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This week’s On the Rise looks at active VC funds in Southeast Asia, Bondee’s growth curve, and an Indonesian firm’s no-layoff strategy to cut costs. [Read from your browser]( On the Rise 🚀 Welcome to On the Rise! Delivered every Tuesday via email and through the Tech in Asia website, this free newsletter breaks down the biggest stories and trends in emerging tech. If you’re not a subscriber, get access by [registering here](. Written by Nikita Puri Journalist Hello {NAME} A sci-fi magazine I follow is having a very sci-non-fi problem. [Clarkesworld]( was drowning in AI-generated content so badly that the mag had to close submissions. Before December 2022, the magazine had banned 50 people for plagiarism or bot-written content on a monthly basis, but that number [has crossed 500]( this month. “There are a lot of anti-plagiarism tools out there, but none of the anti-GPT stuff is any good,” the editor said [in an interview](. “We’ve tried all of the ones that we’re aware of and they’re easily outwitted.” While we wait for AI tools to outwit one another - because that’s where the next tranche of solutions are likely to come from - a ton of VC money will flood the sector. In fact, Southeast Asia already has four VC funds dedicated to its AI scene, my colleague Collin reports in this edition’s Big Story. The story’s highlight, however, is its extensive database of recently raised funds that are ready to be deployed. Another special piece for this edition digs into social app Bondee’s virality and what seems to be a quick decline. Despite its explosive rise, Bondee might not have been very good at bonding with users. But you know what’s not a fad? Cost-optimization strategies that go beyond layoffs. In Making Waves, GajiGesa co-founder Vidit Agarwal talks about strategies that have worked for the Indonesia-based firm. You know what else is evergreen? The democratization of pretty much everything, including, yes we’re back to it, generative AI. Shadine has more on this in AI Odyssey. Strap in. -- Nikita  --------------------------------------------------------------- THE BIG STORIES 1️⃣ [A list of VC funds with money to deploy]( Fundraising is difficult. To make things easier, we have compiled a detailed list of the most recent VC funds for our subscribers. 2️⃣ [With its declining growth, is Bondee just a fad?]( The wildly popular social app risks becoming another blip on the radar, but it still has a few cards to play.  ---------------------------------------------------------------  MAKING WAVES  [Here’s how GajiGesa reduced costs by 15%]( In the first edition of the Cost Control series, GajiGesa’s Vidit Agarwal shares tips that helped bring down the firm’s costs.  --------------------------------------------------------------- AI ODYSSEY Promising AI projects we’re noticing. Behind Amazon’s partnership to bring accessibility to AI Back when I started learning Python, I used to rely heavily on Stack Overflow, a Quora for coding. These solutions seem to be more valuable now than ever amid the AI hype. [Amazon Web Services (AWS)]( the ecommerce giant’s cloud computing unit, has [extended its non-exclusive partnership]( with New York-based [Hugging Face]( a code-sharing community platform looking to [“democratize”]( machine learning. The collaboration enables users to [immediately train]( and deploy models with minimal fine-tuning, making programs easier, cheaper, and quicker to build. This is done through access to Hugging Face’s over 100,000 open-source AI models on SageMaker, Amazon’s cloud machine-learning platform. On its own, Hugging Face has over 1 million daily downloads from its library. Its users can also download the GPT-3 large language model (LLM), which powers ChatGPT. More impressively, last year Hugging Face released Bloom LLM, which [the firm claims]( is the largest open multilingual language model. With over 176 billion parameters, the model can generate text in 46 human and 13 programming languages. Bloom was created within a year with the help of over 1,000 scientists and the French supercomputer Jean Zay training the model. The AWS-Hugging Face partnership comes amid global tech conglomerates announcing their efforts in deploying generative AI solutions. In a heated race, [Microsoft funded and integrated OpenAI]( into its solutions, [Google released its Bard chatbot]( and [Baidu is building Ernie](. Hugging Face said [in a blog post]( that many new models of generative AI are not publicly available, hence “widening the gap of machine learning capabilities between the largest tech companies and everyone else.” Through its solutions, Hugging Face hopes to bring accessibility and transparency to the rapidly evolving world of generative AI. - Shadine  --------------------------------------------------------------- FYI 1️⃣ [Malaysia wants to farm unicorns. It’s going to fail]( The country’s startup and tech scene is still lacking in development. 2️⃣ [The diverse world of generative AI]( Text-to-image creation is just one of the many ways generative AI startups produce content, with a variety of inputs and outputs now on offer. 3️⃣ [SEA’s major listed tech firms compared in 8 charts]( These companies could dictate whether more global investors will back Southeast Asia and decide the fate of the region's tech industry.  --------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS YOU SHOULD KNOW Also check out Tech in Asia’s coverage of the emerging tech scene [here](. 1️⃣ [Exclusive: Good Doctor ‘winds down’ Thailand ops]( The healthtech firm is closing its operations in Thailand and will focus on Indonesia in the short term. 2️⃣ [A rising tide lifts all boats]( Xoogler, a community comprising Google alumni and current staff, has seen its membership grow from 14,000 to 26,000 over the past month. The group has become a place for multi-pronged support particularly for employees who were recently laid off. 3️⃣ [The stairway to EV revolution]( GetGo Carsharing, a Singapore-based vehicle rental firm, has raised about US$14.9 million to expand its electric fleet. 4️⃣ [The XaaS revolution: lessons and benefits for startups]( Speed to market, adaptability, and a flexible cost structure are just some of the benefits of the everything-as-a-service model for tech companies. 5️⃣ [Helpful tools for the win]( VC firm Square Peg has backed Chronicle, a Notion-like startup that helps users create more compelling presentations.  --------------------------------------------------------------- That’s it for this edition - we hope you liked it! Do also check out previous issues of the newsletter [here](. Not your cup of tea? You can unsubscribe from this newsletter by going to your “edit profile” page and choosing that option in our preference center. See you next week! 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