Tag: Screen Printing

For many consumers in Southeast Asia, the smartphone has become both a work tool and a status symbol. It is also getting harder to afford.

That tension sits at the centre of 3cat’s next phase of growth. The Singapore-incorporated, Malaysia-born retailer of pre-owned electronics has raised US$4 million in Series A funding to expand into the Philippines, betting that a more formal, warrantied second-hand device market can win over consumers being squeezed by rising handset prices.

The round was led by Foxmont Capital Partners, with participation from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Golden Gate Ventures. ADB has also authorised a further US$2.8 million for future funding rounds in the company.

Also Read: Cinch Impact Report 2026: What it actually takes to fix device access and e-waste in SEA

Founded in 2023, 3cat started as an online business focused on pre-owned Apple products in Kuala Lumpur. It has since grown into more than 20 retail stores across Malaysia, combining physical outlets, online customer acquisition, financing, warranty coverage and an internal technology platform.

Its first market outside Malaysia will be the Philippines, where the company sees a larger and more price-sensitive opportunity. The country has more than 110 million people, a young population and one of the region’s most active mobile-first consumer markets. According to Euromonitor data cited by the company, 18.4 million smartphones were sold in the Philippines in 2025, almost twice the size of Malaysia’s market.

The timing is not accidental. Smartphone makers have been dealing with higher component costs, supply chain volatility and a shift towards more expensive premium devices. In markets where wages have not risen at the same pace, the result is a widening gap between what consumers want and what they can reasonably pay.

3cat says a new mobile phone in the Philippines can now cost up to double a Filipino’s median monthly income. That makes the pitch for a cheaper, tested, warranty-backed device more compelling, if consumers trust the seller.

Turning second-hand into mainstream retail

The used-device market is not new in Southeast Asia. For years, consumers have bought phones through informal shops, classifieds, social media groups and peer-to-peer platforms. These channels are often cheaper, but they also carry familiar risks: unclear device history, battery issues, counterfeit parts, limited recourse after purchase and little consistency in pricing.

3cat’s wager is that the category can move from informal trade to mainstream retail if those concerns are addressed in a structured way.

Its model includes device checks, a 12-month warranty, return policies, mall-based stores where customers can inspect products, and online sales touchpoints. The company says most store transactions involve an online interaction somewhere in the buying journey, including engagement with its proprietary AI sales agents. In practice, customers may discover, compare or ask questions about a device online before completing the purchase in-store.

“Trust is what makes this category scalable. We have spent the last three years building it deliberately, through the quality of the devices we sell, the warranties we stand behind, the stores we invest in and the market-leading experience we deliver at every customer touchpoint,” said Karl Loo, CEO and co-founder of 3cat.

The company claims its devices can be up to 60 per cent cheaper than new equivalents. That price gap matters in Southeast Asia, where demand for smartphones continues to grow but consumers remain highly value-conscious. It is also where the circular economy angle comes in: extending the life of electronics can reduce e-waste, one of the fastest-growing waste streams globally.

Also Read: Singapore’s e-waste crisis: 2.9M idle phones highlight urgent need for circular tech solutions

For ADB, that environmental and inclusion argument appears central to the investment.

“3cat is helping build greater confidence in the second-hand device market by bringing clearer standards around quality, reliability and after-sales assurance,” said Charles Navarro, Investment Specialist at ADB Ventures. “As the company expands in Malaysia and the Philippines, its model has the potential to help raise standards across the wider market while extending the useful life of devices.”

Why the Philippines matters

The Philippines is a logical but demanding next step. It is one of Southeast Asia’s largest consumer markets, with high social media usage, strong mobile commerce behaviour and a population that often accesses the internet primarily through smartphones. At the same time, household purchasing power remains uneven, especially outside major urban centres.

That creates space for a retailer that can offer relatively aspirational devices, especially iPhones and higher-end Android models, at lower prices. But expansion will require more than opening shops. The company will need to build supply, refurbishment standards, customer service operations, financing partnerships and brand trust in a market where second-hand buying is already common but fragmented.

Foxmont’s participation is notable because of its local knowledge. The Philippine venture capital firm has backed consumer and commerce businesses in the country, giving 3cat a potential advantage in understanding retail behaviour, site selection and local partnerships.

“Across Southeast Asia, smartphones are both essential and aspirational, but premium devices are increasingly out of reach for many consumers,” said Jelmer Ikink, Managing Partner at Foxmont Capital Partners. “3cat makes refurbished electronics trustworthy, warrantied, and accessible.”

3cat’s founding team brings a mix of regional retail and technology experience. Loo is joined by Chris Ng, a former founding senior executive at Oppo Malaysia, and Heinrich Wendel, who has worked across product, technology and digital businesses.

A crowded race for trusted resale

3cat will not have the regional used-electronics space to itself. Southeast Asia already has several players trying to professionalise refurbished and second-hand devices.

CompAsia, founded in Malaysia, operates across multiple Asian markets and works with brands, telcos and enterprises on device trade-ins and resale. Reebelo, which has roots in Singapore and Australia, runs an online marketplace for refurbished electronics and has expanded across several markets.

Carousell, while broader and more peer-to-peer in nature, remains a major channel for second-hand phones in the region. In the Philippines, informal mobile shops and Facebook Marketplace also remain powerful competitors, especially on price.

The difference 3cat is trying to build lies in its mix of physical retail, warranty, financing and digital sales support. That omnichannel approach may help convert buyers who are interested in cheaper devices but uncomfortable with purely online second-hand transactions.

The challenge is whether that model can scale profitably. Physical stores build trust, but they also add rent, staffing and inventory costs. Device quality control is operationally complex. Used-phone prices can move quickly as new models launch and older ones depreciate. And in emerging markets, financing can expand affordability but also introduces credit and collections risk.

Also Read: Circular raises US$7.6M funding for electronic gadgets subscription service

Still, the broader direction of travel is clear. As smartphones become more expensive and replacement cycles lengthen, Southeast Asia’s used-device market is likely to become more organised. Investors are increasingly looking at circular economy models that combine commercial viability with resource efficiency.

For 3cat, the Philippines will be an important test of whether its Malaysia playbook can travel. If it works, the company could position itself not merely as a reseller of old phones, but as part of a new layer of consumer infrastructure: one that makes quality devices more accessible without pushing every buyer towards the latest new handset.

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I recently presented at LEAP in Saudi Arabia, where I spent several days talking with founders, startup teams and people building businesses around emerging technology. Unsurprisingly, AI was everywhere.

Much of the conversation centred on what AI could help people do faster: research that once took hours could be summarised in minutes, first drafts could appear almost instantly, routine analysis could be automated and teams could produce more with fewer delays. The enthusiasm was understandable, because the efficiency gains are real.

What I kept wondering, though, was what happens to workload once individual tasks become faster.

If a report that once took an hour now takes 20 minutes, does that create 40 minutes of genuine capacity, or does it simply create room for two more reports?

That distinction sounds small, but psychologically it is not. If every efficiency gain is immediately absorbed by additional output, the working day does not become easier. It becomes denser.

For startups, this deserves more attention because speed is already embedded in the culture. Teams tend to work across broad roles, priorities shift quickly and people are often expected to absorb new responsibilities as the business grows. AI can make that environment more efficient, while also making it surprisingly easy for expectations to expand without anyone explicitly deciding that the job itself has changed.

A person may retain the same title while significant parts of their role are generated, summarised or analysed by AI, with expectations about turnaround and volume changing almost overnight. The technology may be adopted quickly, but human adjustment rarely works quite that cleanly.

Recent research reflects some of this complexity. A 2026 study involving 541 employees in Chinese technology firms found that greater use of generative AI was associated with both increased confidence about taking on broader responsibilities and increased role ambiguity. Employees could feel more capable while simultaneously becoming less clear about where their role began and ended.

That combination is worth paying attention to. When AI allows someone to produce more, take on more and move faster, it can be tempting to read that as straightforward progress. Yet people generally function better when expectations, autonomy and responsibility remain reasonably clear. When those boundaries become blurred, additional cognitive effort is spent simply trying to work out what the job now requires.

This is particularly relevant in startups because ambiguity is often already part of the environment. Roles are broad, people move between functions and formal job descriptions rarely capture everything someone actually does. AI can increase that flexibility, although it can also make it harder to notice when a role has quietly expanded beyond what was originally expected.

Also Read: SEA’s venture capital shifts from mega-rounds to AI and SaaS

There is also the question of control.

Research published in 2025 examined workers using AI decision support and found that partial AI assistance could support autonomy, competence and meaningfulness, while more complete automation reduced those experiences over time. The implication reaches beyond the specific tasks used in the study because how AI is introduced appears to affect whether people continue to feel that they are exercising judgement or simply supervising output.

That shift can be subtle. A task may become easier while also giving the person less say over how it is done, and over time this can change how much ownership they feel over their work even when the technology itself remains useful.

This is why I would be cautious about treating productivity as the only measure of successful AI adoption. If a team is producing more, but the workday has become more compressed, responsibility less clear and meaningful judgement thinner, then efficiency is only telling part of the story.

Research into employee adoption of generative AI is already showing that people actively reshape their roles around the technology, particularly when AI affects their sense of control and whether their work feels meaningful. That makes AI adoption as much a work-design question as a technology question.

Also Read: The AI productivity paradox: Why finance must  move beyond automation 

For founders, the practical issue is whether the organisation is consciously redesigning work or simply allowing expectations to expand around the technology.

If AI makes a task faster, what happens to the time that has been saved? Does it create genuine capacity, better thinking, more recovery between cognitively demanding tasks or more space for work that requires human judgement? Or does the organisation simply increase the volume expected from the same person?

There is also a longer-term question about capability. If AI increasingly performs the early thinking involved in a role, organisations need to consider how people will develop the judgement required for more senior work later. Expertise usually develops through repeated exposure to problems, mistakes, uncertainty and decisions, so removing too much of that developmental work may produce efficiencies now while creating different problems further down the track.

None of this requires startups to slow down their adoption of AI. It does require them to pay attention to what happens after the efficiency gain appears.

One of the things I came away from LEAP thinking about was how much energy we are putting into imagining what AI will be capable of doing next. That conversation is moving extraordinarily quickly, but the more immediate question for founders may be much simpler: when AI makes work faster, what are you choosing to do with the time it saves?

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A scam rarely begins with a dramatic breach. More often, it starts with something ordinary: a Facebook page selling discounted skincare, an Instagram post promising easy investment gains, or a message from a group that claims to have found a way to beat the market.

By the time victims realise what has happened, the people behind these schemes may have already shifted accounts, changed names, moved chats to another app and started again elsewhere. That is what makes online scams so difficult to police. They are not isolated posts or rogue pages, but networks built to move quickly across platforms and borders.

Also Read: Singapore tightens scam rules for messaging, social media and e-commerce platforms

Meta now says a two-year information-sharing partnership with the Singapore Police Force (SPF) has helped it take action against more than 3.7 million scam-linked accounts, pages and pieces of content across Facebook and Instagram in 2026. The bulk of that figure came from dormant “shell pages” that were taken down before they could be activated.

The figures underline how Singapore has become both a target and a testbed for anti-scam enforcement in Southeast Asia. The city-state is highly connected, financially sophisticated and heavily reliant on digital payments, social platforms and messaging apps. Those same strengths have made it attractive to criminal syndicates looking for victims who are online, mobile-first and accustomed to transacting digitally.

From takedowns to network disruption

According to Meta, the partnership with SPF is designed to go beyond removing individual scam posts after users report them. Instead, Meta’s investigators use information from the police to map wider clusters of activity and identify related accounts, pages and assets.

Between January and June 2026, Meta took action against more than 113,000 entities and pages on Facebook and Instagram connected to fraud and scams, using information shared by SPF. Much of the content involved investment scams, in which victims are lured by promises of guaranteed or unusually high returns.

SPF referred more than 20,000 accounts, pages and pieces of content to Meta during that period. Meta said those signals led it to act against more than five times as many assets, suggesting that one suspicious account can lead investigators to many more linked to the same operation. That matters because scam groups build redundancy into their operations. If one page disappears, another is ready to replace it.

In June, ahead of the school holidays, Meta and SPF also ran an enhanced disruption exercise focused on e-commerce scams. These schemes relied on familiar tactics: misleading prices, fake promotions for well-known brands, exaggerated product claims and countdown-style pressure to make users act quickly. That operation led Meta to take action against more than 33,600 entities.

The largest number came in July, when SPF information helped identify a newer scam pattern: shell pages. These pages may appear empty and harmless, with no obvious scam content or ads. But they function as pre-built infrastructure, waiting to be repurposed for fraudulent campaigns. Meta said it acted against more than 3.6 million such pages before they could be used.

Also Read: Singapore disrupts 30,000 iMessage accounts as scam losses hit US$1.7M

Daryl Poon, Meta’s Director of Law Enforcement Outreach for APAC, said scammers rely on fragmented visibility across institutions. “Scammers count on the fact that no single organisation sees the full picture,” he said, adding that SPF’s information allows Meta to identify threats it might not see on its own.

Why Singapore is pushing public-private enforcement

Singapore’s urgency is not hard to understand. Scam losses in the country have risen sharply in recent years, with police figures showing victims lost more than US$800 million in 2024 alone. The problem is no longer confined to crude phishing links or impersonation calls. Scammers now use social engineering, fake investment communities, impersonated brands, mule accounts and encrypted messaging channels to build trust and extract money.

For authorities, that creates a structural problem. Police can investigate complaints and arrest suspects, but much of the early scam activity happens on private digital platforms. Platforms, meanwhile, can remove content and accounts, but may lack the external intelligence needed to connect what looks like scattered activity into a criminal network.

Senior Assistant Commissioner Justin Wong, Commander of SPF’s Cyber Command, framed the Meta partnership as part of a broader shift in enforcement. He said tackling sophisticated scam networks requires collaboration with international and private stakeholders, with shared scam signals helping platforms disrupt criminal infrastructure before victims are defrauded.

The Singapore model also reflects a wider regional challenge. Southeast Asia has seen the rise of industrial-scale scam operations, some linked to compounds operating across borders. Victims may be in Singapore, the platform may be American, the payment trail may pass through multiple jurisdictions, and the operators may be based elsewhere in the region. Traditional enforcement struggles when the crime scene is spread across apps, countries and financial rails.

Meta’s wider anti-scam push

The SPF partnership sits within Meta’s broader anti-scam efforts. The company said that, so far this year, it has removed 65 million scam ads from Facebook and Instagram, with 94 per cent taken down before users reported them.

Meta has also taken part in larger cross-border operations. Over two weeks in May and June 2026, the US Department of Justice’s Scam Center Strike Force brought together companies including Meta, Microsoft, Coinbase and Starlink, alongside law enforcement agencies from the US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Thailand. The operation disrupted more than 1.4 million accounts, pages and groups across Facebook and Instagram, along with 20,000 Microsoft accounts and thousands of Starlink kits. Thai police also arrested 63 people linked to scam operations.

Also Read: Deepfake fraud losses hit US$3.7B as scams spread beyond social media

In Singapore, Meta, SPF and the National Crime Prevention Council have also worked on public education through the “One Step Ahead” campaign. It encourages people to turn on security features such as two-factor authentication and passkeys for Facebook and Instagram, use WhatsApp linked-device notifications, and rely on local tools such as ScamShield. Meta said the campaign has reached 1.6 million people in Singapore.

Such education efforts are necessary, but they also expose the limits of relying on users to protect themselves. Many scams are designed to exploit moments of haste, trust or financial stress. Security prompts help, but organised scam networks require organised countermeasures.

Rivals face the same trust problem

Meta is not alone in facing this pressure. TikTok, Google-owned YouTube, X, Telegram, WhatsApp, online marketplaces and messaging platforms all sit somewhere along the scam economy’s path, whether as discovery channels, impersonation surfaces, payment touchpoints or migration routes. In Southeast Asia, where social commerce and chat-based selling are deeply embedded, the lines between content, commerce and messaging are often blurred.

That makes anti-scam work as much a competitive trust issue as a compliance obligation. Platforms that cannot control fraudulent activity risk losing user confidence, advertiser trust and regulatory goodwill. Governments in the region are also becoming more assertive, pushing platforms, banks and telcos to share signals faster and shoulder more responsibility for online harms.

Also Read: ASEAN Foundation, Google.org launch US$5M drive to combat scams across Southeast Asia

For Meta, the Singapore partnership offers a glimpse of what that future may look like: less reliance on one-off user reports, more intelligence-sharing, and faster action against infrastructure that has not yet gone live.

The challenge is scale. Scammers adapt quickly, and every successful disruption teaches them what to avoid next. But the latest figures make one thing clear: in the fight against online scams, waiting for victims to report the damage is no longer enough.

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Wall Street finished near record highs on 23 September 2026. Asian equities extended gains. A technology rebound and falling oil prices supported the positive tone. The S&P 500 closed flat and sat roughly 0.4 per cent below its record high. The Nasdaq Composite and Nasdaq 100 advanced 0.5 per cent. The Nasdaq 100 touched new record territory as chipmakers showed strong momentum.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 185 points, or 0.4 per cent. In Australia, the ASX 200 climbed higher. A drop in crude prices triggered rallies in technology and consumer counters. This split performance showed investors favouring growth names over industrial and financial heavyweights. The mixed close also revealed a market digesting recent gains rather than rushing into new positions.

Crude oil tumbled below US$98 to US$100 a barrel. Productive diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran and reports of potential supply routes reopening pushed prices lower. Investors also focused on comments from Federal Reserve officials. Those officials signaled caution on rapid rate cuts.

Geopolitical developments remained a primary focus for participants across asset classes. The energy retreat offered relief to sectors sensitive to fuel costs. It also weighed on oil producers and reminded investors that supply headlines can shift sentiment quickly. Lower crude prices can ease inflation pressure, but the Federal Reserve’s cautious stance kept expectations for rapid rate cuts in check. That combination left equity investors with a supportive but not euphoric backdrop.

Ethereum declined 0.56 per cent over 24 hours to US$2,768.05. The second-largest digital asset underperformed a nearly flat broader market. A technical rejection at the US$2,800 resistance level drove the pullback. That ceiling has capped rallies since 2024. Trading volume fell 43.69 per cent. Weakening volume confirmed the pullback after a powerful 80 per cent three-month rally.

Ethereum shows a strong 68 per cent correlation with the S&P 500. This correlation indicates a shared macro-driven cooling of risk appetite. The drop did not signal panic. It reflected a market digesting a large advance and waiting for a fresh reason to push higher. The US$2,800 zone matters because sellers have defended it for more than a year. A failure there forces buyers to prove they can absorb profit-taking.

Also Read: Can Ethereum clear US$2,672 this week and unlock a run to US$3,000?

Institutional demand through spot ETFs also cooled. United States spot Ethereum ETFs recorded a net inflow of US$269.98 million on Monday, 21 September. That figure marked a record. Demand then appeared to ease. Analysts noted that the Coinbase Premium Gap has narrowed. This narrowing suggests United States spot buying pressure has eased.

The initial surge of institutional capital that fuelled the rally has paused. That pause removed a major source of short-term support. Without steady ETF inflows, the spot market must rely more on existing holders and broader risk sentiment. ETF flow data now acts as a real-time gauge of institutional conviction. A return of positive flows would give buyers a stronger hand.

The near-term trigger for Ethereum is whether spot ETF flows reaccelerate. The important level to hold is the 38.2 per cent Fibonacci retracement at US$2,634. If the token stabilises above US$2,650, it could gather strength for another attempt at US$2,800. A break below that support opens the path toward the 50 per cent retracement near US$2,581. A deeper pullback could reach US$2,500.

A daily close above US$2,800 would signal a breakout. The next major resistance sits at the 161.8 per cent Fibonacci extension near US$3,083. The structure remains bullish but overextended. The asset needs consolidation or renewed demand to continue higher. Ethereum is taking a healthy breather in my opinion. Record exchange outflows signal the underlying accumulation trend remains intact. Investors should watch whether United States spot Ethereum ETF flows turn positive again in the next 24 to 48 hours. That flow would provide the fuel for a decisive break above US$2,800.

Hyperliquid moved independently. Its HYPE token rose 3.84 per cent over 24 hours to US$97.75. Bitcoin dipped slightly during the same period. Over the last seven days, HYPE gained 26 per cent. That gain ranks highest among the top 10 coins. The primary driver is strong on-chain utility. The protocol generated nearly US$4 million in revenue in 24 hours. This revenue funded the buyback and burn of 39,840 HYPE tokens. Those tokens were worth about US$3.77 million.

The burn permanently removed 4.88 per cent of the maximum supply. This mechanism directly converts platform activity into token demand. It also reduces supply. The result creates buy pressure tied to real product usage rather than speculation alone. That link between revenue and token destruction gives HYPE a different demand profile from assets that rely mainly on market sentiment.

Also Read: Why did Bitcoin and Ethereum move in near-perfect lockstep after the Fed rate hike?

Sector rotation added a secondary tailwind. The CMC Altcoin Season Index rose 53 per cent over the past week. This rise signals that capital may be rotating into altcoins. HYPE trades near its all-time high with over US$1.2 billion in daily volume. The token benefits from broader risk-on sentiment and its own strong price trend. Hyperliquid offers a clear example of deflationary tokenomics working with active ecosystem usage. That combination provides a fundamental floor. Altcoin season tailwinds offer upward potential.

The near-term outlook for HYPE depends on continued platform activity and burn execution. If buying pressure from burns persists and the token holds above the recent swing low of US$92.25, the path toward the US$100 psychological level is clear. A failure to hold this support could see a retracement toward the US$88 area. The bias is cautiously bullish, contingent on ecosystem metrics remaining strong. A decisive break and close above US$100 would confirm continued uptrend. Traders should track whether daily token burn value remains above US$3 million. A sustained drop could signal waning buy pressure from core utility.

Across assets, the 23 September 2026 session showed selective risk appetite. Technology stocks led. Oil’s decline helped consumer and technology counters in Australia. The Dow’s 185-point drop showed that not every sector participated. Federal Reserve caution on rapid rate cuts kept investors measured. In crypto, Ethereum and Hyperliquid displayed two different paths.

Ethereum consolidated after an 80 per cent rally and faced a known resistance level. Hyperliquid advanced on token burns and altcoin rotation. This divergence suggests capital is discriminating rather than simply chasing all risk assets. My point of view is that the next 24 to 48 hours will matter for both. Ethereum needs positive ETF flows to challenge US$2,800. Hyperliquid needs daily burn value above US$3 million to sustain its push toward US$100. The broader market remains near record highs. The path forward depends on whether demand broadens or remains concentrated in leading sectors and tokens.

—

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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Seedstars has named the 15 ventures joining the third cohort of SEED Inclusivity, its accelerator for startups building products and services for people with disabilities across Asia Pacific.

Supported by Visa Foundation, the six-month programme brings together companies linked to India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. The cohort covers a wide range of needs: sign-language communication, speech therapy, developmental support for children, mobility, rehabilitation, learning tools and access to care.

The third cohort also marks a visible Southeast Asian tilt. India remains strongly represented, but ventures from Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam point to a wider regional push in a market where disability inclusion is often discussed in policy terms yet remains underserved by scalable, affordable technology.

Also Read: These 8 Southeast Asian startups work with people with disabilities to build a more inclusive society

Over the next six months, founders will receive coaching, take part in expert-led sessions and attend two in-person bootcamps in Vietnam. The structure follows Seedstars’ broader emerging-market playbook: help early-stage companies sharpen their business models, connect them with mentors and investors, and prove that impact-led ventures can also be commercially viable.

Disability inclusion moves from charity to market-building

Asia Pacific’s disability community is large, diverse and poorly served. Access to diagnosis, therapy, assistive devices and inclusive education remains uneven, particularly outside major cities. Families often face long waiting lists, high private-care costs and a shortage of trained specialists. For people with hearing loss, mobility impairments or developmental needs, the gap is not just medical. It affects schooling, work, communication and independence.

That is where this cohort sits. The selected ventures are not tackling disability inclusion through a single lens. Some are building assistive hardware, others are using artificial intelligence for screening and communication, and several focus on therapy delivery, rehabilitation and home-based care.

In Southeast Asia, these gaps are especially pressing. Public health systems in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam are expanding, but access to specialist disability services remains inconsistent. Families often rely on a patchwork of hospitals, schools, therapists, non-profits and informal support networks. Startups that can lower the cost of therapy, extend care beyond clinics or make communication easier could play a meaningful role, provided they can prove quality, trust and affordability.

The Southeast Asian cohort

Among the Southeast Asian startups selected is Indonesia’s Hear Me, which is developing technology for Indonesian Sign Language translation and interpretation. The need is clear: sign-language access remains limited in many public and private settings, from classrooms and workplaces to healthcare facilities. Technology can help bridge that gap, but local language and cultural context matter. A generic sign-language solution does not automatically work across countries, let alone across Southeast Asia’s linguistic diversity.

Also from Indonesia, Birru focuses on speech therapy and language-learning support at home and in school. This reflects a broader trend in paediatric care: parents and teachers need tools that extend support beyond occasional clinical sessions. Where trained therapists are scarce or concentrated in urban centres, blended models that combine professional input with at-home reinforcement may become increasingly important.

The Philippines is represented by Mylo Speech Buddy, which supports speech therapy and at-home practice for children with speech delays. Its inclusion underlines a pain point familiar to many families in the region: early intervention can make a major difference, but regular therapy is often out of reach because of cost, distance and availability.

Vietnam’s Ba Bánh Nam Hà brings a different angle, building adapted three-wheel vehicles and wheelchair attachments. Mobility remains one of the most practical barriers to participation in education, work and community life. In dense cities and rural provinces alike, transport systems are rarely designed around wheelchair users. Locally adapted vehicles can be more relevant than imported devices if they are built for the roads, budgets and daily routines of their users.

Also Read: These startups are using AI to help improve the lives of people with disabilities

Singapore features through GenElek Technologies, an India- and Singapore-linked venture developing robotic exoskeletons for rehabilitation and personal mobility. It sits at the advanced hardware end of the sector, where engineering, clinical validation and cost control must come together. For Southeast Asia, the question is whether such technologies can move beyond specialist institutions and reach wider rehabilitation settings over time.

A broad Asia Pacific mix

The rest of the cohort includes ConnectHear from Pakistan, which provides AI-powered sign-language communication and accessibility services; FyndHealth from India, which offers developmental assessments and multidisciplinary therapy for children; and Gabify, also from India, which builds AI screening and practice-management tools for developmental care.

Several Indian ventures focus on children’s developmental and learning needs. HireForCare provides assessment and therapy for children with developmental needs, Kidaura Innovations builds digital tools for therapy delivery and home reinforcement, and Giftolexia uses AI for early screening and learning support to help identify learning difficulties sooner.

Others target mobility, rehabilitation and neurological care. Lifespark Technologies develops wearable devices and digital care for neurological conditions. BeAble Health builds game-based rehabilitation devices and software for movement recovery. Ksham Innovation is developing bone-conduction smart glasses for people with hearing loss, while Thinklude offers AI-powered live captioning and Indian Sign Language interpretation.

Taken together, the cohort shows how disability-focused innovation is spreading across product categories. It is no longer confined to assistive devices. Increasingly, ventures are combining hardware, software, AI, telecare and data tools to make services more accessible and continuous.

Building on earlier cohorts

According to programme reporting, the 15 ventures in Cohort 1 have reached 2.97 million people and raised US$12.8 million since completing the programme. Cohort 2 brought together 17 ventures from India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Singapore, and concluded in April 2026 with a Demo Day in Jakarta.

Those figures matter because disability inclusion startups often face a difficult funding environment. Investors may see the market as fragmented, heavily regulated or too dependent on public-sector and non-profit buyers. Founders must prove both impact and commercial viability, while navigating sensitive issues such as clinical outcomes, accessibility standards and user trust.

The jury for the third cohort included Bernard Chiira, founder and CEO of Assistive Technologies for Disability Trust and General Partner at Momentous Fund; Katharine Lindquist, Programme Officer at Visa Foundation; Brianna Losoya-Evora, Head of Impact Measurement and Management at Sweef Capital and Director of The Sweef Institute; Pierre-Alain Masson, CEO and co-founder of Seedstars; and Charlotte McClain-Nhlapo, Global Disability Advisor at the World Bank Group.

Also Read: What this digital shift means for people with disabilities in SEA

For Southeast Asia, the more interesting question is what happens after the accelerator. The region does not lack pilots, hackathons or inclusion pledges. What it needs are solutions that can survive procurement cycles, win the confidence of families and clinicians, and reach people outside elite urban settings.

That is the test facing this cohort. If even a handful can scale across borders while staying affordable and locally relevant, SEED Inclusivity could become more than an accelerator. It could help define a new generation of disability-focused businesses in Asia-Pacific, built not around charity but around access, dignity and everyday use.

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The next customer for a software company may not be a person scrolling through a pricing page. It may be an AI coding agent, asked by a developer to choose a database, install an SDK, connect an API, or fix a broken integration.

That shift is still early, but it is already changing how software is discovered and adopted. Tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode can now search for products, compare options, read documentation and write implementation code on behalf of users. In that world, a company’s website is no longer the only front door. Its documentation, APIs, SDKs, command-line tools and machine-readable interfaces become part of the sales funnel.

Also Read: The app worked, the product didn’t: Can we install judgement into AI agents?

Lightsage, a San Francisco-based startup founded by Singaporean founders Jun Liang Lee (CEO) and Sean Er (CTO), wants to build the analytics layer for this new behaviour. The company has raised US$4 million in funding led by Nexus Venture Partners to develop what it calls an Agent-Led Growth platform.

The round also includes operators from the developer tools and AI ecosystem, including former Salesforce CTO Steven Tamm, Postman CEO Abhinav Asthana, Apollo CEO Matt Curl, DocuSign President and GM of Growth Robert Chatwani, Resend CEO Zeno, Firecrawl co-founder Eric, Daytona CEO Ivan, Tinyfish COO Shuhao, and others.

From product-led to agent-led growth

For the past decade, many software companies have optimised around product-led growth, a model in which users discover, try and pay for products with limited involvement from sales teams. The playbook was built around human behaviour: search rankings, landing pages, onboarding flows, product analytics, emails and conversion funnels.

AI agents disrupt that pattern because they may compress discovery, evaluation and implementation into a single workflow. A developer might ask an agent to “add payments to this app” or “find the best OCR API for invoices”, and the agent could decide which vendor to use before the human ever sees a shortlist.

That matters for Southeast Asia, where many startups run lean engineering teams and rely heavily on global developer infrastructure. A fintech in Jakarta, a logistics startup in Ho Chi Minh City or a SaaS company in Singapore may increasingly use AI coding tools to speed up product work. If those agents default to familiar global vendors, newer or regional software companies could struggle to be discovered, even if their products are technically strong.

Lightsage’s core argument is that visibility in AI-generated answers is only one part of the problem. A product may be mentioned by an AI assistant, but still lose the “agent customer” if its documentation is confusing, its SDK fails, its authentication flow is unclear, or its API examples cannot be executed reliably.

“We are moving from an internet where AI tells people which software to use to one where AI increasingly uses the software itself,” said Lee. “Visibility still matters, but the real test is whether an agent can understand your product and get to a successful outcome.”

How the platform works

Lightsage allows software companies to see their product through an agent’s perspective. Its platform runs simulations across answer engines and coding agents, checking not only whether a company appears against competitors, but what happens after that.

Agents are assigned real tasks that require them to navigate documentation, pick the right tools and use APIs, SDKs, CLIs, Model Context Protocol servers and agent skills. MCP, an emerging standard popularised in the AI developer ecosystem, allows AI systems to connect more easily with external tools and data sources.

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

When the agent fails, Lightsage identifies where the workflow broke. The issue could be poor discoverability, missing examples, inconsistent documentation, authentication problems, an API endpoint, an SDK implementation, or an incompatible MCP server. Teams can then fix the issue, rerun the test and measure whether the agent completes the task more successfully.

The company also tracks real agent traffic, showing when agents visit a customer’s website or documentation, what they interact with, and whether those journeys lead to product usage. Over time, Lightsage wants to feed those insights back into development and deployment workflows so products can continuously improve for both agents and humans.

The platform currently supports Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, OpenCode and other coding agents.

Early users and a new analytics gap

Lightsage is beginning with developer software, where the behaviour of coding agents is easiest to observe. Its early customers include Firecrawl, Reducto, Daytona, Rime and Tinyfish. These companies use the platform to understand why agents recommend certain products, where integrations fail and whether changes to documentation or product flows improve outcomes.

A typical case may start with a company discovering that a coding agent keeps recommending a rival. Lightsage then recreates the same task across multiple products and agents to determine whether the problem is awareness, documentation quality, or the actual product experience.

This is an analytics gap that traditional software tools were not designed to handle. Human acquisition is usually tracked through search terms, ad clicks, referral links, sign-ups and sales calls. Agents may not follow those paths. They can discover a product through generated answers, inspect documentation directly, call an API and influence a purchase without producing the same trail of clicks.

Their behaviour is also unstable. Different coding agents can approach the same task differently, and their preferences may shift as models are updated. A workflow that works for one agent may fail in another.

Abhishek Sharma, partner at Nexus, framed this as a wider change in online commerce. “AI is now shifting that agency from humans to agents, which can discover, evaluate and act on a customer’s behalf,” he said. “Lightsage is building the intelligence infrastructure for this new era of autonomous browsing, helping companies optimise for agent conversion, not just awareness.”

Competitive landscape

Lightsage sits at the intersection of AI search optimisation, developer experience testing and product analytics. Its closest rivals are likely to come from several directions rather than one neat category. Generative engine optimisation startups such as Profound, AthenaHQ, Scrunch AI and Peec AI help brands understand how they appear in AI answers, while developer observability and AI infrastructure tools such as LangSmith, Helicone and Langfuse focus on monitoring AI applications and model behaviour.

Traditional product analytics companies, including Amplitude, Mixpanel and PostHog, already help software teams understand human users. Lightsage is betting that agent behaviour will become distinct enough to need its own system of record.

The challenge is whether “agent-led growth” becomes a durable software category or remains a feature added by existing analytics and developer tools platforms. Large incumbents already own parts of the workflow, from code assistants to API platforms and observability stacks. Lightsage will have to show that agent discovery, agent experience and agent attribution are not just interesting signals, but commercial levers that affect revenue.

Why it matters for Southeast Asia

For Southeast Asian startups, the rise of agent-led software adoption cuts both ways. On one hand, small teams can use AI agents to build faster, integrate complex tools and compete more effectively with better-funded rivals. On the other, if agents concentrate attention on a narrow set of familiar vendors, local or emerging software companies may find it harder to break into global workflows.

This could be especially relevant in areas where the region is producing more infrastructure and B2B software, from fintech APIs and compliance tools to logistics software and vertical SaaS. Winning a human developer’s trust may no longer be enough. Products will also need to be legible to machines.

Also Read: When AI agents start acting on our behalf, security gets more complicated

Lightsage plans to use the new funding to expand its agent evaluation, analytics, attribution and optimisation capabilities across APIs, SDKs, CLIs, MCP servers and agent skills. Developer tools are the starting point, but the company expects agent behaviour to spread into B2B software, infrastructure and payments.

If that happens, the old growth funnel may not disappear, but it will have a new participant. The buyer may still be human. The first user may increasingly be an agent.

The post Singaporean founders’ Lightsage bags US$4M to decode how AI agents choose software appeared first on e27.

It was not.

Our HR team wanted employees to share more about company culture, hiring updates, internal events, and project wins on LinkedIn. We were not trying to turn everyone into corporate influencers. We only wanted people to feel more comfortable writing about work when there was something worth sharing.

The usual problem was the blank page. Someone attended a company event, joined a volunteer activity, completed a project, or had a good team moment. They were willing to post, but they did not know how to start. Some people worried about sounding too formal. Some worried about saying the wrong thing. Some simply did not have time to turn a rough thought into a clean post.

So we set up a ChatGPT Project for it.

The idea was simple. Instead of every employee prompting from scratch, HR would condition the project with shared context: company tone, basic social media guidelines, examples of acceptable employee posts, phrases to avoid, and reminders about confidential information. Anyone using that project would start from the same set of instructions.

At first, it worked well.

Employees could paste in a few rough notes and ask for a LinkedIn draft. Someone could write, “We had a team volunteering event last Friday, I helped with registration, make this sound natural.” Another person could ask for a short post about joining the company, a project milestone, or a hiring announcement. The drafts came out cleaner than what most people would write from scratch.

For HR, this looked like progress. More people were willing to share. The posts were more readable. The tone was more consistent. Employees were not staring at a blank page anymore.

Also Read: Quantum’s ChatGPT moment is coming — and it’s worth trillions

Then we noticed the issue. Some drafts sounded a little too official.

An employee might only want to say they enjoyed a team event, but the draft would turn it into a polished statement about company values. A hiring post might sound like it came from the corporate page instead of a person. A project post might imply that the employee was speaking on behalf of the company, even when they were only sharing a personal reflection.

That was the friction point. The ChatGPT Project had made drafting easier, but it had also made company-sounding posts easier to produce.

This mattered because employee advocacy sits in an awkward middle ground. A personal LinkedIn post is not the same as an official company announcement. But when the post is about work, people can easily blur the line. A sentence that sounds harmless inside a draft can still create confusion outside the company.

The issue was not that the project was bad. The shared context helped. It reduced blank-page writing and gave employees a safer starting point. The problem was that our instructions focused too much on writing style and not enough on posting boundaries.

So we changed the project instructions.

We added a simple rule: before drafting, ChatGPT had to identify what kind of post it was preparing. Was it a personal reflection, a hiring-related post, an event recap, a project update, or a repost of official company news?

That small step changed the output.

Also Read: OpenAI’s Astra aims to turn AI from chatbot into digital worker

If the post was a personal reflection, the draft had to sound like the employee. It could mention what they experienced, what they appreciated, and what they learned, but it should not make broad claims on behalf of the company. If the draft crossed that line, ChatGPT had to flag it to the user.

If the post was about hiring, it had to stay close to the approved hiring message. It could make the post warmer or more personal, but it should not invent role details, benefits, salary hints, or promises about career progression.

If the post was about a project, it had to avoid confidential details, client names, unreleased work, internal numbers, or claims that had not already been cleared.

We also asked the project to show a short “check before posting” note under each draft. Not a long policy lecture. Just a few practical checks: remove confidential details, confirm that this is your personal view, check whether the role or event information is current, and get approval if the post sounds like an official company statement and not personal.

That helped because employees did not need to remember the whole social media policy every time. The reminder appeared where the work happened.

It also showed us the limitation of using a ChatGPT Project alone. The project could draft and warn, but it could not route approvals by itself. Right now, we are moving beyond the project setup so the workflow can become more agentic. When approval is needed, the workflow should route the draft to the right person, such as Marcom, Legal, or HR. That person can adjust it, send it back to the writer and it will automatically be posted.

This was more useful than writing a long rulebook. The workflow became less about generating perfect posts and more about helping employees stay inside the right lane.

We did not need employees to become marketing people. We needed them to have a safer way to share real work moments without accidentally sounding like the corporate communications team.

—

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

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

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

The post I used to think the hard part of employee advocacy was getting people to post appeared first on e27.

The crypto market is working through a sharp pullback. In the last 24 hours, total market cap fell 1.74 per cent to US$2.62T. Bitcoin led the decline. The largest digital asset dropped 1.87 per cent to US$76,796.54. This move did not happen alone. It tracked a broader sell-off across traditional finance. The 91 per cent correlation with the S&P 500 shows macro forces are driving price action. That link matters because crypto is trading as a risk asset, not as a safe haven.

The US PPI for August arrived on September 10 and served as the main trigger. Annual inflation reached 5.4 per cent. That result came in above expectations. The data revived fears that the Federal Reserve will raise rates or keep policy tight. Treasury yields moved higher. Stocks, gold, and crypto all fell at the same time. Bitcoin sold off as liquidity concerns and weaker investor appetite hit risk markets. The next test is the CPI report on September 11. That print will shape the odds of a rate hike before the Fed meeting on September 15-16.

Market structure made the drop worse. A wave of long liquidations hit the derivatives market. Over 24 hours, forced liquidations closed US$96.53M in BTC positions. Long bets made up 90 per cent of that total. Total open interest had risen 10.84 per cent before the move. New leverage had entered the system. When prices turned lower, forced selling created a feedback loop. That loop added downward pressure beyond what the inflation report alone would suggest. The same pattern appeared across the wider market. BTC liquidations totalled US$96.53M over 24 hours, up 16.35 per cent. Open interest across derivatives rose 9.11 per cent to US$462.13B. High leverage remains a clear risk.

Sentiment has cooled. The Fear & Greed Index fell from 75 last week to 67. That shift moved the mood from extreme greed to caution. The total market cap broke below its pivot point of US$2.61T. It also fell under its seven-day moving average of US$2.67T. The August rally has lost momentum. The sector is now in a corrective phase as speculative heat leaves the market. The RSI(7) sits at 30.02. That reading suggests the market is nearing oversold territory. If buyers return, the decline could slow.

Also Read: Will Bitcoin hold US$77,000 or drag the market to US$2.51T? The September 10 answer

For Bitcoin, the immediate test is the US$76,000 to US$76,350 range. This zone reflects the average cost basis for active investors. Buyers have defended it many times. If the price holds above this support, Bitcoin could stabilise and trade between US$76,000 and US$79,400 before the CPI release. A decisive break below US$76,000 would open a path toward US$73,000. A close above US$79,400 would signal a return to the uptrend.

For the total market, the path depends on the US$2.59T level. That level matches the 23.6 per cent Fibonacci support. A hold there could lead to range-bound trading between US$2.59T and US$2.67T. A daily close below US$2.59T would target the next support at US$2.51T, the 38.2 per cent Fibonacci level. A US$2.67T reclaim would indicate stabilisation. The market remains in a corrective phase within a larger uptrend. It is still up 19.65 per cent over 30 days. The key question is whether support attracts buyers or whether liquidations drive a deeper flush.

Macro data will likely decide the next move. The CPI release is the major cue. A hot reading could extend the risk-off mood and trigger another leg down. A cooler reading could give buyers a reason to step in. The correlation with the S&P 500 reached 91 per cent and 92 per cent in two readings. The link with gold reached 87 per cent. This highlights how sensitive crypto has become to macro liquidity sentiment. This is not a market-moving story on its own. It is moving with the broader financial system.

On the regulatory front, Senate Republicans released a revised CLARITY Act. The bill runs 630 pages. It aims to establish a federal framework for digital assets while tightening regulations on non-decentralised DeFi and stablecoins. Senator Cynthia Lummis led the effort. The text includes more than 100 changes requested by Democrats. It rebrands Title I as the Lummis-Gillibrand Responsible Financial Innovation Act of 2026. Lawmakers designed the bill as a broad federal framework rather than a narrow crypto adjustment.

The revised bill would split oversight between the SEC and CFTC. It would formalise how regulators would oversee exchanges, brokers, and protocols. It introduces detailed language for non-decentralised finance protocols that people or groups can control or materially alter. Those protocols would have to register with the CFTC. The text narrows DeFi rules to spot and cash digital commodities. For DeFi, the bill draws a line between genuinely decentralised protocols and those that are decentralised in name only. Participating in governance or security councils does not, by itself, constitute control. Protocols that identifiable actors can steer would be subject to CFTC registration and rulemaking. That rulemaking would focus on spot and cash digital commodity markets and address concerns about prediction markets and similar products.

Also Read: Asia has not opened yet: What will the first bell reveal about Bitcoin and oil?

Payment stablecoins would face a ban on passive interest or yield on idle balances. The bill would still allow activity-based rewards under negotiated language in Section 404. The White House and industry regard this compromise as settled. Bank lobbying continues. Developer protections remain. They aim to shield non-controlling software authors from being treated as money transmitters simply for publishing code.

If Congress enacts it, major DeFi and stablecoin projects operating in the United States would need clearer compliance strategies. Many pure-protocol developers could gain a safer legal footing. This mix could reshape compliance planning for large platforms while offering greater protection for developers who do not control user funds or protocol decisions.

The next step is a cloture vote on 15 September 2026. The motion requires 60 senators to agree to proceed. Republicans hold 53 seats. At least seven Democrats or independents must support it. Some Democratic aides call unresolved ethics disputes the biggest stumbling block. Law enforcement and banking groups push competing changes to ethics and stablecoin language. Prediction markets and research desks assign relatively low odds that the bill will become law in 2026. Failure at this stage could push comprehensive US crypto legislation back several years. That outcome would leave SEC and CFTC rulemaking as the main path for crypto regulation. Confidence in the text and vote timing is moderate because multiple independent reports agree. Political outcomes remain uncertain.

Also Read: Why a strong jobs report hit Bitcoin and Ethereum harder than the stock market

The revised CLARITY Act is the most concrete attempt so far to give US crypto markets a formal federal rulebook, especially for DeFi, exchanges, and stablecoins. Whether it advances on 15 September will shape how quickly US based projects can plan around stable rules rather than piecemeal regulation. Crypto users should watch that vote and any follow-up agency rulemaking as key signals for the regulatory regime they will face.

In my view, the current dip is a natural cooldown after a strong monthly rally, which a leverage unwind sharpened. The high correlation with traditional markets shows that crypto remains sensitive to macro liquidity sentiment. The near-term outlook is cautiously bearish. Momentum has shifted to sellers. Stability depends on holding the key support zone. Bitcoin must defend US$76,000 in the hours leading up to the CPI release. If it fails, macro fears could trigger another leg down. If it holds, the market may find room to consolidate and wait for clearer data.

—

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

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

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

The post Bitcoin drops to US$76,796.54 as 91% S&P 500 correlation exposes crypto’s macro trap appeared first on e27.

The Philippines’s electric vehicle (EV) market is expected to keep growing in 2026 even as the broader car industry contracts, underscoring how fuel costs, government incentives and cheaper Chinese models are beginning to shift buyer behaviour in one of Southeast Asia’s more difficult markets for electrification.

BMI Country Risk and Industry Research forecasts electric vehicle sales in the Philippines to rise 11.2 per cent year-on-year in 2026, from 29,479 units to 32,776 units. Its definition of EVs includes battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, but excludes conventional hybrids that cannot be charged externally.

Also Read: Southeast Asia’s EV startups draw US$622M as clean mobility shifts from pitch to pilot

That growth is notable because BMI expects total vehicle sales in the country to fall 8.7 per cent to 423,750 units next year. As a result, EV penetration is projected to climb from 6.4 per cent in 2025 to 7.7 per cent in 2026.

The numbers point to a familiar pattern across Southeast Asia: EV adoption is rising, but not evenly. In wealthier urban centres, buyers are increasingly open to electrified vehicles, particularly as fuel prices climb and more models enter showrooms. Outside those areas, charging access, road conditions and affordability continue to slow the transition.

Fuel prices cut both ways

BMI said higher fuel prices linked to the US-Iran conflict are producing two opposing effects in the Philippine auto market. On one hand, they are weakening overall demand by raising transport and ownership costs. On the other, they make electrified vehicles more attractive to buyers who can still afford a new car.

“Consumers able to purchase a new vehicle have a stronger incentive to consider models that can reduce fuel expenditure. This will benefit BEVs, PHEVs and HEVs, particularly among higher-mileage drivers and urban consumers,” BMI said.

That matters in the Philippines, where traffic congestion, long commute times and frequent stop-start driving can make fuel spending a major concern for households and small businesses. For fleet operators, ride-hailing drivers and urban professionals, the economics of electrification can become more compelling when petrol prices are volatile.

Still, the shift is not a simple move from petrol cars to fully electric ones. BMI expects hybrids and plug-in hybrids to remain important because they offer lower fuel use without forcing drivers to depend fully on public charging networks. This is especially relevant in a market where many consumers do not have reliable access to home charging.

Chinese brands push prices lower

A broader model line-up is also helping the market. BMI pointed to brands such as BYD, Chery, MG, VinFast and Tesla as supporting the local battery EV segment through more competitive pricing and a wider choice of vehicles.

Chinese automakers are likely to be particularly important. BYD, MG, GAC Aion and Chery are bringing more affordable electric SUVs and crossovers into the market, which could help reduce the price gap between EVs and comparable internal combustion engine vehicles.

“We contend that the expansion of Chinese brands will be particularly important because it will reduce the price gap between EVs and comparable internal combustion engine vehicles while increasing consumer awareness of electrified technology,” BMI said.

This mirrors developments elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Chinese EV makers have moved aggressively into Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, often using price, financing and high-spec models to challenge Japanese incumbents. The Philippines has been slower to electrify at scale, but the entry of more Chinese brands could alter expectations among buyers who previously saw EVs as niche or luxury products.

Also Read: Datakrew’s US$2.6M raise is a bet on the EV problem nobody wants to own: battery failures

The popularity of SUVs, crossovers and pickup trucks adds another layer. These are important segments in the Philippine market, but electric versions tend to carry higher sticker prices and require larger batteries. More competitively priced Chinese models could therefore play a decisive role in pushing EVs beyond early adopters.

Policy helps, but charging remains the bottleneck

Government policy is another tailwind. Battery EVs are exempt from import tariffs and excise taxes until 2028, while hybrids and plug-in hybrids benefit from tariff exemptions and lower excise tax rates. These measures are narrowing the price gap with petrol and diesel vehicles.

The Electric Vehicle Industry Development Act also provides a policy framework for charging infrastructure, regulatory support and the use of EVs in public-sector fleets. It sets a target for EVs to make up at least 10 per cent of government vehicle fleets, a move that could create demand while making the technology more visible to the public.

But charging infrastructure remains the clearest obstacle. The Philippines currently has around 1,600 charging points, according to the Electric Vehicle Association of the Philippines. These include 781 alternating current chargers, 291 direct current chargers and 528 battery-swapping stations.

“Although the network is expanding, charging facilities remain concentrated in major urban areas,” BMI said.

That concentration limits the practicality of battery EV ownership for people without home charging and for drivers who travel between cities or through less-developed areas. The dominance of alternating current chargers also means charging can be slow, making plug-in hybrids a more comfortable compromise for many consumers.

Range anxiety is not only about how many chargers exist. Buyers also need confidence that chargers are in the right places, working when needed, compatible with their vehicle and not already occupied. In a market with uneven road quality and heavy congestion, those concerns become more pronounced.

This is why the Philippine market may not follow the same path as countries that built dense charging networks early. Instead, electrification could advance through a mix of battery EVs in cities, plug-in hybrids for flexibility and conventional hybrids for buyers who want lower fuel costs without changing refuelling habits.

A stronger second half of the decade

BMI expects EV sales growth to accelerate after 2026. It forecasts sales to reach 51,666 units in 2027, 65,432 units in 2028, 78,781 units in 2029 and 91,730 units in 2030. That implies average annual growth of 29.3 per cent between 2026 and 2030.

EV penetration is forecast to rise from 7.7 per cent in 2026 to 11.4 per cent in 2027, 13.7 per cent in 2028, 15.6 per cent in 2029 and 17.3 per cent in 2030. Internal combustion engine vehicle sales, by contrast, are expected to recover more slowly, from 390,974 units in 2026 to 438,106 units in 2030.

Also Read: Inside Thailand’s EV and battery push: Balancing growth with sustainability

The outlook suggests electrified vehicles will account for a growing share of industry expansion in the second half of the decade. But two risks stand out: slow charging infrastructure rollout and possible changes to incentives after 2028. Either could weaken affordability and consumer confidence.

The upside case is equally clear. If Chinese automakers intensify competition, battery costs continue to fall and public and private investment in charging accelerates, EV adoption could move faster than BMI currently expects. For the Philippines, the question is no longer whether electrification will happen, but whether infrastructure and policy can keep pace with the market’s growing interest.

The post EVs gain ground in the Philippines as fuel costs squeeze drivers appeared first on e27.

Southeast Asia’s venture boom has left behind a very large graveyard. Between January 2020 and July 2026, 7,538 startups across the region deadpooled, according to Tracxn data examined in a new e27 analysis of 76 notable venture-backed failures.

The pattern is unmistakable: 2021 and 2022 alone account for 57.3% of all closures, as founders who raised at peak 2019–2020 valuations ran out of runway once cheap capital vanished and investors began demanding proof of unit economics rather than growth alone.

E-commerce, social commerce, proptech, co-working, fintech, Web3 and logistics absorbed the heaviest losses — sectors where scale depended on constant cash injections rather than durable margins. Indonesian fashion platform Sorabel, Vietnamese proptech Propzy and enterprise AI firm Taiger all raised meaningful capital before folding. A second, smaller wave hit in 2024, when companies that had survived on bridge financing ran out of options as Series B and C capital failed to arrive.

Closures have since slowed sharply, to just 308 across 2025 and the first seven months of 2026, suggesting the most indiscriminate phase of the correction has passed. The lessons for founders: funding timing matters, GMV is not profit, and premature regional expansion punishes more than it rewards in a market that is really a patchwork of many.

Read the full article here:

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REGIONAL

Grab in talks to acquire SoftBank-backed Atome: Grab is in discussions to buy buy-now-pay-later firm Atome, which counts SoftBank among its backers. A deal would significantly expand Grab’s fintech footprint across Southeast Asia’s fast-growing consumer credit market.

TikTok affiliate to sink US$980M into Vietnam logistics: The investment marks one of the largest single logistics commitments tied to e-commerce in Ho Chi Minh City, deepening TikTok’s Vietnam supply-chain footprint.

Circle to acquire Tazapay, expanding USDC’s SEA reach: The deal pulls Singapore-based cross-border payments infrastructure into Circle’s stablecoin ecosystem, signalling stablecoin rails moving deeper into SEA trade flows.

BillEase doubles credit facility with RCBC to US$16M: Philippine BNPL platform BillEase has doubled its credit facility with Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation to US$16M, boosting its lending capacity to serve more underbanked Filipino consumers.

Indonesia lawmakers grill Tokopedia, TikTok Shop over frozen funds: Parliamentarians are pressing the e-commerce platforms for answers on seller funds that remain frozen, raising fresh questions over merchant protections.

Malaysia ranks second to Singapore in GSMA digital index: The ranking cites Malaysia’s digital infrastructure and AI policy progress, with Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines close behind in the region-wide assessment.

Philippine EV adoption set to accelerate despite charging gaps: BMI forecasts faster uptake even as charging infrastructure lags demand, pointing to policy and import incentives as key swing factors.

Singapore tops Southeast Asia in 2026 Best Workplaces list: The ranking places Singapore ahead of regional peerson workplace culture metrics, reinforcing its pull for regional talent.

Malaysia targets US$5B in annual GDP gains from AI: The communications minister linked the target to national AI strategy execution, part of a broader push to position Malaysia as a regional AI hub.

Singapore data centre investment to hit US$19.2B by 2050: PwC’s projection reflects sustained capacity build-out as demand for AI compute keeps climbing in the city-state.

N&E Innovations nets US$1.6M to fight cashew waste: The funding backs tech that converts husk waste into produce-protection material, tapping agritech’s growing climate angle.

Try Everything 2026 puts AI, robotics, capital centre stage: The event convenes cross-border investors and founders around emerging-tech themes shaping the region’s next funding cycle.

Toku expands into UAE, Talabat, eight Middle East markets: The SEA-founded fintech is pushing beyond its home region, following a broader pattern of SEA startups chasing Gulf expansion.

INTERVIEWS AND FEATURES

Over 7,500 SEA startups have shut down since 2020: New tracking shows a sustained capital drought has wiped out thousands of Southeast Asian startups over six years, underscoring how tight venture funding remains across the region.

SEA’s AI boom has a water problem it cannot offset away: The piece argues data centre cooling demands pose a resource strain that carbon-style offsets cannot easily solve for the region.

INTERNATIONAL

Massachusetts hits data centres with new clean power rules: Facilities over 25MW must now source their own clean energy or pay into a ratepayer fund, making Massachusetts the third US state in as many months to restrict data centre growth.

DOJ seeks more answers on Fox’s US$22B Roku deal: Regulators are pressing for further detail on the proposed acquisition, adding a layer of scrutiny to one of the year’s largest media-tech tie-ups.

Apple’s new CEO revives a Steve Jobs-era iPhone strategy: John Ternus used his first keynote as CEO to position the iPhone as Apple’s AI hub, echoing Jobs’ 2001 “digital hub” pitch for the Mac.

Apple unveils its first foldable, the iPhone Duo: The launch marks Apple’s entry into foldables, a category rivals have shipped for years, as the company leans harder into hardware differentiation.

Uber invests US$10M in Indian fleet operator Carrum: The Series B values Carrum at roughly US$168M post-money; the startup runs about 5,100 vehicles and is Uber’s largest fleet partner for its premium Black tier in India.

Google DeepMind alumni build tools to accelerate fusion power: The founders are applying AI-driven modelling to fusion reactor design, part of a wider wave of AI-for-energy startups chasing grid-scale power breakthroughs.

Travis Kalanick’s Atoms eyes a move into robotaxis: The Uber co-founder’s new venture is reportedly exploring autonomous ride-hailing, pitting Kalanick against the industry he helped build a decade earlier.

Students who avoid AI for schoolwork outscore peers: OECD: The finding holds true in science specifically, with one notable use-case exception, raising fresh questions for education policy as AI tools spread in classrooms.

Finvolve backs Indian cybersecurity startup AllSecureX: Singapore-based Finvolve has invested in AllSecureX, an Indian cybersecurity startup, signalling growing cross-border venture activity between Southeast Asia and South Asia’s expanding infosec sector.

SEMICONDUCTOR

OpenAI deepens Samsung tie-up on next-generation chips: The expanded partnership points to tighter supply-chain coordination between frontier AI labs and Korean chipmakers as compute demand accelerates.

Synopsys, A*STAR team up on AI chip packaging: The Singapore collaboration targets advanced packaging bottlenecks that increasingly constrain AI chip performance and supply.

China’s Longsys slips on Hong Kong debut: The memory chipmaker’s listing fell short of expectations, a reminder that not every chip-sector IPO is riding the AI hardware boom smoothly.

CYBERSECURITY

Hacker steals US$340M in crypto heist, returns most of it: The Liquid Network exploit ranks among the largest crypto thefts on record; roughly 85% of the stolen bitcoin has since been returned.

Google flags threat actors weaponising agentic AI: The warning covers attackers automating intrusion chains with autonomous AI agents, a growing concern for enterprise security teams across Asia.

AI

OpenAI adds AI doomer Paul Christiano to its board: Christiano, an alignment researcher who helped pioneer RLHF, joins OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee following a string of AI agent security incidents.

Anthropic researcher quits, warns on self-improving AI: Jacob Coxon resigned publicly, accusing frontier labs of racing toward recursive self-improvement without adequate safeguards against loss of control.

OpenAI confirms wiki breach, pledges disclosure framework: The lab is working on transparency measures after a security incident, amid mounting scrutiny of how AI labs report agent misbehaviour.

Singapore firms race to adopt AI despite system gaps: A new report finds adoption is outpacing readiness, with many organisations lacking the underlying data and governance systems to support it.

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

The cheapest way to stop your AI product from regressing: A contributor argues disciplined evaluation practicescost far less than the reputational damage of shipping AI features that silently degrade over time.

Quantum’s ChatGPT moment is coming, and it’s worth trillions: The piece contends quantum computing is nearing an inflection point comparable to generative AI’s breakout, with major economic stakes attached.

I built a 21-role AI workforce; management was the hard part: The founder’s account centres on orchestrating AI agents, arguing coordination — not capability — is the real bottleneck in agentic setups.

The missing layer in AI innovation: human verification: The essay makes the case that unchecked AI outputs need structured human review before they can be trusted in production systems.

When a slot opens, let the AI agent act within limits: The contributor argues for bounded autonomy — giving AI agents room to act inside clearly defined guardrails rather than full or no autonomy.

The most valuable part of AI may not be the model: The essay suggests the surrounding infrastructure — data, workflows, and integration — may capture more long-term value than the models themselves.

Gen Z doesn’t need more AI courses, it needs unreplicable skills: The argument centres on judgement and creativityas the skills that will differentiate young professionals once AI commoditises technical execution.

SEA’s SMEs don’t have an AI problem, they have a record problem: The piece argues poor data hygiene, not AI access, is the real barrier holding small businesses back from useful automation.

Singapore learnt to measure cooling; ASEAN should follow: The contributor argues Singapore’s cooling metrics offer a template the rest of ASEAN should adopt as data centre density rises regionally.

Thailand’s mobility future will be decided by data, not vehicles: The essay argues data infrastructure, not fleet electrification alone, will determine how Thailand’s transport systems evolve.

Will Bitcoin hold US$77,000, or slide toward US$2.51T market cap?: The analysis lays out scenarios for bitcoin’s trajectory heading into 10 September, weighing support levels against broader market pressure.

Asia hasn’t opened yet: what the first bell may reveal: The piece previews how Asian markets might react to overnight moves in bitcoin and oil prices as trading begins.

Future-proofing the past: smart engineering for ageing condos: The essay explores how retrofitted infrastructurecan bring Singapore’s older condominiums up to speed for EV charging demand.

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