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SEA of Startups

Candid conversations on what's actually happening across Southeast Asia's startup and venture landscape — the deals, the operators, and the shifts that move the region. Hosted by Kevin Brockland.

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Latest Episode

July 8, 2026

Who Owns the Scarce Thing?

This week the two biggest stories in Southeast Asian tech were not a funding round or somebody’s ninth super app pivot. They were a government chip program in Penang and 3,600 kilometres of fibre being dropped on the seabed between India and Singapore. Two boring stories. Laid...

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One Winner, Six Shipwrecks

Since 2017, Southeast Asia has produced exactly one tech IPO that made public investors real money. One. And this week, the Philippines is getting ready to bet its entire year on the next one. So this week I want to talk about who is buying, who is selling, and which side of...

The Mirage and the Fork in the Road

Start with two numbers and a question. In May, startups in this region raised $472 million. More than double what they raised in April. Read only that line and you would think the drought had broken. Now the second number. That doubling was built almost entirely on two checks....

Oil, iron, and idle money: what the war is really doing to Southeast Asia

Start with a sliver of water between Iran and Oman. On a normal day, roughly a fifth of the world’s oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz. This year it stopped being normal. When the strait seized up, Brent jumped 10 to 13 percent in a single session into the low 80s and kept...

We Called It a Funding Winter. I Think We Built for an Exit That Was Never There.

Singapore just released its report on venture funding for 2025, and almost every write-up reads the same way. Funding winter. Capital’s gone quiet. Hold the line, it’ll come back. I think that’s the wrong story. I’ve been sitting with these numbers for a few days, and the more I...

Chatbots to Agents and where Liability Lands

I hopped into a taxi in Bangkok last week and the driver, a man north of fifty, spent the ride telling me what he was building with AI. Not complaining about the economy. Not asking where I was from. Telling me about his project. I’ve been turning that over ever since, because...

The Philippines Just Drew a Line With Washington. Malaysia Just Rewrote Its IPO Rules. And the Whole Region Is Doing Something Nobody Is Tracking as One Story.

There’s a version of this week that looks like two unrelated news stories from two different countries. The Philippines hosted a US Undersecretary of State for a site unveiling. Malaysia’s securities regulator released a public consultation paper on its small-cap exchange. Two...

Strip Out One Deal and SEA Raised $800M. A Chip Stock Just Got 95x Oversubscribed. And OpenAI Spent $4 Billion Admitting AI Is Hard to Deploy.

There’s a version of this week that looks like a good week for Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem. The Q1 2026 funding report shows the highest quarterly capital raised since late 2022. Malaysia’s hottest IPO in sixteen years prices and lists next week. OpenAI and Anthropic both...

Four Stories That Explain Southeast Asia Right Now

This week’s episode is a news episode. No guests. Just four stories that I think every founder, investor, and operator in Southeast Asia should be paying attention to right now. Here’s what we cover, and why each one matters. 1. China forced Meta to unwind a completed...

Four people are flying around the moon right now.

On April 1st, 2026 (and no, that’s not a joke) Artemis II launched from the same pad that sent Apollo 10 to the moon. Four astronauts. A 10-day mission. The furthest any human has traveled from Earth in over 50 years. I’ve been following the space industry closely for years, and...

AI-First Starts Inside: What Tiwa York Actually Said (And Why It Should Worry You)

Most AI content gives you a framework. Tiwa York gives you a verdict. The founder who built Kaidee to 35 million users and guided it to a successful exit sat down with SEA of Startups and said what most operators are afraid to say out loud: your team is probably performing AI...

The SEA SaaSpocalypse & The Rise of the Space Lobsters

In the ever-changing landscape of technology and business, the term “SaaSpocalypse” has emerged to describe the recent downturn in public software stocks. But what does this mean for the future of SaaS companies, especially in Southeast Asia? In this blog post, we’ll explore the...

Meta's $2.5B "Butterfly Effect"

How Meta’s $2.5B Manus Acquisition Resets AI and Startup Strategy in Asia One-Sentence Summary: Meta’s acquisition of Manus reveals how rapid execution, strategic geographic positioning, and navigating geopolitics can position Southeast Asian startups for global AI success. In...

The "Elon Singularity"

The Future of Space Data Centers and AI: Elon Musk’s Vision for a Space-Driven Tech Ecosystem As technological advancements accelerate, few topics generate as much buzz and speculation as the future of space-based data centers and artificial intelligence. Recently, Elon Musk...

Singapore did it...again: How the SGX–NASDAQ Dual Listing Bridge Rewrites Southeast Asia’s Exit Game

🧠 TL;DR — What Actually Changed SGX × NASDAQ dual listing is a real regulatory breakthrough — but U.S. liquidity remains unproven The fintech “funding collapse” was actually capital consolidation into Singapore Southeast Asia is shifting from emerging → maturing , with real...

While We Argue About Electricity, Google Is Moving Compute to Space. Southeast Asia Has 36 Months to Wake Up.

Your grandmother thinks data centers are just big warehouses with computers. Your government thinks building more of them solves the AI infrastructure problem. Both are about to be catastrophically wrong. A week ago, Kevin sent me an article with six words that basically...

400% Returns: How Transformational M&A and AI Will Redefine Southeast Asia’s Next Decade

⚡ The Shift No One’s Talking About Quick gut check for every founder in Southeast Asia: You’re not asking “How do we grow?” anymore. You’re asking: “Will this survive what’s coming?” Different question. Different game. Different scoreboard. Companies that transform while they...

680 Million People. 11 Regulatory Systems. 1 Opportunity: Turning ASEAN’s Chaos into Capital.

Quick question: What do you call a regional bloc that can’t agree on a unified payment system, has 11 different regulatory frameworks, speaks hundreds of languages, and still somehow attracts more VC than Latin America? Southeast Asia. Your home. Your battlefield. This week, the...

The $1 Trillion AI Feedback Loop: Why OpenAI's Circular Deals Will Either Create the Future or Collapse Like Cisco in 2000

Your grandmother probably thinks AI is just fancy autocomplete. Your investors think it’s the next industrial revolution. Both might be right. And that’s exactly the problem. Welcome to the most expensive game of musical chairs in human history. In October 2025, OpenAI—the...

When Regulators Win: What Singapore's Robotaxi Rollout Reveals About the Future of Deep Tech"

“The interim phase to autonomous vehicles is harder than the end goal. The end goal is all cars are autonomous. The interim is humans and machines sharing the road.” - Kevin Hey guys, Something strange just happened in Singapore. In September 2025, Grab announced plans to launch...

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