Peter Cowan · · 7 min readWho do you trust in tech?
Welcome to Tech in Asia’s Sunday newsletter, your weekend brief on the biggest moves in Asia’s tech and startup world. Not on the mailing list? Register here. Got a story tip? Send it to editors@techinasia.com.
In focus
- Peter Cowan on how much trust tech actually deserves
- How AI is breaking SaaS in Europe and why Asia may be next
- A Q&A with the man behind Glitch in Asia
Hello reader,
Most systems in our world only work when we trust them.
We trust that the water we drink is clean, that the traffic lights work properly, and that our passwords actually keep our data secure. We implicitly trust these things and only notice trust when it starts to break down.
Image credit: Ulla
Two of our stories from this week tackle this in some way or another and discuss what’s left behind once trust disappears.
Lucas Blochberger, the writer of this piece, outlines how AI agents are pushing companies away from the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model they’ve trusted for years.
With tech now able to make decisions, generate content, and trigger actions across systems, enterprises are finding it harder to justify trusting outside SaaS vendors with business outcomes as well as data. Enterprises in Europe want to move in-house as much as possible, and Blochberger bets that the same change will come to Asia.
Closer to home, we have a piece from Wavemaker Partners managing director Paul Santos that looks at the state of startup funding and exits in Southeast Asia. It’s a tale of an investor ecosystem that now does not trust that the region can produce returns.
However, Santos makes the case that what we see now is a reset, one where more disciplined, capital-efficient companies rebuild confidence over time.
Finally, read through to the weekend deep dive on The New Yorker’s bombshell profile of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the question of whether he can be trusted at the helm of the world’s most important AI company.
Trust me, it gets existential.
Peter Cowan, engagement editor
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