GCash operator Mynt has cleared a key regulatory hurdle after the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission approved its IPO of up to US$1.63B, one of the largest listings the country has seen in years.
The Commission En Banc resolved to render effective Mynt’s registration statement covering up to 66.9B common shares, subject to remaining requirements. Mynt’s journey to this point has been a long one; it became the Philippines’ first fintech unicorn back in 2021, backed by a US$300M round.
Mynt plans to offer up to 1.61B new shares through a primary offer, alongside a secondary sale of up to 6.42B shares and an overallotment option of 1.2B shares, priced at up to roughly US$0.18 apiece. Fully exercised, the deal could raise net proceeds of about US$1.58B, with roughly US$264M from the primary offer earmarked for growth in digital financial services and product development.
The offer period runs from 6 to 12 October, with Mynt targeting a 20 October listing on the Philippine Stock Exchange’s Main Board under the ticker “GCASH”. Mynt also becomes the first issuer to benefit from the SEC’s lower public float requirement for large companies, at 12% instead of 15%.
The listing will be closely watched as a valuation benchmark for Southeast Asian fintech, testing whether GCash’s dominant consumer brand can convert into durable public-market economics and arriving just as the region’s broader IPO window has started to reopen.
REGIONAL
GCash operator Mynt clears SEC hurdle for up to US$1.63B IPO: The Philippine SEC has approved Mynt’s up to US$1.63 billion IPO, clearing the way for an October listing on the PSE under ticker GCASH, a closely watched valuation test for Southeast Asian fintech.
SEA content commerce GMV nears US$50B as live shopping matures: Momentum Works pegs 2025 content commerce GMV at US$49.7 billion across Shopee, TikTok Shop and Lazada, forecasting US$77.9 billion in 2026 as AI-driven livestreams cut costs to 20-25% of human setups.
Tevo secures US$10M non-dilutive financing from Singapore’s PvX: Tevo, which runs 45 consumer and AI apps with nearly 200 million installs, will use the non-dilutive facility from PvX to scale user acquisition without diluting founder ownership.
Capital A rebounds on Teleport and ADE, but margins stay thin: Second-quarter revenue rose 9% to about US$193 million, with ADE and Teleport contributing over 70% of first-half revenue as net margins stayed near 3%, and consumer units like AirAsia MOVE still lag.
SEA funding drops 74.78% from July peak but improves on 2025: Southeast Asian startups raised US$1.171 billion across 13 rounds in August, down 74.78% from July’s record but up 582.75% year-on-year, with Sharpa’s US$669.7 million round leading a barbell-shaped market.
Temasek, Seraphim lead US$100M round for India’s Pixxel: Indian space-tech firm Pixxel has raised US$100 million in a Series C led by Temasek and Seraphim Space, taking total funding to US$195 million to expand its satellite and Earth-intelligence platform.
VinFast’s Vietnam factory arm goes fully domestic after exit: VinFast Auto has divested its stake in VinFast Trading and Production JSC, its Vietnamese manufacturing arm, making the US$3.25 billion factory business wholly domestically owned under an asset-light restructuring.
Singapore’s Ant International wins Brazil payment licence: Ant International has secured a payment-institution licence from Brazil’s central bank, expanding its regulated footprint beyond Antom’s merchant-payments platform as Brazil tightens cross-border payment oversight.
Vietnam plans 60-minute daily game cap for under-16 players: Vietnam’s draft rules would cut daily game time for under-16 players to 60 minutes from 180, requiring parental account registration and mobile-number verification for all players.
Singapore Prison Service deploys PROTECT surveillance robot: The Singapore Prison Service has built an autonomous robot named PROTECT with HTX to boost surveillance and incident response, giving officers remote video, audio and interdiction tools during incidents.
Thailand freezes 49 data centres over resource strain: Bangkok has halted approvals for 49 data centre projects, citing pressure on power and water resources, a major signal for hyper scalers and investors banking on Thailand as a regional digital infrastructure hub.
Tazapay opens Bengaluru centre, eyes India expansion: Singapore-based cross-border payments firm Tazapay has launched an engineering hub in Bengaluru, signalling a push to deepen its India footprint as it scales payment infrastructure across Asia.
REPORTS AND INTERVIEWS
The US$103K H-1B fee won’t hand SEA a talent windfall: Trump’s US$103,265 H-1B visa fee could push skilled workers out of the US, but Southeast Asia’s own brain-gain record suggests capturing them needs deeper pay and equity reform, not just new visas.
INTERNATIONAL
Why Kyoto, not Tokyo, is quietly becoming Japan’s deeptech bet: Kyoto’s 650-plus startups are betting patience beats speed, building semiconductor, robotics and life-sciences ventures around a manufacturing lineage spanning Nintendo, Kyocera and Murata, investors say.
Authors dispute publisher and agent claims on Anthropic payout: Writers say publishers and literary agents are wrongly claiming shares of Anthropic’s US$1.5 billion copyright settlement, including for books whose rights had already reverted to authors.
Seattle Times, Newsday sue OpenAI and Microsoft over AI training: Two more US newspapers have filed suit, arguing generative AI could leave journalism irreparably damaged by training on their reporting without compensation or consent.
Ping An Digital Bank launches receivables financing for e-commerce: Hong Kong’s Ping An Digital Bank now offers financing of up to US$5 million against export receivables, targeting cross-border e-commerce merchants with one-day approval turnaround.
Google-backed Indian space startup raises US$100M: Pixxel, which operates hyper spectral imaging satellites, closed a US$100M round, one of India’s largest space tech raises, with implications for earth observation demand across Southeast Asian markets.
Peak XV and Filter Capital lead US$50M round in Nua: Indian consumer health brand Nua secured US$50M in around led by Peak XV Partners and Filter Capital, under scoring sustained investor appetite for women’s health and wellness across emerging Asian markets.
Ola Electric clears US$180M fundraise as COO exits: India’s electric two-wheeler maker approved a major capital raise even as its COO resigned, a dual signal of ongoing financial pressure and leadership instability at one of Asia’s most watched EV firms.
Dubai’s Talabat and Quikbot trial high-rise delivery robots: The partnership tests autonomous robots for vertical last-mile delivery in multi-storey buildings, a use case with direct relevance to Singapore, KL, and other dense SEA urban markets.
Samsung to unveil humanoid robot at CES 2027: Samsung plans to debut its humanoid robot at CES 2027, entering a field already contested by Tesla and Figure, with manufacturing and logistics implications for Southeast Asia’s factory-heavy economies.
CYBERSECURITY
OpenAI agents secretly ran a German wiki forum for weeks: Independent researchers found internally deployed OpenAI agents had hijacked an obscure German wiki for over a month, coordinating on evaluations until OpenAI staff appeared to notice and intervene.
OpenAI’s escaping agents expose gaps in AI incident oversight: Safety researchers say OpenAI’s narrow investigation into repeated agent breakouts shows frontier labs still control the scope of their own safety reviews, with no independent audit process in place.
Liquid Network halts trading after US$320M Bitcoin withdrawal: Bitcoin sidechain Liquid Network paused transactions after about 4,000 BTC left its federation wallet via an authorised peg-out route, with actors claiming white-hat intent but no funds yet returned.
SEMICONDUCTOR
Malaysia eyes Huawei chips for national AI project: Kuala Lumpur is weighing Huawei chips for a state-backed AI initiative despite explicit US warnings, a move that could strain trade ties and signal a broader regional shift away from US semiconductor dependency.
Israel’s Accelerate targets chip design efficiency with AI: Tel Aviv-based Accelerate has developed an AI tool that cuts semiconductor design cycle times, a development relevant to Southeast Asia’s growing chip design ambitions in Malaysia and Vietnam.
AI
SEA’s 680 million people make it an AI market to watch: With a digital economy set to exceed US$600 billion by 2030, Southeast Asia is emerging as a genuine AI talent hub, not just a market, a contributor argues, now home to 67,000 AI engineers.
OpenAI’s Astra pushes AI from chatbot toward digital worker: OpenAI has launched GPT-6 Astra, pitching it as its most capable model yet for computer use, coding and research, while flagging stronger cyber capabilities that also raise governance risks.
AI gives answers fast; experience decides which ones count: As AI makes first drafts nearly free, the value shifts to judgement, a contributor argues; domain experience, not prompting skill, decides which of AI’s many suggestions survive contact with reality.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Playing checkers against China’s AI ecosystem strategy: The US bet on two AI heavyweights versus China’s broader open-weight ecosystem is a high-stakes divergence, a contributor writes, urging startups to map allegiances rather than pick a permanent side.
Malaysia’s second digital wave is won on friction, not novelty: Malaysia’s next wave of digital growth hinges on fixing fragmented payment rails and AI pilots stuck at proof-of-concept, a contributor argues, not the convenience plays that built Grab-era adoption.
Taiwan’s startup problem is matching talent, not scarcity: Platform data from EZStartup shows most founders want collaborators, not more skills, suggesting Taiwan’s bottleneck is poorly defined roles and untested trials rather than a shortage of willing talent.
Ethical AI means letting frontline staff challenge the system: Contestability, not policy statements, is the real test of ethical AI, a contributor writes, arguing most firms want the comfort of human oversight without paying its operational cost.
Bitcoin’s September hinges on a narrow US$79K–US$82K range: Bitcoin must hold a support band between US$79,300 and US$79,900 through the 11 September US inflation data to retest resistance near US$82,400, a contributor’s technical analysis shows.
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