapore anchors higher-value technology work.

Southeast Asia quietly gains from shifting FDI redistribution: Beyond incentives, the author recalls how a Miami-based company’s expansion decision hinged on culture, not spreadsheets, as manufacturers quietly redirect investment across the region.

Indonesia’s insurers enter a second digital transformation wave: A former enterprise-software executive turned insurance insider shares what surprised him most after moving into Indonesia’s insurance sector amid its ongoing digital shift.

AI’s environmental impact needs product-level decisions: By the time sustainability teams weigh in, the author argues the important environmental decisions have already been made, pushing companies to treat AI’s footprint as a product design choice.

How to build teams that resist burnout, not just endure it: With Microsoft data showing 48% of workers feel overwhelmed by their workload, the author draws on 15 years leading APAC and EMEA teams to outline what actually prevents burnout.

When your cloud provider’s data centre gets hit by a drone: After a military drone strike knocked out an AWS data centre serving millions of users, the author recounts a week spent manually migrating a platform because automated tools failed too.

SWOT isn’t boring; it’s just used too late, argues writer: Frameworks like SWOT, 5W1H and PESTLE aren’t office wallpaper, the author argues — used at the right time, they help avoid costly strategic mistakes many teams only diagnose in hindsight.

China’s overseas asset tax reform is a signal for SEA: Beijing’s push to tax citizens’ offshore assets is a fiscal move with wider consequences, the author argues, as it reshapes how private wealth moves through the region, not just government revenue.

The post Singapore now captures 78 per cent of SEA’s startup funding appeared first on e27.

In February 2024, Klarna’s CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told the world that the company’s AI assistant had taken on the work of 700 customer service agents. Headcount fell from 5,500 to 3,800. The story became the most cited example of AI replacing humans at scale. Boards across Asia, Europe, and the US used it to justify their own restructuring conversations.

Eighteen months later, Klarna was quietly rehiring. By February 2026, Siemiatkowski publicly admitted that the company had gone too far. Customer satisfaction had cratered. Software engineers and marketers were being pulled onto support lines to plug the gaps. The CEO who had once claimed AI could do every job, including his own, was now telling Bloomberg that the quality of human support was the new priority.

Klarna is not the cautionary tale of a single company that bet wrong on AI. It is the cautionary tale of a thinking error that most AI-driven reorgs are making right now.

The data on the thinking error

A Harvard Business Review article published in January 2026, authored by Thomas Davenport and Laks Srinivasan, surveyed 1,006 global executives in late 2025. The numbers landed hard. Sixty percent of organisations had already reduced headcount in anticipation of AI. Only two percent of those organisations had reached the point where AI was actually doing the work the cut humans used to do. Fourteen percent had AI solutions ready to deploy. Eleven percent were using AI in production.

The math is uncomfortable. Six out of ten companies had cut. Two out of a hundred had a working AI replacement for what they cut. The other 58 were either betting the gap would close before customers noticed, or quietly absorbing the work back into the humans who remained.

Davenport and Srinivasan called this AI washing. Companies using AI as the narrative cover for financial restructuring that they would have done anyway. Recent research from agentic AI vendors confirms the pattern: 55 percent of companies that executed AI-driven layoffs now regret the decision. Gartner projects that 40 percent of agentic AI projects will be cancelled outright by 2027.

This is not a problem about AI capability. It is a problem about how leaders are framing the question they are trying to answer.

Also Read: Why Japan’s booming AI market is harder to crack than it looks

What work-first design looks like

The companies getting AI team design right are not the ones starting with the question “how do we restructure for AI?” They are starting with a different question. What does the work itself actually want to look like now?

I call this Work-First Design, and the difference shows up in the outcomes.

At Tripadvisor, AI agents now handle 90 percent of incoming customer queries autonomously. The headline number sounds like Klarna’s. The strategy underneath is the opposite. Tripadvisor did not set out to eliminate human roles. The company set out to free the human support team for strategic work that required judgment, creativity, and relationship-building. The 90 percent automation rate enabled a 100 percent reassignment of human attention to work AI could not do. Thumbtack and ClickUp built similar models.

McKinsey research from 2025 found that companies which fundamentally redesign their workflows around AI are three times more likely to capture real value from the technology, and they generate twice the AI usage per employee. The redesign companies are also the ones building pod structures that work. Meta’s Reality Labs reorganised a large group into AI-native pods with roles like AI Builder, AI Pod Lead, and AI Org Lead. Engineers were expected to operate with broader range. Pods were required to own outcomes rather than isolated tasks.

The pods are not the point. The work redesign underneath is the point. Putting “Pod Lead” titles on top of a workflow that has not been redesigned just renames the old problem in new vocabulary.

This is where most reorgs fail. The leaders running them have been sold a structure. Pods, agents, AI-native teams. The structures are real and many of them work. But they only work if the work has been redesigned to fit. Drop a pod structure on top of a customer service workflow that still requires emotional judgment on 30 percent of cases, and you get Klarna. Drop the same pod structure on top of a workflow where AI genuinely handles 90 percent and humans handle the judgment-heavy 10 percent, and you get Tripadvisor.

The structure looks identical from the outside. The outcomes are not.

The Klarna pattern is going to repeat

The reason Klarna is going to keep happening is that work redesign is harder, slower, and less narrative-friendly than structural reorg. A reorg announcement makes the board happy. A six-month work redesign with no headlines does not.

Leaders are also being pushed by the wrong signals. Compensation benchmarks now reward AI fluency at every level. The PwC Global AI Jobs Barometer reports a 56 percent wage premium for AI-skilled workers. The labour market is telling leaders to hire AI talent fast and restructure around them. The temptation is to do exactly that, then figure out the work design later.

Later is when the customer satisfaction scores collapse. Later is when the engineers get pulled onto the support phones. Later is when the CEO has to tell Bloomberg that the strategy was wrong.

Also Read: AI is changing global expansion, but it cannot standardise local markets

I built and exited a SaaS company without taking venture capital. That meant I never had the budget to throw structure at problems. Every team I built had to match the shape of the work, because there was no spare capital to absorb a wrong design. That discipline turned out to be the most valuable constraint of my operating years. The companies that are now learning this lesson under AI pressure are learning it the expensive way.

The good news is that the lesson is learnable. The bad news is that the leaders most likely to ignore it are the ones with the most capital to throw at the problem first.

Three questions for leaders rethinking team design in 2026

What is the actual shape of the work after AI is genuinely doing what it can do, and what is left for humans?

If you removed every “AI” job title from your reorg plan, would the structure still solve a real problem, or does it only make sense as an AI narrative?

If your customer satisfaction scores or your output quality drop 15 percent in the six months after the reorg, what is your specific plan to recover them?

If the answer to the third question is “we will rehire,” you are not redesigning. You are doing a Klarna in slow motion. The cost of that mistake has now been documented in detail. There is no excuse left to make it.

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