SINGAPORE: South-East Asia is fast emerging as an investment hot spot for AI leaders like Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp., which are plowing money into cloud services and data centers. But the region’s own young tech companies are failing to capitalise on the boom.
While the world’s biggest companies are set to splurge up to US$60 billion over the next few years in South-East Asia as its young populations embrace video streaming, online shopping and generative AI, little is flowing to the region’s startups that have artificial intelligence at their core. Investors are wary about betting on unproven entities, and the region has yet to show it can produce innovative firms that can scale significantly.
