In seconds, AI decides loans for street vendors in Ho Chi Minh City and Manila. Invisible algorithms unlock opportunity but shift power to distant servers. In Southeast Asia, financial inclusion flows with both promise and risk.
Finance & Markets
Exploring how finance shapes people, power and progress.
Vietnam is quietly transforming. Often seen merely as a hub for outsourcing, the country is stepping into the global spotlight as a rising technological and economic power. Behind its rapid growth lies a defining advantage: a young, ambitious and technologically literate population that is driving innovation across sectors.
For years, global markets were dominated by narratives of American exceptionalism and the AI-driven rally on Wall Street. In 2025, however, the story changed. Asian markets broadly outperformed their Western counterparts, signaling a historic turning point. From sustained gains across equities to strategic shifts in investor sentiment, the region emerged as a central engine of global financial growth. For Altair Media Asia, understanding the forces behind this shift is crucial as we look toward 2026.
For decades, technological leadership was measured in market capitalization, platform dominance and consumer adoption curves. Silicon Valley defined the global narrative with privately owned platforms built for scale, speed and extraction. China followed a different path, constructing vertically integrated digital ecosystems tightly aligned with state control and strategic surveillance.
While much of the global AI conversation is dominated by American hyperscalers and Chinese platform giants, a quieter — yet arguably more consequential — transformation is unfolding in Europe. At the center of this shift stands Siemens, a company better known for turbines, factories and rail systems than for artificial intelligence. Yet today, Siemens is emerging as one of Europe’s most strategically important AI actors, not by chasing consumer AI dominance, but by embedding intelligence deep into the continent’s industrial and infrastructural backbone. This is not AI as spectacle. It is AI as system logic.
Artificial intelligence is often discussed at the level of cloud infrastructure, foundation models and geopolitics. Yet its most immediate societal impact may unfold much closer to home. As AI increasingly becomes embedded in consumer products — from smart appliances to home automation systems — European retailers find themselves at the frontline of the next phase of AI adoption. MediaMarktSaturn Group, Europe’s largest consumer electronics retailer, offers a revealing lens into how this transition may unfold.
