Jonathan Honig, who owns about 9% of MoneyHero’s Class A shares, wants the Nasdaq-listed comparison platform sold. His open letter asks the board to hire an independent adviser and explore a sale before a 5 October deadline.
Honig’s complaints are hard to dismiss: no permanent CEO six months after Rohith Murthy’s exit, revenue down from US$80.7 million in FY2023 to US$73.4 million in FY2025, and a share price more than 88% below its 2023 debut. At US$0.675 a share, the market values SingSaver, Seedly, Moneymax and 10.1 million members at roughly US$30 million, barely above the company’s US$28.2 million cash pile. Honig nearly doubled his stake as the stock fell, betting the cash sets a floor. His proposed US$1.50 a share would more than double his money.
The arithmetic of control tells a different story. Richard Li’s sponsor entity holds 38.3% of the equity and 81.1% of the votes through super-voting Class B shares. Honig can embarrass the board, but he cannot outvote it. A pressured sale also carries risks: a take-under priced off cash, a break-up that thins Southeast Asia’s comparison market, or a buyout by the controller itself. PropertyGuru’s 52% premium shows exits are possible, but MoneyHero lacks its pricing power.
REGIONAL
PSA, Granite Asia launch US$50M fund for supply-chain tech: The G&P Strategic Innovation Fund will co-invest alongside Granite Asia’s existing funds, backing port, logistics and supply-chain startups that can move beyond pilots. PSA, which handled over 105 million TEUs in 2025, offers deployment sites across 45 countries.
Amazon pays US$75M for Selangor land to build a data centre: Amazon Data Services Malaysia is buying a 184,000 sq m freehold plot in Dengkil, Sepang, from developer Sunsuria. The deal needs state and data-centre task force approvals, with completion due by Q2 2027.
Zeya Health buys ConnectLah to automate clinic bookings with AI: Antler-backed Zeya absorbs ConnectLah’s WhatsApp-based booking workflows after posting 15-fold revenue growth. It serves providers in six markets and targets 1,000 by mid-2027. ConnectLah founder Jules Pereira-Gomes joins as strategic advisor.
MoneyHero shareholder urges board to explore sale after stock slump: Jonathan Honig, who owns about 9% of MoneyHero’s Class A shares, wants an independent adviser hired as the Singapore-based platform battles leadership uncertainty, stalled revenue growth and a sharp fall in its Nasdaq-listed shares.
MDEC chief Anuar Fariz Fadzil to exit after US$44B investment push: Anuar leaves Malaysia’s national digital-economy agency when his contract ends on 2 October, closing a two-year tenure that sharpened MDEC’s focus on AI, high-value investment and measurable economic outcomes.
Temasek to open first Middle East offices in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi: Due to open in 1H 2027, the new hubs will widen Temasek’s deal access into Central Asia and Africa and lift its network to 15 offices in 11 countries. The state investor manages a S$518B net portfolio.
Malaysia’s top 100 startups generated US$2.98B in FY2024 revenue: Cradle’s inaugural Top 100 list shows an 87% average CAGR, with 36 startups earning over MYR1M in net profit and 58 operating abroad. AI and data-driven businesses make up 66% of the cohort.
Kawaijuku backs Do Ventures to enter Vietnam’s education market: KJ Holdings, the education group’s holding company, has invested in Do Ventures Fund II, using a Ho Chi Minh City-based VC as its route into Vietnam as a shrinking population squeezes demand in Japan.
Meta names Dhruv Vohra to lead its Southeast Asia business: Vohra becomes Managing Director of Meta’s Global Business Group, overseeing commercial strategy across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam as AI and chat commerce reshape online retail.
Singapore leads region with US$284B in crypto activity: Chainalysis: Singapore’s activity rose 55.4%, driven by a 94% jump in institutional trading, even as the wider Central and Southeast Asia and Oceania region contracted 6.8%. Vietnam ranked fourth with US$122.2B.
AI could lift Singapore’s potential output by 1.06%, says AMRO: Only half the gain arrives by 2035 under AMRO’s baseline scenario. Just 3.8% of firms have built AI into core operations, while 22.3% of jobs face high automation exposure, squeezing fresh graduates.
IMDA, TikTok launch programme to build Singapore microdrama talent: Professionals from 20 accredited companies will learn to produce 50-100-episode microdramas across live-action and AI-animated tracks, including ByteDance’s Seedance 2.5, before onboarding onto TikTok’s distribution ecosystem.
EV adoption spreads beyond China into Southeast Asia, says BMI: BMI expects Asia-Pacific vehicle sales to shrink 0.5% in 2026, yet EVs will keep gaining in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. Malaysia’s tax break for imported EVs has expired, favouring locally assembled models.
AI exposure widens the credit gap across Asia-Pacific sectors: S&P: Issuers with AI demand exposure, pricing power and supply-chain flexibility look most resilient. Prolonged energy disruptions threaten manufacturing, agriculture and transport, while emerging Asia remains exposed to capital rotation.
FEATURES AND INTERVIEWS
AI agents are exposing SEA startups’ codebase problem: As developers move from AI autocomplete to agents that work on codebases unsupervised, Southeast Asia’s startups face a harder question: whether their code is in good enough shape for AI to touch safely.
Philippine brands win AI mentions but lose control of context: A Spiralytics study finds consumers increasingly ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for buying advice, creating a new visibility problem: being named by an AI does not guarantee being described the way a brand intends.
Why token prices understate the real cost of AI agents: Founders who forecast AI costs from a model provider’s pricing page treat AI like a utility meter. Autonomous agents break that model, making usage, and the bill, far harder to predict.
Michael Padilla on turning risk management into a business: After 31 years in the US Army, the retired colonel founded Al Thuraya Holdings, now 18 companies spanning risk, security, technology and consulting. He argues the costliest failure is refusing to stop when strategy no longer holds.
INTERNATIONAL
OpenAI in talks to raise US$30B at a US$1.4T valuation: The pre-IPO round would bridge OpenAI to a delayed 2027 listing. Run-rate revenue jumped 70% since July to US$40B in August after a refocus on coding, according to Bloomberg.
SoftBank completes final US$10B OpenAI investment: The final tranche closes out SoftBank’s OpenAI commitment as the ChatGPT maker lines up a fresh pre-IPO round ahead of its planned 2027 public debut.
CYBERSECURITY
OpenAI apologises after its AI agents breached Australian govt sites: An experimental model accessed a Services Australia system holding Medicare data in June, but authorities learnt only on 10 September. OpenAI says no personal records were accessed and is setting up an independent Australian task force.
89% of Singapore leaders fear data sovereignty failures: Yet 81% of Singapore enterprises lack a formal data sovereignty strategy, the highest of eight markets in Everpure’s survey, and 68% have no plan for geopolitical data exfiltration or service disruption.
ThreatBook buys AI penetration testing platform CyberStrikeAI: The Singapore- and Hong Kong-based firm plans an Asia-Pacific rollout of an enterprise edition with on-premises deployment and audit trails this month. Researchers have linked the open-source tool to infrastructure tied to FortiGate targeting.
SEMICONDUCTOR
Infineon opens US$1.4B Thailand plant as Bangkok pushes into chips: The German chipmaker’s highly automated backend facility in Samut Prakan makes power modules for EVs, renewables and industry, anchoring Thailand’s bid to draw at least 500 billion baht in chip investment by 2029.
Taiwan’s AVC plans US$500M Vietnam expansion and R&D centre: The AI-server cooling supplier would lift its total Vietnam investment above US$1.26B with the 2027 spend in Bac Ninh, where the new R&D centre will train semiconductor and high-tech workers.
Amazon seeks to offload US$8B of Nvidia chips to investors: FT: Amazon is looking to sell US$8B worth of Nvidia chips to outside investors, the Financial Times reports, as hyperscalers hunt for new ways to finance the soaring cost of AI compute.
Malaysia needs 50,000 engineers but graduates only 5,000 a year: MBSB Research warns the talent gap will cap tech-sector earnings as Malaysia moves from back-end assembly into IC design and advanced packaging. The National Semiconductor Strategy targets 60,000 skilled engineers by 2030.
AI
OpenAI cuts ties with three safety researchers, WSJ reports: OpenAI says the trio mishandled sensitive information by sharing it with an outside AI safety group. The exits follow reports that executives brushed aside staff safety warnings, and a string of rogue-agent incidents.
Grok reportedly shaped Trump’s thinking before the Venezuela raid: Trump spent hours asking Musk’s chatbot in December 2025 how Venezuelans would react to Nicolás Maduro’s capture, Time reports. The Pentagon has since tapped Musk to co-lead a study on battlefield technology.
ChatGPT now lets shoppers virtually try on clothes: OpenAI has added a virtual try-on feature to ChatGPT, pulling the chatbot deeper into shopping as AI assistants compete to become the starting point for online retail.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
The cross-border due diligence questions most founders can’t answer: Chris Chen recalls a polished Singapore semiconductor pitch that faltered on three questions, starting with where the intellectual property legally sits. A clean deck and cap table cannot hide a messy cross-border structure.
What TaniHub teaches Indonesia’s agritech founders about credit: Bobby Yulandika Putra revisits the first agritech generation, from TaniHub to Crowde and iGrow, which tried to do for smallholder farmers what fintech did for SME credit, and why credit became the sector’s paradox.
Why con artists get the meeting that honest founders can’t: David Kim uses Elizabeth Holmes’ 10-minute slot with George Shultz, which ran two and a half hours, to examine why charisma opens investor doors that substance alone often cannot.
SMEs adopt AI four times slower than big business: Alexey Navolokin cites IMDA data showing SME AI adoption at 14.5% against 62.5% for larger firms, and argues that closing the gap starts with something basic: the PC on every employee’s desk.
The next information advantage is knowing what changed: Jeff Chong argues AI summarisation solves only part of the problem for decision-makers. The real edge lies in tracking what has shifted between one announcement, report or filing and the next.
Why AI could unbundle the beauty industry: With contract manufacturers and e-commerce already in place, John Millar argues AI removes one more reason new beauty brands need their own factories, R&D teams or nationwide retail networks.
Why social commerce seeding is replacing influencer retainers: With acquisition costs on Meta, TikTok and Google up 60-80% in 18 months, Serge Berezhnoy says brands are swapping guaranteed upfront fees for performance-linked creator seeding.
A 20% stablecoin APY may be less magical than it sounds: Drawing on a costly 2022 lesson, Douglas Gan urges Singaporeans used to 2.5% CPF returns to ask who pays the yield, and why, before chasing double-digit stablecoin returns.
Tokenisation: Crypto’s symbolic walk on Wall Street: Yiwei Wang examines the SEC’s Innovation Exemption for tokenised US stocks, and warns that hacks such as Bitget’s US$387.5M loss show integration with traditional finance is no substitute for security.
The sovereign shift: Why nation states trade gold for Bitcoin: Anndy Lian points to sovereign wealth fund allocations, new institutional products and ETF inflows as evidence that Bitcoin is maturing from a speculative retail asset into an institutional cornerstone.
Will Bitcoin’s 19% Uptober average survive US$100 oil?: Anndy Lian’s data points to neither a triumphant rally nor a collapse this October, but a tougher middle path as the economic pressures that defined the year weigh on crypto.
Could the US jobs report make or break Bitcoin’s rally?: Bitcoin rose 1.7% to US$85,002 and the crypto market reached US$2.89T ahead of the data, with Anndy Lian crediting institutional optimism and policy progress for the coordinated advance.
Why a good product isn’t enough for sustainable growth: Reem Bekdash argues that when growth stalls despite customer interest and a hard-working team, the problem usually lies outside the product itself.
Building a Bangladesh agency from the inside: Part 2: Tajul Islam picks up Ngital’s story after its early years, exploring what client trust looks like once work is underway in an industry he says is built on vanity metrics.
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