June Tech Round-Up: Forged in the Reckoning, Built for Southeast Asia
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Dear reader,
Welcome to the June edition of Tech Round-Up.
Periods of correction often reveal what periods of abundance conceal: the difference between growth and business quality. Across Southeast Asia's fintech ecosystem, capital is becoming more selective and competitive advantages are becoming easier to identify. This month, we explore how that dynamic is producing stronger fintech champions in Indonesia and driving the convergence of payments, software, and business infrastructure across the region. While seemingly different stories, they are expressions of the same underlying shift: a market that has stopped rewarding companies for showing up and started rewarding them for being genuinely useful and hard to replace.
Enjoy, from the team at North Ridge Partners.
Original Thinking From North Ridge Partners
Indonesia's fintech sector spent two years living through fraud, licence revocations and a funding drought. The reckoning may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to it. Capital is concentrating around companies with stronger economics, better governance and clearer paths to profitability. The survivors are no longer staying home; they are scaling across Southeast Asia. Read more here: Indonesia FinTech's Reality Check Could Forge Stronger Regional Champions.
As transaction processing becomes commoditised, leading payments companies are moving deeper into software, merchant workflows and business infrastructure. The next generation of winners may be those that become indispensable to how businesses operate, rather than simply how they get paid. Read more here: The Future of Payments May Sit Inside Business Infrastructure.
Short On Time? Hit Play
Our AI hosts Bill Bitcoin and Penny Payment discuss Indonesia's fintech reset and why workflow ownership is emerging as the new moat in payments.
Click here or on the banner below to listen. Enjoy.
Techtonic Shifts
Liftoff for the Listing: SpaceX Starts Its Record Roadshow. SpaceX opens its IPO roadshow, targeting about $75bn at a $1.75tn valuation, the largest listing in history.
Claude Goes Public: Anthropic Files at $965bn. Anthropic files for IPO at a $965bn valuation, edging past OpenAI after a $65bn round.
Altman's Move: OpenAI Lines Up Its Own Debut. Not to be outdone, OpenAI prepares its filing, eyeing an autumn listing near an $852bn value.
Asia Pacific Tech News
Super App, Super Bank: Grab Banks a Record Quarter. Grab reports Q1 revenue up 24% to $955m and record profit, and folds Indonesia's Superbank into its financial services arm.
Reeling It In: Sea's Shopee and Monee Surge. Sea reports Q1 revenue up 47% to $7.1bn, with its Monee finance arm growing its consumer and SME loan book 71%.
Why Pay $100: WiseTech Axes 2,000 Jobs for AI. WiseTech sheds nearly 30% of its workforce; its founder says paying $100 for labour when AI costs $2 is foolish.
Software & AI
Earnings & Yearnings: Nvidia reports Q1 revenue of $81.6bn, up 85%. Salesforce reports record Q1 revenue of $11.1bn, up 13%, and raises its FY guidance. Snowflake reports Q1 product revenue of $1.33bn, up 34%, and lifts guidance. Okta reports Q1 revenue of $765m, up 11%, and raises FY outlook.
Claude Nine: Anthropic raises $65bn and files to go public. Its $65bn Series H at $965bn valuation overtakes OpenAI as the world's most valuable private AI company; Anthropic files for IPO.
Buffett Buys In: Alphabet Raises $80bn for AI. Alphabet launches massive equity raise to fund AI compute, anchored by $10bn placement to Berkshire Hathaway - one of the largest tech equity financings ever.
Agents of Change: incumbents race to productise agentic AI: SAP unveils Autonomous Enterprise, Microsoft ships Agent 365, Nvidia releases open-source Agent Toolkit, Dell brings agents on-premises, and Coupa launches Coupa Compose to orchestrate agents across procurement and finance.
Aerospace & Defence Tech
Earnings & Yearnings: South Korea’s defence champions report a strong Q1: Hanwha Aerospace, Hyundai Rotem, LIG Nex1 and Korea Aerospace post ~$750m in combined operating profit, driven by Poland and Middle East exports, with combined backlog at ~$68bn. Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries reports record FY results, with Defence & Space revenue up 40%.
Luckey Number: Anduril Doubles to $61bn. Palmer Luckey’s defence tech startup raises $5bn in a round led by Thrive Capital and a16z, doubling its valuation as defence-tech capital continues to flood in.
Viking Raid: Europe's Helsing Storms to $18bn. Daniel Ek-backed Helsing is reportedly close to raising $1.2bn at an $18bn valuation, with Dragoneer and Lightspeed expected to lead and co-lead the round.
Sensors and Sensibility: Safran Weds Baykar. France’s Safran and Turkey’s Baykar sign a drone-systems partnership covering sensors, navigation and guided weapon integration.
Fintech
Earnings & Yearnings: Coinbase reports Q1 revenue down 31% to $1.41bn with a $394m loss as crypto volumes slump. Block reports Q1 gross profit up 27% to $2.9bn on Cash App strength. Nu Holdings reports Q1 net income of $871m, a 29% ROE with over 135 million customers.
Passport Control: Revolut Wants a Licence in Every Time Zone. With >75 million customers and global expansion plans, Revolut's ambitions now look more like a multinational than a fintech. It’s also planning a $100bn secondary!
Eastward Bound: Asia Pacific Pulls Further Ahead in Fintech Growth. APAC fintech revenues grow 25% in 2025, the fastest of any region globally, even as industry debate remains anchored in North America and the EU.
Copy, Paste, Bank: Tyme Goes Looking for Market Number Three. Tyme Group explores a third digital bank after launches in South Africa and the Philippines - two markets prove the concept, a third makes it a franchise.
Travel Tech
Earnings & Yearnings: Airbnb reports Q1 revenue up 18% and raises Q1 outlook. Expedia reports Q1 revenue up 15%, with B2B gross bookings up 22%. Web Travel Group reports record profits with FY26 TTV and revenue up 20%. HBX reports H1 TTV up 17% with adjusted EBITDA up 1%. Amadeus reports Q1 revenue up 7.9% and adjusted EBIT up 6.6% in constant currency.
Booking By Bot: Google Makes Hotels Its Next Agent. Google names hotels as its next agentic shopping vertical, letting AI compare and reserve across Expedia, Booking, Marriott and IHG.
Everything App: Airbnb Bolts on Hotels, Services and AI. Airbnb unveils 220-plus updates at its summer release, pushing AI personalisation, boutique hotels, in-app services and World Cup experiences.
Amadeus Goes All-In on Airport Biometrics: Amadeus agrees to acquire Idemia Public Security for €1.2bn, extending its biometrics platform from booking and boarding into border control and identity infrastructure.
Stuff We Found Interesting
Lighten Up: A Particle That Could Speed AI. Penn researchers create a hybrid light-matter particle that may accelerate AI computing while sipping far less energy than electronics.
Mind of Its Own: NASA Chips Let Spacecraft Think. A radiation-hardened processor in testing could give deep-space craft autonomy at performance levels hundreds of times beyond today's flight chips.
Crystal Clear: Quantum Maths Cracks the Uncrackable. A quantum-inspired algorithm simulates fiendishly complex quasicrystals in seconds, a problem that ties classical supercomputers in knots.
Tech Investment Banking Across Asia Pacific
North Ridge Partners advises tech companies across the Asia Pacific on strategy, capital raising and M&A. We’re experienced dealmakers who have built and sold many tech companies. In partnership with GP Bullhound, we have 200 bankers in 17 global offices.
Contact us here.
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