Business News
Curated business and financial news from top sources across Asia — banking, fintech, healthcare, enterprise, and markets.
AstraZeneca, Oracle partner on AI-driven clinical trials
M42, the UAE healthcare group involved in the first project, was launched by G42 and Mubadala.
Read more →AI won’t tidy your business. It just moves the mess faster
I build AI tools for marketers, and run an AI marketing software firm in Singapore, so I spend a lot of time hearing about AI adoption. A recent talk by Robert Lai, founder of performance agency Kaliber, stuck with me because it opened with an uncomfortable claim: most of the AI work in the room [] The post AI wont tidy your business. It just moves the mess faster appeared first on e27 .
Read more →DBS PayLah! rolls out QR payments in Taiwan
This adds to the lender’s coverage in markets including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and China
Read more →How I use AI to support public relations
After narrowly losing yet another pitch earlier this year, I added up the time I had spent preparing proposals: 300 hours in four months. I wanted to know whether we were pursuing the right business. Using Gemini and a script in Google Docs, I compared five years of proposals with our client invoicing records. One [] The post How I use AI to support public relations appeared first on e27 .
Read more →Oyo parent Prism plans to cut IPO fresh issue to $353m
Moody's recently raised PRISM's outlook to positive from stable while affirming its B2 rating.
Read more →Blackstone, Warburg weigh IntraFi sale at over $10b
Formerly Promontory Interfinancial Network, IntraFi was bought by Blackstone in 2019.
Read more →Blume Ventures leads $4.15m series A in Hunar.AI
Founded in 2022, Hunar offers voice, WhatsApp, and chat-based tools for candidate sourcing.
Read more →I still work 40 hours a week. AI turns it into 120
I teach people how to use AI for a living. So you would expect me to tell you it does everything. It doesn’t. What it does is take a huge amount of the grind out of my week, as long as I stay in the loop. Most of what I have learned came from AI [] The post I still work 40 hours a week. AI turns it into 120 appeared first on e27 .
Read more →Who pays for AI in your language?
Can Asia’s local-language AI models become viable businesses? Plus: South Korea’s robotics push and an interview with TorqueAGI’s founder.
Read more →These funds have not invested in India in the past year
Pitching your startup to an investor? First, check if they’re still active in your market.
Read more →Chinese automaker reports set to shine before challenges mount
Import curbs in Europe and exports tax changes at home cloud the outlook for carmakers from China
Read more →Malaysia’s US$110M startup bet has a matching problem, investors warn
Malaysia has found the money for its startups again. The harder part, investors say, is finding everything that is supposed to come with it. In his Budget 2027 speech on 9 October, Prime Minister and Finance Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Khazanah’s Jelawang Capital and KWAP’s Dana Perintis would invest MYR450 million (US$110.4 million) in startups. [] The post Malaysias US$110M startup bet has a matching problem, investors warn appeared first on e27 .
Read more →Netflix is great at making money – its problem is keeping viewers hooked
An ‘engagement problem’ plagues the streaming giant, even as its revenue grows
Read more →MoneySmart grows revenue by 26% in 2025, but AI threatens margins
With AI eating web traffic on search engines, MoneySmart faces a challenge. But the financial comparison site has new products up its sleeve.
Read more →Google may already be showing us its route to AGI
In 2015, Demis Hassabis looked back at a decision he had made more than a decade earlier. By 2004 he was already thinking about what would eventually become DeepMind, but concluded that the technology was not ready. As he later put it, we still didnt have enough of the components. Deep learning had not yet [] The post Google may already be showing us its route to AGI appeared first on e27 .
Read more →Hasbro raises annual revenue forecast on strong demand for digital games
Hasbro expects fiscal 2026 revenue to grow in the range of 7% to 9% on constant currency basis
Read more →China’s CATL profit growth slows in third quarter as competition intensifies
Third-quarter net profit growth is the slowest in nearly two years
Read more →GM shares sink as full-year profit forecast misses Wall Street estimates
Revenue totaled US$50 billion, up 2.9% from a year earlier
Read more →Singapore banks may curb financing of firms in ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to open burning, deforestation
DBS, OCBC, UOB reiterate strict sustainability standards for clients as scrutiny intensifies over haze crisis
Read more →GoTo’s 27B model speaks Batak, but the real test is who can afford to run it
For most of the generative AI boom, someone in North Sumatra typing a question in Batak Toba has been talking to a machine that, at best, half understands them. GoTo Group says it wants to change that. But the hard part is only beginning. Indonesia’s largest digital ecosystem on Monday released a 27-billion-parameter language model [] The post GoTos 27B model speaks Batak, but the real test is who can afford to run it appeared first on e27 .
Read more →Ecosystem Roundup: Betagro buys control of Freshket as Thai corporates close in
Betagro has taken majority control of Freshket, the Bangkok platform that supplies ingredients to hotels, restaurants and caterers, through its venture arm Betagro Ventures. Neither side disclosed the price, the stake size or what happens to Freshkets venture backers. This is less a courtship than a marriage after a long engagement: Betagro Holding, the listed groups [] The post Ecosystem Roundup: Betagro buys control of Freshket as Thai corporates close in appeared first on e27 .
Read more →What 9 Tokyo Deep Tech Startups Learned About Southeast Asia’s Appetite for Japanese Innovation
On 14 October 2026, e27 hosted Borderless Innovation: X-HUB Tokyo-Singapore Demo Day 2026 with X-HUB TOKYO, the Tokyo Metropolitan Governments global startup accelerator, run by Deloitte Tohmatsu. This is the third year e27 has partnered with Deloitte Tohmatsu to bring Tokyos startups to Southeast Asia, and this years cohort arrived with a clear focus: technology [] The post What 9 Tokyo Deep Tech Startups Learned About Southeast Asias Appetite for Japanese Innovation appeared first on e27 .
Read more →Banks want AI agents to move money, as long as someone is accountable
The pitch for agentic payments usually goes like this: software that negotiates, pays, reconciles and optimises cash while the finance team sleeps. A new report from UOB Global Economics Markets Research is a reminder that a payment involves more than moving the money. Someone also has to answer for it. The bank’s argument is [] The post Banks want AI agents to move money, as long as someone is accountable appeared first on e27 .
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