The story
I did not arrive at AI from engineering. I arrived at it the way most of the market does, from the commercial side, where the question is never how does this work? but what does this change, and who pays for it?
The path ran through communications and PR, then emerging technology, then the metaverse and Web3 years, then AI. Along the way I kept ending up in the same seat: the person translating a fast-moving technology into something a business could actually decide on. Different technology each time. The same job underneath.
That work taught me to be suspicious of two things at once: the hype cycle, and the reflex to dismiss it. Most technologies are oversold in year one and underestimated in year five. The interesting question is always the commercial one: who is building, who is buying, who is making money, and what is quietly compounding underneath the noise.
My career has consistently sat where new technology meets business, communication and adoption. Now I am focused on understanding how AI is becoming an industry across Asia.
Asia is where this gets genuinely interesting. It is not one market but many, with very different buyers, regulators, price points and distribution realities. An AI business model that works in Singapore can stall in Jakarta. A Chinese model lab and a Southeast Asian enterprise are answering completely different questions. Most of the commentary on AI is still written from San Francisco, for San Francisco.
What I’m doing now.
I write the Asian AI Briefing on the companies, business models and ideas shaping the AI economy across Asia. I speak, mostly to rooms of senior leaders trying to work out what any of this means for their business. And I advise: leadership teams deciding what AI changes for their strategy, and AI companies working out how to enter or expand across Asian markets.
I also build inside the market I write about, which I think matters. I founded ANCHR AI Labs for enterprise AI capability, helping professionals and organisations become AI-native through practical training, workflows and AI systems.
SAIYAN.asia came out of cross-border work between Singapore and Sarawak, an AI talent-to-opportunity network connecting emerging talent with real business opportunities. And Women in Clode is a community helping women learn, build, earn and lead with AI.
Why this matters now.
The AI conversation is about to shift from capability to commerce. The question stops being what can the model do and becomes who is paying for it, at what margin, through which channel, in which market. That shift will decide which companies survive the decade, and in Asia it will play out across a dozen markets that behave nothing like each other.
Someone should be watching that carefully, from here, with commercial eyes and without a vendor’s agenda. That is the work.
