In this interview, e27 speaks with Dennis Yap, Founder of AI Seer, an AI venture focused on building systems that prioritise verifiable truth, traceability, and transparency in an increasingly noisy information landscape. As generative AI accelerates content production across social platforms, AI Seer positions itself around verification rather than generation, aiming to help organisations and individuals navigate misinformation more confidently.

This conversation forms part of e27’s broader AI Pulse coverage, which examines how organisations across the region are building, deploying, and governing AI in real-world settings.

Designing truth-seeking AI

e27: Briefly describe what your organisation does, and where AI plays a meaningful role in your work or offering.

Dennis: We create truth-seeking AIs, including a patented Multi-spectral Reality Detector and our bot @ArAIstotle which has a growing presence on Crypto Twitter has unique granular fact checking capabilities which is required for multimedia or long-form content on X unlike @grok for example. We’re also at least 3X less inaccurate than any other AI Search when it comes to news citations and provide fully transparent and traceable reasoning from credible sources.

Debunking misinformation in practice

e27: What is one concrete way AI is currently creating value within your organisation or for your users or customers?

Dennis: We help debunk fake news that are used in pump and dump scams on crypto twitter. See the post that @ArAIstotle is factchecking here as an example.

Protecting innovation

e27: What was a key decision or trade-off you had to make when adopting, building, or scaling AI?

Dennis: When to patent our AI inventions vs the costs of doing so.

Also read: AI Pulse Exclusive: How Asia AI Association is advancing human-centred AI across the region

What surprised us

e27: Looking back, what has worked better than expected, and what proved more challenging than anticipated?

Dennis: Our X bot gaining followers was easier than expected after launching our token. Raising from the local SEA startup ecosystem has been more challenging than anticipated after ZIRP especially.

Adoption challenges

e27: What is one lesson about applying AI in real-world settings that leaders or founders often underestimate?

Dennis: Operations buy-in as people are very used to their existing workflows.

Practical advice for AI adoption

e27: Based on your experience, what is one practical recommendation you would give to organisations that are just starting to explore or scale AI?

Dennis: Start small with explorations and use sandbox environments for testing. Look beyond LLMs, to other forms of AI that can help contain the randomness of LLMs.

Also read: AI Pulse Exclusive: How GenAI Fund is accelerating enterprise AI adoption across Southeast Asia

Looking ahead

e27: Over the next 12 months, how do you expect your organisation’s use of AI, or the role of AI in your industry, to evolve?

Dennis: We expect to continue trying new AIs and integrating them into our workflows, especially for coding.

Final thoughts

e27: Anything else you want to share with the audience?

Dennis: There are other frontier tech that can increase human productivity aside from AI, I am getting healthier through red light therapy for example and you can factcheck some claims about it here.

Building trust in the AI era

This conversation highlights a growing emphasis on transparency, verification, and trust as AI adoption accelerates. As generative technologies expand content creation, initiatives focused on fact-checking and traceability are becoming increasingly important in maintaining confidence in digital information environments.

For more interviews, analysis, and real-world perspectives on how organisations across the region are applying AI in practice, explore more AI stories here.

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When regional startups map out their Southeast Asia expansion, the Philippines usually lands somewhere in the middle of the whiteboard. Not first, not last. “Emerging market” gets written next to it, which in founder shorthand tends to mean: small total addressable market (TAM), low willingness-to-pay, figure it out later.

That framing is outdated. For startups trying to prove commercialisation before burning through their Series A runway, it is also an expensive mistake — at least according to Vince Yamat, President and CEO of 917Ventures, the corporate venture builder of Globe Telecom.

Yamat has spent years sitting at the intersection of large enterprise infrastructure and startup execution, helping ventures across fintech, healthtech, adtech, and e-commerce move from experimentation to structured revenue generation inside the Globe ecosystem. His view on the Philippines is neither boosterism nor wishful thinking. It is grounded in what he sees founders consistently get wrong when they arrive here.

More scale than the label suggests

“Founders often hear ’emerging market’ and assume small, early, and low willingness-to-pay. What they miss is that the Philippines is actually one of the most efficient places in Asia to prove you can commercialise at scale. It combines a large, digitally engaged population with the kinds of real-world complexity that startups will eventually face across Southeast Asia,” Yamat says.

The numbers support that. The Philippines has 114 million people, roughly 87 million internet users, and 138 million mobile connections. Filipinos spend an average of 3.5 hours per day on social media, among the highest globally. That is one of the most digitally engaged consumer populations in Asia, accessible within a single language, a single regulatory environment, and an increasingly unified digital payments infrastructure.

The country is also the second-largest population in Southeast Asia after Indonesia. Yet it receives a fraction of venture attention. That gap between market reality and investor perception is exactly where the opportunity sits.

Why the Philippines works as a validation market

Three structural factors make the Philippines unusually useful for startups at the validation stage, Yamat argues.

The first is behavioural complexity within a single market. The Philippines compresses many of the dynamics startups will eventually face across Southeast Asia into one addressable environment: mobile-first consumers, real price sensitivity at a GDP per capita of roughly US$3,900, fragmented geography across more than 7,000 islands, and strong social commerce behaviour. Founders can stress-test pricing elasticity, retention, and distribution without the operational overhead of running a multi-country experiment.

The second is digital infrastructure that already exists at scale. GCash, built on Globe’s distribution network and part of the 917Ventures portfolio, has been used by 94 million Filipinos. “That scale has created a strong digital commerce layer across the market, giving startups access to one of the largest digitally transacting user bases in Southeast Asia,” Yamat notes. Globe itself serves around 65.8 million mobile subscribers, meaning the distribution question that stumps most market entrants is already largely solved.

The third factor is the speed of feedback. “Filipino consumers are extremely active online. Startups receive product feedback, adoption signals, and behavioural data very quickly,” Yamat says. “That matters enormously when you are trying to iterate before your next raise.” The country consistently ranks among the top markets globally for social media and messaging usage, making it one of the fastest environments in the region to pick up real user signal.

Also read: Why many funded startups still struggle to scale

What actually surprises founders once they get here

Pilot success does not automatically translate into scaled revenue. That is the first and most common reality check for regional startups entering the Philippines.

Yamat sees three patterns emerge once founders move past the initial proof of concept. “The biggest surprise is that pilot success does not automatically translate into scaled revenue. Distribution matters more than product. Reaching users often requires partnerships with telcos, fintech platforms, or large enterprises. Price sensitivity is real. And offline still matters — even digital products often require physical marketing or field activations to move beyond early adopters.”

Many startups arrive with a purely digital growth playbook and quickly discover that hybrid go-to-market strategies are not a compromise but a requirement. “Many startups come in with a purely digital growth mindset and realise that hybrid GTM strategies may work better here,” Yamat says. The market rewards founders who adapt fast and penalises those who insist on replicating playbooks built for more homogenous consumer environments.

Velocity and the case for structured enterprise access

This is where the structural gap in the Philippine ecosystem becomes most relevant for founders looking to move quickly.

Corporate engagement has historically been slow. Startups often spend months trying to identify the right business sponsor inside a large organisation, navigating layers of process before anything resembling a real pilot gets off the ground. “Large companies still operate in silos, which makes integration and deployment harder. Startups often don’t know who the real business sponsor is,” Yamat says.

Velocity by 917Ventures was built to close that gap. Rather than treating startups as vendors to be evaluated, the programme structures commercialisation partnerships directly with the Globe Group and its portfolio companies across fintech, adtech, consumer, and enterprise platforms. “Velocity exists so that startups don’t have to navigate the Globe Group alone,” Yamat explains. “The programme is designed to make collaboration easier and faster, helping startups work directly with the right business units from day one.”

Each engagement starts with a clear enterprise sponsor and a defined use case. Pilots are designed to run within 3-6 months and measured against concrete commercial outcomes, not just technical milestones. In some cases the programme also includes equity or staged investment options, aligning incentives on both sides from the start.

The first startup to go through Velocity illustrates the model well. Netopia AI, creator of the behavioural AI platform Predikta, is currently working with Brave Connective Holdings and its subsidiaries AdSpark and Inquiro to test how predictive behavioural insights can improve marketing intelligence and audience segmentation inside a real enterprise environment. “For Netopia, the value is exposure to large-scale consumer datasets and complex enterprise workflows, which helps refine the accuracy of its models and how insights are delivered to decision-makers,” Yamat says. For the enterprise side, it is a structured way to evaluate whether predictive tools can improve campaign outcomes before broader deployment.

That dynamic, a startup refining its product inside a real operating environment while the enterprise evaluates real outcomes, is what commercialisation actually looks like. It is different from a demo, a hackathon, or a pilot that never leaves the sandbox.

Also read: From VC-first to capital stack: Rethinking funding in Southeast Asia

The sectors worth watching

Four areas stand out as strong validation opportunities in the Philippine market right now.

“We are particularly bullish on digital trust and security, customer experience platforms, adtech and data, and vertical AI,” Yamat says. As digital adoption grows, demand for identity verification, fraud prevention, and secure transaction infrastructure is accelerating. Customer experience platforms are well-suited to the Philippine consumer’s behaviour across chat, messaging, and mobile. The digital advertising market is maturing quickly, with brands moving toward data-driven marketing and customer analytics. And vertical AI, particularly domain-specific applications integrated with enterprise data in telecom, fintech, and customer engagement, represents the next defensible layer for startups building in the region.

“These sectors align closely with the infrastructure and distribution platforms already present in the Philippine ecosystem,” Yamat adds. For startups, that alignment matters. It means the path from pilot to enterprise deployment is shorter because the underlying infrastructure already exists and is already in use at scale.

A regional launchpad, not a consolation market

The longer-term case for the Philippines is bigger than validation alone.

The country already supports one of the world’s largest IT-BPM workforces of around 1.7 million people, a talent base well-positioned to evolve alongside AI and automation. Yamat believes that over the next decade, this could translate into stronger capabilities in AI-enabled services, data operations, and digital product support, shifting the Philippines from a consumer market to a more active node in how regional technology gets built and refined.

The distribution dynamics are also structurally different from most markets. “One major difference between the Philippines and ecosystems like Silicon Valley is corporate distribution power. Telecom, fintech, and digital platforms already reach tens of millions of users. Over time, we may see corporates increasingly become startup distribution engines,” Yamat says.

The Philippines is unlikely to compete with Singapore as a capital hub or with Vietnam as an engineering centre. Its role is different and arguably more useful for founders at the commercialisation stage. “The Philippines could increasingly serve as a regional launchpad for commercialisation — a place where startups test adoption, validate business models, and build partnerships before expanding into larger but more fragmented Southeast Asian markets,” Yamat says.

For startups serious about Southeast Asia, that is not a secondary market. It is where the real work begins.

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Artificial intelligence tools are now more accessible than ever.

Subscription-based AI platforms, generative models, automation tools, and copilots are available to anyone with a credit card. In Southeast Asia, awareness of AI is no longer limited to tech companies. Founders, marketers, freelancers, and SME operators are experimenting with AI in their daily workflows.

Yet despite widespread access, one pattern keeps emerging: AI usage is growing, but AI advantage remains rare.

The illusion of adoption

Many businesses and individuals subscribe to AI tools. They test prompts, generate content, automate small tasks, and explore new features.

But when asked a simple question — “What measurable outcome improved because of AI?” — the answers often become vague.

Productivity gains are unclear. Revenue impact is inconsistent. Processes remain largely unchanged.

This gap reveals something important: adoption does not equal integration.

Using AI occasionally is not the same as embedding it into how a business operates.

From experimentation to operationalisation

The early phase of AI adoption is characterised by curiosity. Individuals explore what AI can do.

The next phase — the one that creates value — requires discipline.

Operationalising AI means:

• Identifying repetitive, high-leverage tasks
• Redesigning workflows instead of layering tools on top
• Training teams to evaluate outputs critically
• Setting measurable objectives for AI use

Also Read: Building an inclusive AI economy starts with access to deployment tools

Without this shift, AI remains a novelty rather than a competitive advantage.

Many organisations stop at experimentation because moving beyond it requires structured thinking and cross-functional alignment.

The capability bottleneck

Contrary to popular belief, the biggest constraint in AI transformation is not technology. It is a capability.

Most AI tools are increasingly user-friendly. Interfaces are simplified. Features are guided.

What remains complex is:

• Framing the right problems
• Translating business objectives into AI-driven processes
• Knowing when not to rely on AI
• Measuring return on effort

These are strategic and cognitive skills, not technical ones.

In many SMEs and startups, founders themselves become the “AI champions.” But without a systematic approach, usage remains fragmented and dependent on individual initiative.

The productivity paradox

There is also a subtle productivity paradox at play.

AI promises time savings. Yet in many cases, teams spend significant time experimenting, learning new interfaces, and troubleshooting outputs.

Without clear implementation pathways, AI can temporarily increase cognitive load instead of reducing it.

The difference lies in whether AI is introduced as a tool to explore — or as part of a deliberate productivity redesign.

Also Read: The AI arms race in cybersecurity: Is your startup ready?

The rise of the AI generalist

One emerging trend across Southeast Asia is the rise of the “AI generalist.”

These are not engineers or data scientists. They are operators — founders, marketers, product managers, consultants — who understand enough about AI to integrate it into real workflows.

AI generalists do three things well:

• They identify leverage points.
• They redesign processes around AI capabilities.
• They maintain human judgment over automated output.

In many growing startups, this profile may become more valuable than deep technical specialisation in certain roles.

Moving beyond tool thinking

One of the most common mistakes in AI adoption is tool-centric thinking.

Businesses ask:

• “Which AI tool should we use?”
• “Which model is best?”

Fewer ask:

• “Which problem should we prioritise?”
• “What workflow should we redesign?”
• “What metric will define success?”

Until the conversation shifts from tools to outcomes, AI advantage will remain uneven.

Southeast Asia’s opportunity

Southeast Asia is uniquely positioned in this transition.

The region’s startup ecosystem is young, adaptable, and digitally inclined. SMEs are not burdened by legacy infrastructure to the same extent as larger corporations in more mature markets.

This creates an opportunity: to integrate AI thoughtfully from the ground up.

But capturing this opportunity requires moving beyond surface-level adoption.

It requires building organisational capability — not just subscriptions.

The next phase of AI maturity

• The first wave of AI was about access.
• The second wave is about application.
• The third wave will be about advantage.

Businesses that move deliberately from experimentation to structured implementation will see compounding benefits. Those who remain at the surface level may experience frustration rather than transformation.

AI advantage will not belong to those with the most tools.

It will belong to those who know how to use them well.

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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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Security teams are used to thinking in terms of access. Did an attacker get into the database? Did they steal a token? Did they bypass authentication?

AI changes the shape of that question. In an AI-integrated platform, an attacker may not need direct access to sensitive systems to learn sensitive things. If they can interact with the model, they can sometimes infer what the system knows, how it was trained, and what patterns it has absorbed. Inference becomes an indirect exfiltration channel: not a single clean “data dump,” but a gradual extraction of truth from outputs.

This is not a theoretical concern for “model builders only.” It becomes relevant the moment AI is wired into product workflows, especially when the model is allowed to see internal context and user data.

What an inference attack really is

An inference attack is an attempt to learn something sensitive without being given it explicitly. The attacker probes the system, observes the outputs, and uses those outputs to reconstruct hidden information.

Sometimes the target is training data. The attacker wants to know whether a particular record or document was included. Sometimes the target is sensitive attributes. The attacker wants to infer details about a user, a customer, or an internal dataset. Sometimes the target is reconstruction. The attacker tries to coax the model into reproducing fragments of memorised content, or to reveal patterns that are supposed to remain private.

The critical point is this: the model becomes a new interface to your data. Even if you never intended it to be one.

Why AI makes this easier than traditional systems

Traditional applications are designed around explicit queries. You ask for a record, you get a record, with access checks in the middle. When the system is well designed, it’s hard to retrieve data you are not authorised to see.

AI systems are designed to be helpful, general, and context-aware. They produce probabilistic outputs and fill in gaps. They often summarise, rephrase, and generalise. That flexibility is valuable for users, but it also creates room for leakage.

Also Read: The new cybersecurity battlefield: Protecting trust in the age of AI agents

The more a model is trained on sensitive material or is given sensitive context at runtime, the more likely it is that the output surface can be shaped into an extraction surface. Not because the model is “trying” to leak, but because language models are excellent at pattern completion. If you give them enough signals, they will complete the pattern.

Where platforms get exposed

The risk expands sharply when AI is embedded into workflows that touch real business data.

Customer support copilots see tickets, account details, and internal notes. Sales assistants see pipeline data and customer conversations. HR tools see employee information. Engineering assistants see code, secrets that accidentally slip into repos, incident notes, and internal documentation.

Then there is retrieval. When platforms use retrieval-augmented generation, the model is not only reflecting training knowledge. It is pulling documents into the prompt at runtime. If access controls, document filtering, or tenancy boundaries are imperfect, the model can become a thin layer that unintentionally routes sensitive content to the wrong person.

Even when access is correct, inference can still happen. A user might not be able to open a document, but they might be able to ask the assistant questions whose answers reveal what’s inside. This is one of the most uncomfortable shifts: “I didn’t show it” is not the same as “I didn’t leak it.”

What attackers actually do

Inference attacks rarely look dramatic. They look like curiosity at scale.

Attackers ask repeated, slightly varied questions. They test boundaries. They look for consistent phrasing that suggests memorised content. They probe for details that should not be knowable. They use indirect prompts that make the system “reason” its way into revealing a fact.

In some cases, they attempt membership inference. They try to determine whether a specific person, company, dataset, or document was part of training. In other words, they attempt reconstruction, where the goal is to extract snippets of sensitive text that the model has learned too well.

Another common pattern is to exploit the platform’s own convenience features. Autocomplete, suggested replies, “smart summaries,” and “next best action” features can all leak signals. These features often feel harmless because they are not framed as “data access.” But they are outputs, and outputs are exactly what inference attacks consume.

Also Read: The AI arms race in cybersecurity: Is your startup ready?

This becomes an insider-risk cousin

Inference attacks are often discussed as an external threat. In practice, they also behave like insider risk.

A legitimate user with legitimate access to the AI interface can still misuse it. They might not be able to export a dataset. They might not be able to query an internal system. But if the assistant can answer questions across silos, they can extract insights at a scale that traditional controls were never built to detect.

This is where security posture needs to evolve. It is no longer enough to secure the data store. You also have to secure the reasoning layer that sits on top of it.

Designing for “least revelation”

The useful mental model is not least privilege alone. It is the least revelation.

A system can have correct access control and still reveal too much. A support agent might be allowed to see account details, but not payment information. If the assistant produces a helpful summary that includes payment context “because it seems relevant,” you have a revelation problem even if no one queried payment fields directly.

In AI-integrated products, you need explicit decisions about what the model is allowed to reveal, not just what it is allowed to read.

That forces product and security to collaborate. Product teams define what “helpful” looks like. Security teams define what “safe” looks like. The system needs both constraints.

Practical guardrails that work

Start with data minimisation at the model boundary. Do not give the model more context than it needs. If the use case is to draft a response, you rarely need the full history, internal notes, plus billing data. More context feels like higher quality, but it also increases the leakage surface.

Treat retrieval as a privileged operation. Retrieval should respect tenancy and authorisation with the same rigour as direct document access. If you cannot confidently enforce that, do not route sensitive data through the assistant.

Constrain high-risk outputs. Some data should never appear in generated text, even if the user is authorised in other channels. Payment identifiers, secrets, authentication factors, and certain categories of personal data should be handled with strict rules. The assistant can acknowledge that it cannot provide those details and direct users to the appropriate system of record.

Add friction where the value is high. Rate limits, query throttles, and anomaly detection matter because inference is often iterative. A single prompt may be harmless; a thousand prompts can be extracted.

Monitor for “probing behaviour,” not just obvious violations. Repeated variations of the same request, requests for verbatim text, unusual curiosity about internal corpora, and systematic enumeration are signals worth paying attention to.

Finally, invest in testing that resembles how attackers behave. Traditional red teaming is good at finding prompt injection and unsafe outputs. You also need an evaluation focused on leakage: can the system be coaxed into revealing private facts through indirect questioning over time?

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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 convergence of escalating Middle East tensions, stubborn inflation, and unyielding central bank policies has created a treacherous environment for investors across asset classes. From the trading floors of Wall Street to the digital exchanges powering cryptocurrency markets, fear has taken hold as traders grapple with the prospect of prolonged economic uncertainty.

The numbers tell a sobering story. Traditional equity indices posted modest declines, but the magnitude of these losses masks the underlying turbulence. The S&P 500 slipped 0.3 per cent to 6,606.49, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite mirrored this decline, also falling 0.3 per cent to 22,090.69. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fared slightly worse, shedding 0.4 per cent to close at 46,021.43. These movements occurred against the backdrop of triple witching, the quarterly expiration of stock options, futures, and other derivatives estimated at a staggering US$5.7T. Such events typically amplify volatility, and today proved no exception.

The cryptocurrency market experienced even more pronounced stress. Digital assets fell 0.81 per cent over 24 hours, with the total market capitalisation dropping to US$2.42T. Bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency, tumbled below the psychologically important US$70,000 threshold. More than US$142M in Bitcoin long positions faced liquidation within a single day, forcing leveraged traders out of the market and accelerating the downward spiral. What makes this selloff particularly noteworthy is the 92 per cent correlation between cryptocurrency prices and gold, suggesting that digital assets are increasingly behaving like traditional inflation hedges rather than the high-growth technology bets they once were.

The root cause of this market-wide anxiety traces back to two interconnected factors. First, the Federal Reserve delivered a hawkish message on March 19, holding rates steady at 3.50 per cent to 3.75 per cent while upgrading its inflation forecasts. The European Central Bank adopted a similarly cautious stance. These decisions reflect central bankers’ growing concern about sticky inflation, particularly as energy prices surge due to geopolitical disruptions. Second, tensions in the Middle East have intensified, with conflicts threatening the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global oil shipments.

Also Read: Why crypto market cap falls to US$2.53T despite regulatory clarity win and 6-day ETF streak?

Oil markets have reacted predictably to these developments. West Texas Intermediate crude, after spiking on news of the Hormuz disruptions, retreated 1.7 per cent to US$93.95 a barrel on Friday. This pullback provided some relief to Asian markets, where the MSCI Asia Pacific Index managed a 0.2 per cent gain as oil prices stabilised. Japanese markets remained closed for a holiday, sparing traders from the day’s volatility. European equities faced steeper losses, with the STOXX 600 falling 0.7 per cent as tech and utility stocks bore the brunt of energy price pressures. The index closed at 598.00, reflecting the continent’s particular vulnerability to energy supply disruptions.

Bond markets sent mixed signals about investor sentiment. The US 10-year Treasury yield edged slightly lower to 4.25 per cent, suggesting some flight to safety. The policy-sensitive 2-year yield climbed to 3.79 per cent, indicating that traders expect the Federal Reserve to maintain higher rates for longer. This yield curve dynamic reinforces the challenging environment for risk assets, as borrowing costs remain elevated and the prospect of near-term rate cuts fades.

Amid this macroeconomic turbulence, cryptocurrency markets received a glimmer of positive news that ultimately failed to move the needle. On March 18, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued joint guidance classifying major tokens like Bitcoin and Ethereum as digital commodities. This regulatory clarity represents a structural positive for the industry, potentially paving the way for broader institutional adoption. This development was completely overshadowed by macro fears, demonstrating that cryptocurrency markets remain highly sensitive to traditional financial conditions despite their decentralised nature.

The immediate outlook hinges on several critical support levels. Bitcoin must defend the US$69,000 to US$70,000 zone to prevent further deterioration. Ethereum needs to hold above US$2,150. A failure at these levels, combined with another spike in the US Dollar Index, could push the total cryptocurrency market capitalisation toward US$2.3T. Derivatives open interest currently stands at US$416.64B, and any continued decline from this level would reduce systemic squeeze risk but would likely be accompanied by further price weakness.

Also Read: Why crypto surged while stocks fell: The regulatory breakthrough changing everything

Interestingly, not all market segments moved in lockstep. The Russell 2000 index, which tracks smaller US companies, bucked the negative trend, posting a 0.65 per cent gain to 2,494.71. This outperformance suggests that domestic-focused smaller firms may be better positioned to weather geopolitical storms than their multinational counterparts, which face greater exposure to international supply chain disruptions and currency fluctuations.

The path forward remains fraught with uncertainty. The next Federal Open Market Committee meeting on May 6 and 7 will provide crucial insights into whether policymakers maintain their hawkish stance or pivot in response to economic data. Any escalation in Middle East conflicts could send oil prices higher, further complicating the inflation picture and forcing central banks to keep rates elevated. A de-escalation of tensions combined with softer inflation data could restore some confidence to risk assets.

For now, investors face a difficult calculus. The regulatory progress in cryptocurrency markets offers long-term promise, but short-term sentiment remains dictated by interest rates and oil prices. Traditional equity markets show resilience but lack conviction. The correlation between digital assets and gold suggests a fundamental shift in how investors perceive cryptocurrency, and this new identity as an inflation hedge provides little comfort when both assets face pressure from the same macroeconomic forces.

The question every market participant must answer is whether current valuations adequately reflect these risks or if further adjustment lies ahead. With Bitcoin testing critical support levels, equity indices hovering near session lows, and bond yields signalling prolonged monetary restraint, the coming weeks will prove decisive in determining whether this represents a temporary setback or the beginning of a more sustained market correction. 

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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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Cambodia’s startup scene talks a lot about momentum. This week in Phnom Penh, it finally had something harder to argue with: deals.

At the Cambodia Entrepreneur Showcase, co-hosted by Khmer Enterprise, 2080 Ventures and Seedstars at the Shangri-La Hotel Phnom Penh, 19 startups pitched to a room packed with local, regional and international investors, ecosystem builders and corporate players.

The headline outcome was not the usual parade of handshakes and optimism. OneDash secured an initial investment from Silicon Valley-headquartered 2080 Ventures, while agribusiness player Kingdom Hub Agro landed a US$500,000 export contract to Europe.

Also Read: Why Cambodia’s startup ecosystem is the next big bet for investors

That matters because Cambodia’s startup ecosystem has long faced a familiar bottleneck. Founders can build early traction, but access to capital, cross-border partners and investor networks remains patchy. The showcase was designed to tackle exactly that problem by compressing pitching, networking and investor engagement into a single forum.

For once, the event produced something more tangible than ecosystem slogans.

Khmer Enterprise chief executive H.E. Dr Chhieng Vanmunin called the showcase “a milestone for Cambodia’s startup ecosystem”, pointing to both the investment and export deal as evidence that local founders are starting to convert visibility into commercial outcomes.

That may sound like standard stagecraft, but the two announcements give the claim some weight. Startup demo days across Southeast Asia are crowded with polished decks; fewer produce signals that outside investors are prepared to write cheques, or that Cambodian companies can win overseas business.

The showcase pulled founders from two initiatives run with 2080 Ventures and Seedstars: the Cambodia Startup Launchpad and the Cambodia Accelerator Program. Startups on stage included OneDash, PharmKulen, WeMoney Mobile, CheckinMe, FHF Capital, ScreenWise and Mitosis Bioscience, spanning fintech, cybersecurity, agritech, healthtech, SaaS and consumer services.

Five companies — OneDash, PharmKulen, WeMoney Mobile, CheckinMe, and FHF Capital — were selected as the event’s standout startups for 2026. Khmer Enterprise said they will receive support to attend regional tech events later this year, giving them another shot at investor exposure beyond Cambodia.

Still, OneDash and Kingdom Hub Agro were the real proof points.
OneDash’s backing from 2080 Ventures suggests at least one investor sees something investable in Cambodia beyond the usual frontier-market narrative. 2080 Ventures has positioned itself around execution-led acceleration rather than broad ecosystem evangelism, and its message in Phnom Penh was that Cambodian startups need to be built for repeatable growth, not just local buzz.

Also Read: Why Cambodia’s startup ecosystem is the next big bet for investors

“Our mission is to turn Cambodian early-stage startups into scalable ventures ready for ASEAN and beyond,” said Timur Daudpota, founding partner at 2080 Ventures.

That regional framing matters. Cambodia’s domestic market is small, and the path to venture-scale outcomes usually runs through expansion into bigger Southeast Asian markets. Investors do not just want local traction; they want evidence that a startup can cross borders, professionalise operations and survive tougher competition.

Seedstars, which has been working with revenue-generating Cambodian startups through the accelerator launched in 2025, struck a similar note. Tom Sebastian, International Ventures Ambassador to Seedstars, said the latest cohort is building “real businesses that address real market needs”, adding that Cambodia is beginning to generate the kind of early-stage deal flow regional investors are watching.

That is the bigger story underneath the event. Cambodia is no longer trying to prove that entrepreneurship exists. The question now is whether enough startups can move from grant-supported experimentation to investor-grade companies with real customers, sharper unit economics and regional ambition.

The investor line-up at the showcase suggests that question is starting to draw more serious attention. Participants included representatives from Plug and Play, Golden Gate Ventures, Anthill Ventures, Satori Giants, Quest Ventures and Canadia Impact Fund, alongside 2080 Ventures and Seedstars. For founders, that kind of access is often rare and fragmented; for investors, it is a faster way to scan a still-undercovered market.

The event also handed out another set of signals. Seedstars named OneDash, CheckinMe and FHF Capital as its top three startups, with all three receiving tickets to Tech in Asia’s flagship conference — a useful bridge into wider Southeast Asian investor and corporate networks, even if conference visibility alone is no substitute for revenue or follow-on funding.

Also Read: From cranes to code: Building Cambodia’s smarter real estate future

That is ultimately where Cambodia’s startup ecosystem still needs to prove itself. One investment and one export win do not make a market. But they do show that, under the right conditions, Cambodian founders can attract capital and close business beyond their home turf.

For an ecosystem trying to move past soft-launch mode, that is a far more convincing story than another room full of polite applause.

The post Cambodia startups move from pitch to payoff appeared first on e27.

Crypto.com’s latest round of layoffs underscores a familiar pattern in the crypto sector: rapid expansion followed by sharp recalibration. While the company frames the 12% workforce reduction as a strategic pivot towards “key business initiatives” and AI integration, it also reflects deeper structural tensions within high-growth tech firms.

Having scaled to over 100M users, Crypto.com now faces the classic challenge of operational bloat. Layered teams and siloed functions—common side effects of aggressive hiring during boom cycles—can slow decision-making and dilute accountability. In that sense, the restructuring is less surprising than it is inevitable.

What stands out, however, is the role of artificial intelligence as both justification and catalyst. Like many enterprises, Crypto.com is leaning into AI not just as a tool for innovation, but as a means to drive efficiency—often at the expense of roles in growth and customer engagement. This signals a broader shift where automation begins to reshape even traditionally human-centric functions.

Yet, repeated layoffs since 2022 raise questions about long-term workforce planning and resilience. For employees, the abrupt nature of notifications—such as losing access overnight—highlights the human cost of these transitions.

Ultimately, Crypto.com’s move reflects an industry still searching for stability amid evolving technologies and market realities.

REGIONAL

Crypto.com Cuts 12% of Staff in Third Round of Layoffs: The Singapore-headquartered exchange let go of roughly 180 employees globally — including more than half its Singapore team — citing a push to integrate enterprise AI and redirect resources. Growth and CRM functions bore the brunt, with some staff learning of cuts after being locked out of Slack.

Carsome Secures US$30M to Boost Growth and Tech Efforts: Fresh off record FY25 results, the used-car platform secured backing from HKIC, Gobi Partners, and Asia Partners. CEO Eric Cheng says funds will advance AI capabilities, cross-border supply chain networks, and next-generation mobility services across the region.

Talino Bets on Fintech Plumbing, Secures US$7.5M: The Philippine fintech pivots from venture studio to “fintech foundry”, raising a Series A led by Chemonics International. Its API-first infrastructure targets cross-border corridors between the US and the Philippines, using Mojaloop rails, stablecoin transfers, and regulatory-as-a-service capabilities.

Datakrew’s US$2.6M Raise Bets on EV Battery Failures: The Singapore-based deeptech startup closed a pre-Series A backed by Greenwillow Capital, Beenext, and 500 Global. Its OXRED MyFleet platform targets commercial EV fleets across SEA, converting raw telemetry into battery health and safety intelligence before failures happen.

SmartSolar’s US$1.3M Debt Raise Signals Maturing Solar Market: The Ho Chi Minh City-based rooftop solar provider secured a US$300,000 senior loan and a US$1M facility from European backers, bringing total funding to US$3.15M. Operating a solar-as-a-service model, it has deployed nearly 4MWp across 75-plus Vietnamese SME sites since 2024.

OMOWAY Unveils OMO-Robot Architecture at Singapore Launch: The company introduced its full-stack intelligent two-wheeler platform at Changi Airport, confirming the OMO X — billed as the world’s first mass-produced self-balancing electric motorcycle — has entered production. Commercial rollout begins in Indonesia, with Jakarta pre-orders opening in late April 2026.

Malaysian SMEs Embrace AI But Confidence Gap Widens — Xero: A Xero report found 81% of Malaysian SMEs have adopted AI, yet 82% say they need more education before deploying it with confidence. Data privacy concerns, lack of governance policies, and decision-making uncertainty are suppressing deeper integration despite strong optimism.

Vietnam Moves to Pilot Licensed Crypto Exchanges This Month: Hanoi plans to launch regulated domestic exchanges to curb overseas trading and tighten capital flow oversight. Five firms — including affiliates of Techcombank, VPBank, and Sun Group — passed initial qualification, as the finance ministry drafts rules prohibiting nationals from trading on foreign platforms.

INTERVIEWS & FEATURES

Hackuity Wants to Fix Cybersecurity’s Prioritisation Problem: Co-founder Pierre Samson explains how Hackuity’s risk-based vulnerability management platform moves beyond CVSS scores, using its proprietary True Risk Score to help SEA enterprises identify and act on the small fraction of vulnerabilities that truly matter.

Hyperspace Is Making Stores Think and Act Like Websites: Ulisse Ltd’s LiDAR-powered Hyperspace platform gives physical retailers real-time crowd intelligence, enabling staff redeployment before queues form. A Singapore grocery pilot reported a 45% drop in checkout wait times and a 22% uplift in fresh produce sales within one month.

Meilin Wong: SEA Startups Win with Credibility, Not Just Visibility: The Milk & Honey PR CEO and PRCA Fellow argues founders confuse being visible with being credible — a costly mistake in a market where trust drives funding. After three decades spanning PR, branding, and co-founding, she urges leaders to align messaging across every touchpoint, not just investor decks.

INTERNATIONAL

Jeff Bezos Eyes US$100B Fund to Buy and Automate Manufacturers: The Amazon founder is in early talks to raise a fund targeting chipmaking, defence, and aerospace firms, deploying AI to accelerate manufacturing transformation. A separate venture, Project Prometheus, has separately raised approximately US$6.2B, with Bezos reportedly set to serve as co-CEO.

Alibaba Posts 66% Net Income Drop Despite AI Revenue Surge: Revenue rose just 2% year-on-year to US$41.4B for Q4 FY2025, weighed down by heavy investment in quick commerce. Cloud Intelligence revenue grew 36 per cent, AI product revenue logged triple-digit growth for a tenth consecutive quarter, and Qwen surpassed 300M monthly active users.

Alibaba Hikes AI Computing Prices by Up to 34%: The Chinese tech giant is raising prices on T-Head AI chips and Cloud Parallel File Storage by between 5 and 34 per cent, following a structural reorganisation aimed at monetising AI products. The moves coincide with the launch of Wukong, an agentic AI service for enterprise customers.

Trump Administration Defends Anthropic Blacklisting in Court: The Pentagon designated Anthropic a national security supply chain risk after the AI company refused to remove guardrails preventing its models from being used in autonomous weapons or domestic surveillance. The Justice Department argues the move concerns contract conduct, not protected speech.

OpenAI Pivots Aggressively to Enterprise Ahead of Possible IPO: With ChatGPT now serving 900M weekly active users, OpenAI is repositioning as a high-productivity enterprise platform targeting US$280B in revenue by 2030. A December “code red” was declared to sharpen ChatGPT’s competitive edge against Google and Anthropic, while an IPO could come as early as Q4.

Senator Probes US$10B Payment in TikTok Deal Structure: Senator Mark Warner has demanded the White House disclose the legal basis and intended use of a US$10B payment — equivalent to 71% of the joint venture’s valuation — reportedly being made by Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX as part of the Trump-brokered TikTok sale.

KKR to Invest US$310M in India’s E-Bus Platform Allfleet: Marking KKR’s first India deal under its Global Climate Transition strategy, the firm will take a majority stake in Allfleet and a minority stake in manufacturer PMI Electro. Allfleet is set to deploy over 5,000 electric buses under long-term concession agreements with state transport authorities.

Yotta Seeks US$4B Valuation Ahead of India AI IPO: India’s largest Nvidia AI processor cluster is targeting US$500–600M in a pre-IPO round, with sovereign wealth funds including Mubadala among potential backers. Operating roughly 10,000 H100 chips and expecting over 20,000 B300 processors live by August, Yotta is positioning itself as a sovereign computing provider.

CYBERSECURITY

Singapore’s AI Boom Demands Stronger Data and Cyber Defences: Asia Pacific AI spending is set to hit US$90.7B by 2027, with Singapore leading regionally. Businesses must prioritise robust data management and multi-layered cybersecurity — including encryption, access controls, and privacy-by-design principles — to protect AI systems and sustain growth.

Inference Attacks in AI-Integrated Platforms: A Growing Threat: When AI is embedded in business workflows, attackers need not breach databases directly — they can probe model outputs to reconstruct sensitive training data, customer records, or internal documents. The fix requires a “least revelation” design principle, not just access controls, alongside query throttling and anomaly detection.

Super Micro Co-Founder Charged With Smuggling Nvidia Chips to China: US prosecutors allege Yih-Shyan Liaw and two associates used a Southeast Asian middleman to falsify paperwork and ship Nvidia-powered servers to China without export licences, generating US$2.5B in sales since 2024. Super Micro placed the individuals on leave and distanced itself from the scheme.

SEMICONDUCTOR

Singapore Startup AAT Opens R&D Facility for Next-Gen Chip Tools: Applied Angstrom Technology launched a 10,000 sq ft Atomic Precision Innovation Center in Yishun, backed by iGlobe Partners and Enterprise Singapore, targeting Micron and GlobalFoundries. The move reinforces Singapore’s position as producer of roughly 20% of the world’s semiconductor equipment.

Korea and Taiwan Chip Sectors Most Exposed to Helium Shortage: Fitch Ratings flagged mounting supply risk as Middle East tensions disrupt Qatar’s LNG output and constrain Strait of Hormuz shipments. South Korea sources nearly 65% of its helium from Qatar, while Taiwan’s dependence is similarly heavy — with both nations critical to global chip production.

Vietnam Courts NVIDIA and Marvell in Semiconductor Ambitions Push: At APEX EXPO 2026 in Los Angeles, Vietnam’s National Innovation Centre signed cooperation agreements and held meetings with leading chip firms. While the country shows momentum in assembly and packaging, Malaysia and Singapore remain ahead in supplier depth and advanced manufacturing credentials.

AI

Alibaba Launches Wukong AI Agent Platform for Enterprises: Alibaba’s new agentic AI platform, built under its reorganised Token Hub business group, coordinates multiple AI agents to handle complex enterprise tasks. Available via DingTalk and as a standalone app, Wukong will integrate with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and WeChat, with planned connections to Taobao, Alipay, and Alibaba Cloud.

Asia’s Deeptech Decade: Where AI, Healthtech and Cleantech Converge: Singapore is functioning as the orchestration hub as Asia’s AI sector shifts from adoption to competitive differentiation, healthtech moves from pilots to clinical deployment, and cleantech advances through systems-based innovation. The region’s pragmatism — designing for dense cities, multilingual populations, and complex supply chains — sets it apart from Western counterparts.

AI Access Is Easy — AI Advantage Is Rare: Across Southeast Asia, widespread AI tool adoption is not translating into measurable business outcomes. The bottleneck is not technology but capability: framing the right problems, redesigning workflows, and building the “AI generalist” profile — operators who embed AI into real processes rather than merely experimenting with it.

If Your AI Can’t Understand You, Your Team Probably Can’t Either: Poor AI output is rarely a model problem — it is a clarity problem. Drawing on the CLEAR briefing framework (Context, Logic, Expectation, Aesthetic, Result Format), the author argues that vague prompts mirror vague leadership, and that AI’s instant feedback loop exposes organisational thinking gaps that human teams quietly paper over.

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

SEA Founders Are Designing the Wrong Thing — Fix Decision Environments: Culture decks and OKR frameworks are insufficient for building resilient startups. The real leverage point is designing decision environments — the structural conditions under which teams choose under pressure — so that surfacing risk, protecting user trust, and exercising sound judgement become the default, not the exception.

The First Meta-Nation Won’t Be a Country — It May Start in SEA: As cross-border data flows outpace physical trade, fintech and AI platforms in Southeast Asia are quietly accumulating sovereign-like power — setting monetary rules, allocating capital, and coordinating labour at scale. The author argues that founders building financial infrastructure today may be constructing a digital polity, whether they intend to or not.

Private Equity’s US$3T Blind Spot: When Value Creation Plans Don’t Deliver: With over US$3T in unrealised PE portfolio value globally and exit markets tightening, polished investment decks are no longer sufficient. Drawing on the contrasting fates of Toys “R” Us and Hilton, the author argues that sustainable returns now require turning value creation plans into genuine operating systems — starting with knowing what is actually happening inside the business today.

Gender Gap in GenAI Skills Is Narrowing, But Progress Is Uneven: Coursera data shows women’s share of GenAI enrolments rose from 32 to 36% globally between 2024 and 2025, with Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines recording gains. However, women’s participation actually fell in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Spain over the same period.

SEA Gaming Market Turns ESL Tournaments into Media Ecosystems: With Southeast Asia’s gaming market projected to hit US$14.83B in 2025, ESL events have evolved far beyond match play into fan-co-created content engines, festival experiences, and brand platforms — blurring the line between audience and producer across TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch.

Vietnam’s New Crypto Rules: What Startups and Investors Must Know: Vietnam’s updated framework mandates licensing, AML/KYC compliance, stablecoin restrictions, and explicit crypto taxation. While compliance costs rise for smaller players, restrictions on foreign platforms open domestic market share — and early adopters stand to gain first-mover regulatory advantages.

Pakistan’s Carbon Market Opens a New Door for Startups and SMEs: New Carbon Market Policy Guidelines allow Pakistani businesses to generate and trade carbon credits internationally, aligned with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Startups in clean energy and sustainable packaging stand to gain, though high certification costs and complex approval procedures remain significant barriers.

The post Ecosystem Roundup: Crypto.com cuts staff; Carsome raises US$30M; Hyperspace reinvents retail; OpenAI preps for IPO appeared first on e27.

Southeast Asia’s innovation ecosystem is increasingly defined by collaboration across borders, industries, and organisational types. Startups are scaling faster, corporates are seeking external innovation more actively, and investors are looking beyond traditional hubs for the next wave of high growth companies. As a result, platforms that connect founders with enterprise partners, capital, and global networks are becoming central to how innovation happens in the region.

Plug and Play, headquartered in Silicon Valley with a strong presence across the Asia Pacific, operates at this intersection. With more than 60 locations in over 30 countries and partnerships with more than 550 global organisations, including EDB, GIFT City, Amazon, MPA, and HTX, the platform connects startups with the corporates, governments, and investors that can help them scale.

A Record Year for Innovation

In 2025, Plug and Play accelerated more than 2,800 startups across its global network, with close to 30% of those coming from Asia. The firm also invested in more than 250 startups during the year, with nearly half of those investments focused on artificial intelligence, reflecting the firm’s conviction in AI as a transformative force across industries.

Globally, Plug and Play has continued to expand its venture activities, launching industry- and geography-focused funds and growing its assets under management to more than US$1 billion. Recent expansions into new markets, including Phnom Penh and Taiwan, underscore the firm’s commitment to supporting innovation where it’s happening, not just where it’s traditionally been.

Also read: Join 150+ builders creating AI workflows that solve real SME problems

Connecting Southeast Asia to Global Opportunities

In Southeast Asia, Plug and Play APAC offers founders more than just their network. Through its market access programmes, including some in partnership with Enterprise Singapore under the Global Innovation Alliance, startups gain structured pathways into key markets such as San Francisco, the UAE, Manila, and Jakarta. More than 800 startups every year have benefited not only from corporate and government-focused programmes but also from access to Plug and Play’s global network of investors and corporates, enabling them to soft-launch in new markets with the right introductions and support.

Meet Plug and Play APAC at Echelon Singapore 2026

Plug and Play APAC joins Echelon Singapore 2026 as a bronze sponsor. The two-day event, held at Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre on 3–4 June 2026, brings together Southeast Asia’s startup community through content stages, exhibitions, networking sessions, and knowledge-sharing activities designed to support regional innovation.

Also read: Meet the companies taking the floor at Echelon Singapore 2026

Attendees can connect with the Plug and Play APAC team to explore accelerator participation, corporate innovation partnerships, investment collaboration, and cross-border expansion opportunities. Selected startups may receive fast-track introductions to relevant Plug and Play accelerator programmes and corporate partners, an exclusive opportunity designed to help founders accelerate partnerships and international market access.

Whether you’re a founder looking to scale, a corporate seeking innovation partners, or an investor exploring the region’s next wave of high-growth companies, Echelon 2026 is the right place to start the conversation.

The region is evolving quickly, and Echelon 2026 offers the right place at the right moment to be part of what comes next. Register here to join the conversation.

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Plug and Play APAC: Leading the way in open innovation platforms

Plug and Play is the leading innovation platform, connecting startups, corporations, venture capital firms, universities, and government agencies.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, we’re present in 60+ locations across five continents. We offer corporate innovation programs and help our corporate partners in every stage of their innovation journey, from education to execution. We also organize startup acceleration programs and have built an in-house VC to drive innovation across multiple industries where we’ve invested in hundreds of successful companies including Dropbox, Guardant Health, Honey, Lending Club, N26, PayPal, and Rappi.

Our Asia Pacific headquarters was launched in Singapore in 2010 and we are now present in five cities in Southeast Asia with additional locations in China, Japan, Korea and India. We work closely with both the public and private sector with programs, innovation initiatives and startup investments across the region.

Click here for more information.

The post How Plug and Play APAC is connecting startups to global innovation networks appeared first on e27.

There’s a conversation happening in boardrooms, co-working spaces, and coffee shop offices across Southeast Asia. It’s not about whether AI will change how businesses operate. That question has already been answered.

The conversation now is about timing. And for most SMEs, the answer they’re giving themselves is the most expensive one possible: not yet.

It’s part of the reason the AI Workflow Competition at Echelon Singapore 2026 exists. Not as a theoretical exercise in what AI could do for small businesses, but as a direct response to the execution gap that’s keeping real operational solutions from reaching the SMEs that need them most. The competition connects businesses carrying genuine workflow challenges with builders who can solve them, and it does so in a structured environment designed to produce deployable results, not demo-ready concepts.

But the competition is a symptom of something larger. The window for SMEs to move on AI automation is not staying open indefinitely.

The window is narrowing

For the past few years, AI automation has existed in a comfortable grey area for small and medium enterprises. Interesting, but experimental. Promising, but unproven. Worth watching, but not yet worth acting on.

That grey area is disappearing.

The tools have matured. The costs have dropped. The use cases are no longer theoretical; they’re documented, repeatable, and increasingly accessible to businesses without dedicated technology teams or enterprise budgets. What was a competitive advantage for early adopters twelve months ago is becoming the baseline expectation for operationally efficient businesses today.

The SMEs that moved early are not struggling to integrate AI into their workflows. They’re struggling to remember what operations looked like before it.

What’s actually changed

The shift isn’t just about technology becoming more capable, though it has. It’s about the nature of what automation can now handle.

Early automation was brittle. Rule-based systems that worked perfectly until they didn’t, breaking the moment they encountered something outside their narrow parameters. The operational reality of most SMEs, with varied inputs, inconsistent formats, and context-dependent decisions, was fundamentally incompatible with automation that demanded consistency it could never guarantee.

AI-powered workflows are different in kind, not just degree. They handle variation. They extract meaning from unstructured inputs. They make contextual decisions rather than following rigid logic trees. They don’t just execute instructions; they interpret intent.

Also Read: SMEs invited to turn real workflow challenges into AI solutions

This distinction matters enormously for SMEs, whose operations rarely conform to the clean, predictable patterns that traditional automation required. An AI workflow that can process a supplier invoice regardless of format, extract the relevant information, cross-reference it against existing records, flag discrepancies, and route for approval: that’s not incremental improvement. That’s a fundamental change in what a small finance team can accomplish.

The same logic applies across functions. Customer service workflows that understand query intent, not just keywords. Inventory systems that identify patterns in demand data rather than simply tracking counts. Onboarding processes that adapt to context rather than forcing every new hire through identical steps regardless of role or background.

The technology to build these workflows exists today. It is not expensive. It is not inaccessible. What it requires is translation: the capacity to take a real business problem and engineer a solution that works in production, not just in a demo.

The real barrier isn’t technology

Ask most SME owners why they haven’t implemented AI workflow automation, and the answers cluster around a few familiar themes: concerns about cost, uncertainty about where to start, lack of internal technical expertise, and a general wariness born from years of overpromised and underdelivered enterprise software.

These concerns are legitimate. But they’re also increasingly outdated as explanations for inaction.

Cost is no longer the barrier it once was. Cloud infrastructure, accessible LLM APIs, and no-code automation platforms have dramatically reduced the investment required to build functional AI workflows. Solutions that would have required a dedicated engineering team three years ago can now be built and deployed by a skilled individual working within weeks.

The starting point question has also become easier to answer. The highest-value AI automation opportunities in most SMEs follow recognisable patterns: document processing, customer inquiry management, data reconciliation, approval workflows, reporting automation. These aren’t exotic edge cases. They’re operational table stakes that appear, in different forms, across virtually every industry and business model.

What remains genuinely scarce is execution capability: the ability to take a real business problem, understand its operational context, and build automation that works reliably in the hands of non-technical teams. Not impressive demos. Not sophisticated architectures. Working solutions that deliver measurable outcomes and don’t require a developer on call to function.

This is the gap that actually matters. And it’s the gap that the broader AI ecosystem is now beginning to close.

Also Read: Builders wanted: Close the AI execution gap for SMEs

Why collaboration is the model that works

The traditional paths to SME automation, whether hiring a consultant, adopting a SaaS tool, or building in-house, all share a common flaw. They treat automation as a product or service transaction rather than a problem-solving collaboration.

Consultants interpret problems through their existing frameworks. SaaS tools ask businesses to conform to their logic. In-house builds rarely happen because the talent and bandwidth don’t exist simultaneously. The result, across all three approaches, is a persistent gap between the automation that SMEs need and the automation they actually get.

The model that consistently produces better outcomes starts differently. It starts with the actual problem, described by the people who experience it, in the specific operational context where it exists, and works backwards to a solution. It treats the business owner as the authority on the problem and the builder as the authority on implementation, and it structures collaboration so both can contribute what they actually know.

This sounds obvious. It rarely happens in practice, because most procurement and development processes create distance between problem and solution rather than closing it.

The businesses and builders who figure out how to close that distance, who build genuine collaboration structures rather than transactional relationships, will define what SME automation looks like in Southeast Asia over the next decade.

The builders who will matter

There’s a generation of technical talent in Southeast Asia that understands AI tooling better than most enterprise technology teams. Developers who have spent time with LLMs, automation platforms, and API integrations. Engineers who can architect solutions that are both technically sophisticated and operationally pragmatic.

What many of them haven’t had is access to real business problems. Genuine operational challenges, with real constraints, real edge cases, and real accountability for outcomes. The gap between capability and credibility, between knowing how to build and being able to prove you’ve built things that work, is significant for builders early in their careers or transitioning into AI automation.

The builders who close this gap won’t do it by building more impressive demos. They’ll do it by solving real problems in real environments and documenting the outcomes. By proving that they understand the difference between a system that works in controlled conditions and one that works in production. By treating business impact as the measure of success, not technical sophistication.

These are the builders the market needs. They’re also the builders who will find the most commercial opportunity as SME automation moves from experimental to essential.

Also Read: Why the future of AI automation belongs to builders who ship

What comes next

Southeast Asia’s SME sector is at an inflection point. The operational efficiency gains available through AI workflow automation are no longer marginal; they’re substantial enough to materially change what small teams can accomplish, what growth is achievable without proportional headcount increases, and what competitive positioning looks like in markets where margins are tight and agility matters.

The businesses that act now, that identify their highest-friction workflows, find builders who can translate those problems into working solutions, and implement automation that actually runs in their environments, will not look back.

The businesses that wait will find themselves explaining the delay to teams who are increasingly aware that the tools exist and the cost is justified.

The automation era isn’t a future state to prepare for. It’s the present reality to engage with.

The question isn’t whether to automate. It’s whether to act before or after your competitors do.

The AI Workflow Competition at Echelon Singapore 2026 is open now. Submit your challenge or register as a builder.

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The post The businesses that automated last year aren’t looking back. What’s stopping everyone else? appeared first on e27.

After a robust performance in 2024—when Singapore’s economy expanded by 4.4 per cent, outpacing the previous year’s growth—business leaders entered 2025 with renewed optimism.

However, as the year unfolded, the outlook became clouded by intensifying geopolitical rivalries in the Middle East and Europe, and most notably, by the escalation of global trade wars. The Trump administration’s imposition of high tariffs sent shockwaves through international markets, capturing the attention of business communities worldwide and reminding us of Singapore’s vulnerability to external shocks as one of the world’s most open economies with a trade-to-GDP ratio exceeding 300 per cent.

Business leaders are increasingly concerned about the risks and uncertainties facing Singaporean companies, particularly how these will affect growth and strategy. Slower economic growth, weaker sentiment, and reduced international trade are dampening investment and demand across sectors. Supply chain disruptions and higher import costs from tariffs and global volatility are impacting both export-oriented and domestic businesses. Even those focused on the local market may face delays, rising prices, and softer consumer demand as households tighten spending.

Despite these headwinds, Singaporean businesses are not without recourse. Drawing on insights from the recent IndSights Research Business Leaders Forum, this article explores the key risks and uncertainties for 2025—and, crucially, the strategies that can help companies navigate this challenging landscape and continue to thrive.

Turning uncertainty into opportunity

While headlines may paint a sobering picture, Singaporean businesses should not be discouraged by prevailing uncertainty.

At the forum, Ho Kwon Ping, Founder of Banyan Group, reminded leaders that resilience is forged in adversity. He cautioned against letting constant news and media commentary dictate business sentiment or strategy. Instead, Ping urged leaders to critically assess their unique position and seek ways to pivot and adapt for success in this new environment.

Mitigating protectionism through diversification of markets

Amid heightened global uncertainty and volatility, Ping stressed the importance of market diversification for Singaporean businesses. Given Singapore’s limited domestic market, he cautioned against a local-only focus and advocated making overseas expansion a key part of long-term strategy.

Drawing from his own entrepreneurial journey, Ping noted he launched his first resort in Thailand, only opening one in Singapore three decades later, underscoring his commitment to building an international brand. He also cited fellow panellist Elizabeth Liau, Founder of Maison de L’asie, who prioritised overseas growth by marketing her luxury perfumes in non-traditional destinations such as Lithuania, Paraguay, and Romania.

Their experiences demonstrate that, especially during periods of global volatility, businesses should look beyond conventional markets to remain agile, manage risks, and achieve sustainable growth.

Also Read: Navigating trade turbulence: Digital transformation enhances global logistics amid rising tariffs

Choosing the right partner is key to local market success

Evelyn Tay, CEO of EtonHouse International Education Group, which operates 100 schools in nine countries, emphasised the importance of partnering with the right local stakeholders. She noted that having local partners aligned with the company’s values is vital, as it provides insights into localisation and access to key networks.

Tay shared that while EtonHouse’s standard operating model worked well in Suzhou, it needed further fine-tuning in Chengdu due to differences in affluence and parental work patterns. This underscores the need for a local partner, as even within the same country, market dynamics can vary significantly.

Striking a balance between brand identity and cultural nuances

Liau, with her extensive experience marketing luxury fragrances globally, emphasised that definitions of luxury differ and shift across markets, demanding brands to balance authenticity and adaptation. For businesses to expand into new markets, it’s essential to focus on the local consumers and appeal to their tastes, preferences and needs.

Additionally, Liau noted the growing role of digital marketing and the need for an omni-channel strategy, where regional influencers and digital ambassadors can significantly enhance brand equity—even without a physical presence. Digital marketing also offers a cost-effective approach for businesses looking to diversify into global markets, enabling them to reach and engage new audiences efficiently while managing resources strategically.

For Singaporean businesses, investing in aligned local partnerships and developing digital strategies is vital for building brand presence and achieving sustainable growth in diverse global markets.

Diversify supply chains for stability

To remain sustainable and tackle the impact of the trade war, businesses can look to diversifying business supply chains, particularly for companies deeply involved in cross-border trade. Ping highlighted the importance of understanding Singapore’s unique and evolving position in the regional supply chain.

With Thailand and Indonesia joining BRICS and expanding their supply chain networks into markets like Brazil, Egypt, and Ethiopia, Singaporean businesses now have indirect access to new and previously untapped markets, opening fresh opportunities for trade and collaboration.

Also Read: The perfect storm: Jobs plunge, tariffs hit, and crypto volatility soars

“1 + 1 + 1 greater than 3” means more cooperation between ASEAN nations

The ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement (ATIGA) has been particularly beneficial in this regard, with six out of ten ASEAN members eliminating import duties and the remaining four reducing them to minimal levels. This has fostered a robust internal market within Southeast Asia that remains resilient despite external pressures.

Reflecting this momentum, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong attended a two-day ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur, where leaders reaffirmed their commitment to ASEAN’s integration and community building, and discussed ways to promote a free, open, and inclusive regional architecture both within the bloc and with external partners. The talks also focused on strengthening ASEAN’s resilience by making intra-regional trade more seamless and tapping into new growth areas such as the digital and green economies.

Beyond Southeast Asia, Singaporean businesses can also explore new opportunities in regions such as the Gulf. Recent ASEAN summits have strengthened economic ties between ASEAN, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and China, with leaders affirming their commitment to deeper cooperation in trade, investment, and supply chain diversification.

Local and on-the-ground partnerships

As highlighted by our panellist, Jasper Lee, Founder of Kingsmen Global, a leading freight forwarding company, it is crucial for businesses that are looking to diversify into new markets to work closely with their logistics providers.

Understanding lead times, customs requirements, and regulations is essential to ensure timely deliveries and avoid costly disruptions at borders. This reinforces the earlier point on the importance of strong local partnerships—not only for market entry but also for maintaining resilient and agile supply chains, regardless of industry or destination.

Charting a path forward

Despite the challenges posed by global complexities and trade tensions, Singaporean businesses are encouraged to stay optimistic and seize the opportunities that arise during uncertain times. The strategies shared by our panellists highlight the importance of adaptability and resilience.

Coupled with Singapore’s pro-business stance and commitment to maintaining a conducive environment, businesses are well-positioned to navigate the evolving landscape.

This article covers key moments from the Business Leaders Forum 2025 by IndSights Research. Additional highlights from the discussion are available here.

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