Singapore’s office workers answer a 10.47pm message within 90 seconds to prove their commitment. Their bosses barely notice.
The Jobstreet by SEEK Singapore Workplace Culture Study 2026, which surveyed 600 employees and jobseekers and 200 hiring decision makers, finds that 63% of staff signal dedication by replying fast, a behaviour only 39% of employers value. Some 52% stay reachable after hours; just 18% of employers rate it. What employers actually want is initiative and outcomes (49%).
The anxiety behind this is imported. AI and automation, followed by inflation and the cost of living, top both sides’ lists of workplace pressures. Employees fear for pay and job security; employers worry about AI’s impact on teams and restructuring towards leaner headcounts. That loop turns permanent availability into cheap insurance against the next round of cuts.
The payout is close to nil. Some 62% say always-on working has done nothing for their career, and 63% of those under pressure report lower energy. Yet 48% of employers who expect it have no plans to add support, and budgets favour AI training (34%) over wellbeing (14%) and manager development (12%). Until employers decide when staff may switch off, the late-night reply keeps costing workers dearly.
REGIONAL
SEA fintech funding triples to US$2.3B as deal count nearly halves: Four US$100M-plus rounds took 86% of capital, led by Ant International’s US$1.2B Series A. Seed funding fell 46% to US$53.3M, Singapore firms raised US$1.9B, and the region logged no fintech IPOs, per Tracxn.
Salary Hero raises US$7.6M Series A to take on Malaysia’s loan sharks: Cento Ventures led the round for the Bangkok-based financial health platform, joined by Kairous Capital and M Venture Partners. Salary Hero has also expanded its credit facility to US$10M with regional banks and lenders.
Parallel Loop nets US$6.6M to feed enterprise AI the context it lacks: Founders Yujun Chean and Prateek Jogani previously built Vouch Insurtech, parent of Thai insurtech FairDee, which raised a US$755,000 seed round in 2018. Eight years on, they return with a bigger cheque in a far more crowded field.
Antares Ventures passes US$50M for debut deep-tech fund, eyes US$100M: Family offices and corporate investors from Southeast Asia, Japan and Korea backed the second close. Fund I has already deployed about US$27M across nine companies, including Singapore’s VFlowTech, spanning energy, compute, industry and urban infrastructure.
TalentHero, DeeMoney form Thai JV to link hiring, payroll and payments: The Singapore-headquartered firm, co-founded by Oliver Lewis and James Miles, targets the post-hire grind of local entities, compliance and payroll, plus the cross-border money transfers that slow companies expanding into Thailand.
85% of Singapore employers expect staff to be always on: Yet half of employees say they receive no organisational support, against 22% of employers who admit offering none. Always-on working rarely pays off: 62% of staff see no difference to their career progression.
Malaysia’s VentureTECH backs biosimilar maker and Sabah agritech firm: Hanan Medicare is moving into biosimilars, including insulin, while AgriData Portal runs a seed-to-market model for smallholders. The AgriData deal is the government-backed investor’s first Sabah bet, aligned with PuTERA35.
Cashku adds Muamalat Invest Shariah funds, including private credit: The Malaysian platform offers sukuk, equities, gold and money market funds with no sales charges. Malaysia’s Islamic capital market grew 4.31% to US$660B in 2025, about 63% of the domestic capital market.
Partior and Bahrain’s NBB study putting the dinar on its rails: The Singapore blockchain settlement network could gain NBB as a dinar settlement bank, but the MoU commits only to feasibility work. Neither side disclosed a live service, a launch date or financial terms.
Beenext, Lotus lead US$2M pre-seed for AI search startup Miracly: Miracly, from Swedish home decor operator The Wild Ventures, tracks brand visibility on AI platforms. Acclime and Pixi Beauty are early customers, and it faces rivals such as Profound and AthenaHQ in AI search optimisation.
INTERVIEWS & FEATURES
Manus’s US$500M round puts the AI startup back in Chinese hands: Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the raise, months after Beijing ordered Meta’s US$2B acquisition unwound. The lesson for SEA investors: regulatory exposure follows founders and code, not the registered address.
JFrog’s Sunny Rao: tokens are the wrong yardstick for AI agents: Rao once sold the IVR and chatbot automation wave that left customers trapped in looping phone trees. He warns that enterprises measuring AI agents by token use risk repeating that mistake.
Six wallets are replacing cash-on-delivery across Southeast Asia: Cash-on-delivery, long the default where card ownership was thin, once made up about half of e-commerce. Shoppers are finally abandoning it, but each market is choosing differently, fragmenting checkout for merchants.
Employers buy AI tools while their managers are left behind: Jobstreet by SEEK finds 37% of Singapore employees quietly draw their own boundaries to cope with pressure. Employers, meanwhile, rank manager development near the bottom of their investment list, at 12%.
Auto finance loses buyers in gaps that AI agents could close: Up to 80% of SEA cars are bought on credit, yet only about 10% of prospects complete financing, X Star’s Shawn Yang told AIMCONNECT 2026. Delegates ranked connectivity across institutions first as the fix.
INTERNATIONAL
Netflix cuts about 1,000 jobs as YouTube and TikTok eat into viewing: The roughly 6% cut falls mostly on product, tech, legal and HR teams. It follows Netflix losing the Warner Bros. Discovery bidding war to Paramount Skydance earlier this year.
US EV sales grow for a third straight quarter after tax credits end: EVs took 6.1% of the US market, per Cox Automotive, led by Toyota, Rivian and Subaru. Tesla’s sales fell 20% year-on-year, though it still sold over half of all EVs.
Amazon’s Panos Panay tells founders to fail, then harvest the lessons: Panay cited Microsoft’s Surface RT, which triggered a nearly US$1B write-down, as proof that failures stem from decisions made years earlier. His advice: adjust course by 30 degrees, not 180.
CYBERSECURITY
Singapore wants Google’s AI to stop scams inside the phone: Google unveiled two initiatives with the Singapore Government, shifting part of the anti-scam fight onto users’ devices, away from police operations centres, bank back offices and platform blocking rules.
Spyware makers turned online ads into a zero-click hacking pipeline: Citizen Lab says Israeli firm Discover-Tech let Candiru and Bindecy target victims through ad networks. One campaign hit at least 45 computers at Al Jazeera; exposed bidding records show ads reached military devices.
FBI arrests OpenAI staffer over hidden device in executive boardroom: Prosecutors charged Saudi national Abdulrahman Alfozan with intercepting oral communications after a device turned up in a TV’s USB port. OpenAI says it has no sign of stolen weights or customer data.
Ping An Digital Bank reports 96% deepfake detection in HKMA sandbox: Built with OneConnect, the platform checks customer selfies for forged faces during verification. The bank published no methodology or false-positive rates, and gave no deployment date beyond the trial.
SEMICONDUCTOR
SK Hynix’s Solidigm ties US fab plans to China equipment approvals: Reuters reports Solidigm wants more US tools for its Dalian plant while weighing a NAND factory in upstate New York. The unit is reportedly eyeing a US$10B IPO in 2027.
Applied Materials opens AI chip R&D hub with TSMC, Intel, Samsung: The Sunnyvale centre houses nearly four acres of cleanroom, and Applied expects capital spending of about US$5B over time. Micron, SK hynix and five US universities also joined, but the company gave no timeline or spending breakdown.
Cerebras CEO says AI doomsayers are drowning out the benefits: Andrew Feldman told TechCrunch Disrupt the industry also failed to engage local communities over US data centres, fuelling NIMBY pushback, while countries such as Brazil, Finland and Mexico welcome the buildouts.
Japan to invest up to US$21B in two GlobalFoundries fabs in New York: GlobalFoundries will operate the plants, jointly owned by Washington and Japanese interests. The deal forms part of Japan’s US$550B US investment pledge, made in return for US tariffs on Japanese imports falling to 15% from at least 25%.
AI
Anthropic’s Singapore MOU puts AI safety testing ahead of reach: Opening its fifth APAC office, Anthropic counts GovTech, DBS, GIC, Grab and Sea as users. The MOU carries no investment figure or headcount, and Washington still holds the off switch on US frontier models.
Sea Labs gets Google’s frontier models before February pilots report: Google AI Futures Fund calls Sea Labs its first external lab partner, but no money, equity or milestones were disclosed. Sea cut fourth-quarter 2025 R&D spending 7.8% as revenue rose 38.4%.
Singapore bets AI agent assurance can become its next industry: IMDA unveiled new assurance measures for AI agents, reflecting regulators’ shift in focus from software that chats to software that acts, where a wrong refund or misdirected email becomes a liability.
Singtel, IMDA offer 10,000 SMEs free AI-ready document management: SMEs get six months of free access to Singtel’s SPACE plus workshops, aimed at organising messy business data first. Neither party disclosed sign-ups or measured productivity gains.
Disney offers US$20M for tech Google licensed for US$2.7B: Both deals cover a licence to Character.ai‘s technology, marking a fall of over 99% in just over two years. The chatbot startup has since filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Hong Kong opens embodied AI hub to test robots in real settings: HKPC and FLAIR have signed seven technology partners and eight international scenario partners across manufacturing, logistics and retail. Hong Kong wants the hub to bridge mainland robotics and global markets.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
SEA’s funding winter is real, but its builders have not stopped: Faheem Aizat Kamsan notes that zero regional PE funds closed in the first half of 2026. Yet he argues capital fleeing the region is not the same as founders downing tools.
Indonesian fintechs paid more for ASEAN expansion than they planned: Bobby Yulandika Putra revisits the 2018–2022 cohort, from Investree to Modalku, that pushed beyond Indonesia and hit a structural cost few had priced in.
DEFA lowers the cost of entry, but architecture decides cost of scale: Fathhi Mohamed warns that platforms in four ASEAN markets often run four data stores, four KYC flows and four sets of legal entities, so every new market multiplies complexity.
Singapore’s growth upgrade helps some sectors far more than others: MTI lifted its 2026 forecast from 2–4% to 4.5–5.5% in August. Boris Dzhingarov urges founders to read the sector breakdown, not the headline, before planning.
Founders now judge investors on what comes beyond the cheque: Chris Chen opens with a founder weighing two term sheets in one week, including a reasonable US$1.5M offer from a well-known regional VC, to show what founders actually buy.
Decide which decision predictive AI should change before buying tools: Daniel Tan argues startups begin too early with models, data stacks and dashboards. The first question is what decision a prediction changes; without that answer, he suggests, the rest is premature.
AI saves hours, but teams simply fill them with more work: Rubyni Karun warns that as organisations accelerate AI spending, time saved by automation simply gets refilled with tasks, leaving human capacity as stretched as before.
Audiences warm to ads as marketers lose faith in their own metrics: Prof. Aleks Farseev draws on Kantar’s Media Reactions study, built on interviews with 800-plus senior marketers, to ask why green dashboards cannot show teams what worked ahead of 2027 planning.
Human rights are getting lost in the ‘S’ of ESG: Adam Goulston notes the 2011 UN Guiding Principles have long required companies to find, prevent and repair human rights harms, yet the social pillar still dilutes or ignores them.
The West buys longevity scans while SEA still pays cash for basics: Americans pay up to US$2,499 for full-body MRIs, Maria Gaitanidou notes. In the Philippines, many families delay check-ups until symptoms turn serious, and public hospital beds are often full.
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