Vol.018 — East vs West on AI: Two Different Bets
Date: 2026-05-01 | Newsletter
Key Summary
Western enterprises are burning through AI budgets at alarming speed — Uber consumed its entire 2026 AI budget in four months, Stanford’s AI Index shows 89% of enterprise agents never reach production, and Gartner predicts 40%+ of agentic projects will be cancelled by 2027. Meanwhile Asia is building differently: DBS expanded its Spark GenAI programme into a three-tier structured advisory system for Singapore SMEs, and the ASEAN Foundation’s AIM ASEAN initiative is training 100,000 MSMEs across all ten member states. Zenta argues these are not competing strategies but two live bets on fundamentally different questions — Asia betting on disciplined, capital-efficient adoption, the West betting on AI as the operating substrate even as 89% of pilots fail. For business owners in ASEAN, Functional AI Partners surfaces two questions that matter this week: are your AI costs predictable and do you have a kill switch, and are you playing big enough to avoid being left behind? Do it simple. Two paths. Both live. Both risky. Watch your costs. Watch your scope. Don’t pick one.