Sarah Chew covers Southeast Asia’s technology, fintech, digital policy, and AI adoption landscape for RECATOOLS. Her work focuses on how regulation, platform shifts, and emerging technologies affect businesses, consumers, and digital markets across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

169
Articles
ASEAN Tech
Primary beat
May 2026
Writing since
~1124 min
Total reading
All 169 ASEAN Tech 97 Finance 65 Business 4 AI & ML 3

Articles · ASEAN Tech Showing 71–80 of 97

Bundled fibre-optic strands glowing turquoise against a black background, illustrating a report on green financing for a Johor data centre campus.
ASEAN Tech

STT GDC Raised US$1.37bn For Johor, And Three Of The Four Lenders Are Regional

A green financing facility for a 166 MW campus at Nusa Cemerlang, coordinated by UOB Malaysia with OCBC, Standard Chartered and CIMB. The lender composition says more about who funds Southeast Asia's data centre build than the headline number does.

19 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
The Metro Manila skyline at sunset seen through tall wild grasses, illustrating a report on a Philippine consumer lender reaching break-even.
ASEAN Tech

Skyro Reached Break-Even In Philippine Consumer Lending, Which Almost Nobody Does

About US$180 million disbursed in the first half, 1.9 times a year earlier, and operating profitability four years after launch. The distribution model — 3,000 merchants, 10,000 till points — explains the economics better than the user count does.

19 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
Gold-coloured coins spilling from a glass jar on a red background, illustrating a report on MariBank's regional expansion.
ASEAN Tech

MariBank Is Exporting a Model That Has Not Worked at Home Yet

Sea's Singapore digital bank lost S$55.6 million in 2025 and has about three years of its profitability window left. It is now building a regional group, starting with the Philippines, where a large share of transactions still begin and end in cash.

17 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
Front panels of rack-mounted servers with status indicators lit, illustrating a report on an ASEAN AI data centre partnership.
ASEAN Tech

An AI Data Centre Pact for Four ASEAN Markets, With No Capacity, Cost or Date

A SoftBank subsidiary, a Singapore developer and a Malaysian HPC firm will build AI data centres in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam. No investment, capacity, timeline or site was disclosed - and what was disclosed is more informative.

17 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
A river boat below the Singapore central business district skyline, illustrating a report on a company that reincorporated in Singapore.
ASEAN Tech

Manus Moved to Singapore. Beijing Blocked the Sale Anyway.

Meta is unwinding a US$2 billion acquisition that Chinese regulators blocked, and users have until 23 August to save their data. Manus had already reincorporated in Singapore. The position Beijing took was that control follows origin, not registration.

15 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
An open legal textbook on a stack of files and newspapers, with a small brass scales-of-justice figure and a seated figure in a suit blurred behind
ASEAN Tech

Vietnam's High-Risk AI List Takes Effect Tomorrow. Compliance Is Not a Defence.

Six sectors, mandatory conformity assessment, local presence for foreign providers - and strict liability for damages even where the provider complied fully. Southeast Asia's first binding AI regime sets a template the region will copy or avoid.

14 Aug 2026 · 9 min read
Three high-voltage transmission pylons standing in thick fog, their power lines fading into white, photographed in monochrome
ASEAN Tech

Indonesia Wants a Gigawatt. Singapore's Entire Market Is 1.46.

Zankore targets a gigawatt of AI computing capacity within three years, starting with 200MW at Batang in 2027. Set against Singapore's live capacity and Malaysia's pipeline, the ambition is clear - and so is the constraint.

13 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
Traffic on a tree-lined Jakarta arterial road, office towers and a construction crane rising through haze behind it — illustrative of the Indonesian market CoreWeave is entering.
ASEAN Tech

CoreWeave Is Building 360MW in Indonesia. It Will Own the Compute.

Three facilities, 360 megawatts, online in 2028. The buildings will be in Indonesia and the machines inside them will be CoreWeave's, which is the part the sovereignty language tends to obscure.

11 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
Small online seller labelling a parcel beside a laptop, illustrating the merchants this withholding tax reaches.
ASEAN Tech

Indonesia Switched On a Marketplace Tax. Four Days Later It Switched It Off.

Indonesia's four largest marketplaces began withholding 0.5% of seller turnover on 1 August. The finance minister postponed the regime on 5 August, the tax office has since set a 1 November restart with refunds, and the four collector appointments are being revoked.

8 Aug 2026 · 7 min read
A red passenger train crossing a steel railway bridge over water.
ASEAN Tech

Two MPs Asked What the Johor Rail Link Does to Singapore Retail. The Numbers Come Later

The government says the RTS Link brings net benefits and that its taskforce reports later this year. The projected effects on spending, costs, employment and visitor flows were not given.

8 Aug 2026 · 8 min read
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