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In focus
- SEA voice AI startups punch above their weight vs. ElevenLabs
- HitPay proves you don’t need big funding to scale
- OpenAI CFO has doubts on the company’s upcoming IPO plan
Hello reader,
How do you compete against ElevenLabs, a startup worth US$11 billion? Or against Airwallex? The honest answer is you probably shouldn’t – at least not head-on.
Some founders think it’s best not to try. Instead, they find specific things heavyweight players can’t – or won’t – do well, and they build around those gaps.
Today’s top stories are both about companies running that playbook in different corners of the market. The first one zooms in on how regional startups like Fano, Wiz.ai, and Kata.ai are holding their ground against ElevenLabs and other well-funded voice AI players.
Rather than focusing on raw model performance, the edge these regional companies have lies in their specialization: training on unusual acoustic data to catch fraud or offering on-premises deployments that global players are only just beginning to support. The last mile, it turns out, is still mostly local territory.
The second story, by my colleague Melissa, dives into HitPay. The firm has processed US$2.5 billion in annualized payment volumes with just US$18 million raised, while rivals like Airwallex have raised over US$1.5 billion.
Its moat is similarly unglamorous: support for over 40 local payment methods across Asia Pacific and an SME retention rate that most payments companies would envy.
Neither story shows a company that has definitively won. However, both are proof that in Southeast Asia, knowing the market in granular detail is a more sustainable advantage than it gets credit for.
Glenn Kaonang, journalist
Top Stories
1️⃣ The Southeast Asian playbook for winning at voice AI
Image credit : Ulla
Much of the competition in the region’s voice AI space comes down to one requirement: Enterprise clients like banks want their data on-premises. This constraint has shaped how Wiz.ai and Kata.ai built their products, and it’s an area where ElevenLabs is only just catching up.
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The cracks in the old playbook are showing.
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