Asian entrepreneurs are going global before they've even nailed down a business model
The rapid rise of artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping the strategy of Asian tech entrepreneurs: they are now thinking about global markets before they've even fully defined their business idea. According to a Stripe survey, AI companies based in Singapore expand into an average of seven new markets within just one year of being founded.
Sarita Sing, Stripe's regional head for Southeast Asia, Greater China and South Korea, describes this as 'a major shift in how Asian companies approach cross-border business.' 'There's a huge appetite to find customers and growth outside the home market,' she says. This, she notes, is a sharp departure from the earlier playbook — building a product for the local market first, then expanding country by country.
The numbers bear this out: according to a 2025 study, the top 100 AI companies on the Stripe platform took an average of 11.5 months to surpass $1 million in annual revenue — four months faster than even the fastest-growing SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies at the height of the subscription-model boom.
Still, Asian entrepreneurs face a formidable obstacle: the region has one of the world's most complex and fragmented payment landscapes. 'There's no single card market here — there are many different countries with very different buying behavior,' Sing says. That's why Stripe announced on Tuesday partnerships with local payment platforms such as South Korea's Samsung Pay, Malaysia's Touch 'n Go, Singapore's ShopeePay, the Philippines' GCash, and Thailand's TrueMoney.
The company is also preparing for an 'agentic economy,' in which AI agents act independently on a person's behalf economically — Stripe launched its Agentic Commerce Suite for this purpose last December, already used by brands including Coach, Kate Spade, Etsy, and Halara. As Sing points out, the global agentic economy is still in its early stages, but companies should start preparing now so they don't have to rebuild their tech infrastructure later.
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