Morning, founders 👋 Big week for Malaysian tech. The country just posted a record trade surplus on the back of an AI export boom, a Kuala Lumpur SaaS raised $62.5M to go after America, and the IPO pipeline is stacked. One read, five minutes.

On deck: the $62.5M war chest · Malaysia's RM132.77b surplus · why Cambodia's on your doorstep · a founder takes MDEC's chair · and why I'm not buying the Middle East "peace". Let's go.

Budget 2026 put RM16.36 billion into the Ministry of Digital — the money is flowing into anything digital this year. Three things worth your attention right now:

Three routes worth checking:

AI Governance Bill heading to Cabinet — expect rules on transparency, bias testing and human oversight for high-stakes AI (lending, hiring). Get ahead of it now if you ship AI features.

Takeaway: Grants don't dilute and procurement wins are stickier than any round. Claim what's relevant before you go chase capital.

The numbers MATRADE released this week are eye-watering. For Jan–May 2026, Malaysia's trade surplus hit a historic RM132.77 billion — nearly 3× the RM46.93b in the same period last year. Total trade crossed RM1.46 trillion (+18.3% YoY).

Takeaway: Takeaway: The AI buildout isn't just Nvidia in California — it runs through Johor and Penang. If your product touches semis, data centres or the E&E supply chain, the budget is sitting right here. Read the full report →

A delegation of 15 European tech firms — AI, traveltech and cybersecurity — wrapped up a visit to Cambodia on 12 June, hunting outsourcing and digital-investment deals. They toured real, operating infrastructure (the Daun Penh Data Centre, Digital Divide Data, AI Farm Robotics), and both the science/tech and post/telecom ministries showed up. Translation: Cambodia is now being sized up as a serious back-office and engineering hub — not a someday story.

Why this matters for a Malaysian SME 🇲🇾→🇰🇭 :

It's next door, the wage base is lower, the population is young and digital-hungry (235+ startups, now in a "performance phase"), and the government is actively courting foreign tech. For a Malaysian SME it's a credible place to stand up a lower-cost dev or BPO arm, test a second market before you tackle Indonesia or Vietnam, or sell SaaS into a digitising economy with far less competition than KL or Singapore.

Takeaway: Don't only look up at the US — look sideways. Your cheapest expansion this year might be a 90-minute flight away. More on Cambodia →

Sam's take: ~3× in twelve months. This is the macro tailwind sitting under every Malaysian tech story in today's issue.

💵 Raised

📈 Listing — fresh ACE Market IPOs

🎯 Hunting : AI — agentic + enterprise automation — is still where SEA capital is concentrating. Malaysia moved up to #2 in the region by deal volume in Q1 2026.

Takeaway: Spot the pattern — Respond.io, SRKK and GreatAsic are all monetising AI for real businesses, not building toys. Revenue and margin are back in fashion.

MDEC — the agency steering Malaysia's digital economy — appointed serial entrepreneur Ganesh Kumar Bangah as its non-executive chairman this week. He founded MOL and Commerce.Asia and chaired PIKOM, the national tech association. In short: the person now helping set digital-economy priorities has actually built and exited companies.

Why founders should care: when operators set the agenda, the programmes, grants and partnerships tend to get more practical — and the companies closest to the ecosystem hear about them first. Watch what he leans into: AI adoption, SME digitalisation, GovTech, local champions and regional expansion.

Takeaway: Get on MDEC's radar now — grants, Malaysia Digital status, the events circuit. Proximity pays most right when priorities are being reset. Details →

KL's Respond.io just raised $62.5M. AC Ventures, Wavemaker, the usual heavyweights are writing cheques across the region again. The founders who win those rooms aren't the ones with the best product — they're the ones who can tell the story in 12 slides. So we pulled the receipts.

Everyone's celebrating the US–Iran “deal” this month: a 60-day ceasefire, the Strait of Hormuz reopening, billions about to thaw. The headlines say peace is here. 🕊️

I'll save you the suspense — it won't hold. I lived in the Middle East, and I called this exact cycle three years ago: the conflict there doesn't end, it pauses, reloads, and comes back. A 60-day ceasefire isn't a peace treaty — it's a coffee break. (Right on cue, the technical talks already got postponed last week.) The war continues. Plan for that, not for the press release.

Now the good news for us: when a region stays unstable, its capital goes looking for a calmer home — and a lot of it is moving out of the Middle East and into Southeast Asia. Mature law, neutral ground, real growth. That money is already landing in our backyard.

But don't pop the champagne. That capital is selective, and the next couple of years are going to be hard for most SMEs — tighter credit, pickier investors, customers counting every ringgit. This isn't a boom you coast on; it's a window you have to survive your way into.

The lesson: build for a hard two years. Keep your costs honest, stay close to revenue, and be ready when the money comes looking — because the founders who make it through lean are exactly who the relocating capital wants to back.

— Sam

GreatAsic — engineers who cut their teeth at Intel, Marvell and Broadcom — became one of the first Malaysian design firms to secure Arm Flexible Access, the same IP toolkit the world's biggest chip companies design on. Six months ago that door was effectively closed to local startups.

Why it matters: deep tech is now fundable and buildable in Malaysia — not just e-commerce and fintech. The ceiling on what a SEA founder can attempt just went up.