Can Southeast Asia claim its place in the AI economy?

Murli Ravi, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Tin Men Capital, was featured in The Edge Singapore's feature exploring whether Southeast Asia can move beyond hosting AI infrastructure to building lasting enterprise value. The feature, which also drew on perspectives from INSEAD, NUS Business School, and AI Singapore, examined the region's position in the global AI value chain and the gap between investment and commercial impact.

Murli argued that the real test of AI sovereignty lies in who owns the application layer: "The commercial case for sovereign AI is not in the model. It is in the companies that deploy AI into the region's enterprises using that infrastructure. The question is not whether Southeast Asia builds its own [AI model] but whether the companies turning AI into enterprise value are owned here and built here."

The piece highlighted Tin Men Capital portfolio companies Ailytics, Groundup.ai, and Graas as examples of Southeast Asian AI startups solving measurable enterprise problems across construction safety, predictive maintenance, and e-commerce.