Ecosystem Roundup: Frozen Middle: 57% of SEA firms can’t scale their AI pilots

e27 - Oct 13, 2026

Southeast Asian companies are spending more on AI and getting little out of it. Adobe’s 2026 State of AI Readiness Report, which surveyed 461 senior executives in the region, finds 73% raising AI budgets year on year, while 57% remain stuck in AI’s Frozen Middle, piloting without the coordination to scale. Only 15 of every 100 […] The post Ecosystem Roundup: Frozen Middle: 57% of SEA firms can’t scale their AI pilots appeared first on e27.

Read full article
MORE NEWS
Apple adds No Man’s Sky, other indie games to App Store
Apple adds No Man’s Sky, other indie games to App Store
This week, Apple kicks off Indie Games Week by adding seven familiar titles into the App Store including Sifu, Vampire Crawlers, and No Man’s Sky. It’s a great retrospect to...
Oct 13, 2026See more
MakeO secures US$10M to scale Zenyum’s dentist network across Asia
MakeO secures US$10M to scale Zenyum’s dentist network across Asia
India’s MakeO has raised US$10 million in a round led by Singularity AMC, with unnamed funds and family offices also participating, eight months after the Mumbai-headquartered dental aligner company agreed...
Oct 13, 2026See more
Adobe study finds 57 per cent of SEA firms stuck in AI’s “Frozen Middle”
Adobe study finds 57 per cent of SEA firms stuck in AI’s “Frozen Middle”
Southeast Asian companies are not short of money for AI. Most of them simply can’t get their projects past their own IT and security teams. That is the uncomfortable picture...
Oct 13, 2026See more
Work from anywhere, work all the time: Inside Singapore’s flexibility paradox
Work from anywhere, work all the time: Inside Singapore’s flexibility paradox
When Singapore’s offices emptied out in 2020, flexible work was sold as the cure for an overworked city. Employees would get their commutes back, set their own hours and finally...
Oct 13, 2026See more
Vietnamese-founded Drylab raises US$3M to put autonomous AI scientists inside pharma labs
Vietnamese-founded Drylab raises US$3M to put autonomous AI scientists inside pharma labs
The cost of sequencing a human genome fell from about US$95 million in 2001 to about US$500 by 2022, according to the US National Human Genome Research Institute. Biology became...
Oct 13, 2026See more
Could a hot inflation print send Bitcoin and Ethereum into freefall?
Could a hot inflation print send Bitcoin and Ethereum into freefall?
The cryptocurrency market is going through a difficult stretch. In my view, this selloff is not a story about broken technology or failed projects. It is a story about how...
Oct 13, 2026See more
What is work worth when thought is metered?
What is work worth when thought is metered?
Your organisation buys human intelligence by the hour and machine intelligence by the million tokens. Only one of those prices is falling fast, and most management systems, from the timesheet...
Oct 13, 2026See more
NEU Battery Materials bags US$7.6M to mine lithium from the world’s least-loved battery
NEU Battery Materials bags US$7.6M to mine lithium from the world’s least-loved battery
Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries have an awkward reputation among recyclers: they are everywhere, and they are worth very little once they die. Unlike the nickel- and cobalt-rich chemistries that...
Oct 13, 2026See more
Social impact is easy to pitch and hard to prove: 17 SEA startups taking the harder route
Social impact is easy to pitch and hard to prove: 17 SEA startups taking the harder route
“Social impact” is one of the most overused phrases in a Southeast Asian pitch deck. Founders apply the label to themselves, and in a funding winter it gets stretched to...
Oct 13, 2026See more
US-China trade is entering an era of managed rivalry. Southeast Asian businesses should prepare for it
US-China trade is entering an era of managed rivalry. Southeast Asian businesses should prepare for it
The most important change in US-China trade this year is not another tariff headline. It is the emergence of a more managed, transactional relationship between the world’s two largest economies....
Oct 13, 2026See more
Everyone is talking about AI adoption. But are enterprises actually ready for it?
Everyone is talking about AI adoption. But are enterprises actually ready for it?
A company can have hundreds of employees using ChatGPT, Copilot, or other AI tools every day, and still not be an AI-ready organisation. This may sound contradictory, but it is...
Oct 13, 2026See more
AI can generate a video in minutes. Making it usable is the hard part
AI can generate a video in minutes. Making it usable is the hard part
Generative AI has made video creation remarkably fast. A scene that once required a camera crew, actors, locations and hours of post-production can now begin with a prompt and an...
Oct 13, 2026See more
RECOMMENDED

SainsKini is established to address and cover all notable science and technology discoveries made in the region and properly credit them for the whole world to acknowledge.

Copyright © 2015 - 2026sainskini. All Rights Reserved.