Thailand’s Massive AI Bet

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Welcome back to The Asia Tech Podcast. Today we discussed Thailand’s massive AI infrastructure boom, why proving your company is AI-compliant takes so long, whether coding schools still need to teach coding, how a lending platform settled a loan in 36 minutes, why founders are afraid to talk about their mistakes, why wealth managers still can’t tell a good story, and how 3D visuals could change the way you trade.

We were joined by:

• 22:41 Sebastiaan (Bas) Kager - Founder and Head of Technology, FynTun

• 45:39 YJ Soon - Cofounder, Tinkercademy

• 1:05:13 Julian Fayad - Founder and CEO, LoanOptions.ai

• 1:25:46 Ben Bagg - Founder, Founder F**k Ups

• 1:43:53 Dominic Gamble - CEO, GoUpscale

• 2:26:14 Siraj Dahal - Founder, Gilver.ai

Here is an overview of the topics we discussed today:

Thailand’s $43.6 billion AI bet

Thailand just reported $43.6 billion in investment applications for AI and tech infrastructure in the first half of the year, a 37% jump from last year. Most of that money is chasing data centers, including one $25 billion project tied to TikTok. What makes Thailand so attractive to Microsoft, AWS, and Alibaba, over even more famous neighbors like Singapore?

The answer isn’t just cheap land. Thailand already builds some of the world’s most advanced camera lenses and has quietly become one of the best-connected countries on earth. So why hasn’t the rest of the world noticed?

Can AI actually prove you’re compliant?

Bas runs a compliance startup and says most companies confuse being secure with being able to prove it. Those are not the same thing. So what actually happens when a regulator or a customer asks you to show your work?

Bas also warned about a new risk: employees connecting confidential company data to AI agents through their personal WhatsApp. He compares it to social engineering, but worse, since an attacker can try a thousand times a second instead of getting one shot. And in Europe, that risk now falls personally on the CEO, not just the security team.

Do we still need to learn to code?

YJ runs a coding school in Singapore and isn’t sure her own business has a future. Her students can now skip straight past HTML and CSS and go build working apps. So is understanding the fundamentals becoming pointless, or more valuable than ever?

YJ thinks it depends on what you actually want. Some people just want to “scramble an egg,” she says, while others want to become chefs. But if writing code is now almost free, what happens to everyone stuck in between?

A loan, approved in 36 minutes

Julian’s company matches borrowers with over 90 lenders using AI models that get smarter the longer they run, without needing to be rebuilt every time. One nurse applied for a personal loan on her lunch break and had cash in her account 36 minutes later. How is that even possible?

Julian says the trick isn’t chasing the same generic AI everyone else is building. It’s owning the messy, unglamorous data that big AI labs can’t scrape, like the private lending criteria of 90 different banks.

Why founders won’t admit they’re failing

Ben built a community where founders confess their mistakes out loud, calling it “Alcoholics Anonymous for founders.” Roughly 80 to 90 percent of the founders he meets are quietly struggling behind a polished exterior. What does it actually take to get people to be honest?

Ben has also watched founders try to replace salespeople with AI, only to watch conversion rates crash. One company selling to parents dropped from 35 percent to 12 percent after swapping humans for a chatbot. Some decisions, it turns out, are still deeply emotional.

Why wealth managers still can’t tell a good story

Dominic’s company helps private banks turn dense research reports into content people actually want to read. He’s been asking the same question for a decade: why does a 65-year-old client still get handed an unreadable PDF?

Part of the answer is regulation. Many countries won’t even let banks send clients a clickable link, for fear it looks like phishing. So how do you build trust with a client when you’re barely allowed to collect their data?

Trading, but make it a video game

Siraj wants to turn dense financial charts into explorable 3D worlds you can practically walk through. Could seeing the market, instead of squinting at candlesticks, actually make people better investors?

His bigger bet is that financial information is either too complex or too expensive, with tools like Bloomberg terminals costing thousands a month. Siraj thinks clarity, not more data, is what actually separates good decisions from bad ones.

That’s a wrap on this episode. Watch the full conversation here:

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