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[Announcement]
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[June 25, 2026]

Building an AI-Native Business: Southeast Asia's Next Growth Chapter


At the Cross-Border Business Leadership Forum in Singapore, fifty-five senior executives spanning industries from e-commerce to financial services gathered around one question: How do businesses redesign for what's coming next?

The urgency is clear. Cross-border commerce is growing at 15.5% CAGR, on track to reach US$4.8 trillion by 2032. Seven in ten global shoppers now buy on social media. And Gen Z consumers shop internationally at nearly twice the rate of Baby Boomers.

As Sandhya Devanathan, Vice President of Meta India & Southeast Asia, noted in her opening keynote: "What got you here won't get you there. The businesses winning today have rebuilt around AI entirely. And Southeast Asia, with its messaging-native consumers and rapid adoption, is where this transformation is happening fastest."

Messaging Is the Storefront

In Southeast Asia, commerce lives inside conversations. Consumers discover products, ask questions, negotiate, and transact within the same messaging thread. That behaviour has created something no other region has at this scale: a commercial infrastructure that is inherently conversational, inherently mobile, and now ready to become intelligent.

McKinsey research confirms the region is already moving. Forty-six percent of Southeast Asia firms have progressed beyond AI pilots, compared to 35% globally. Singapore (56%) and Indonesia (51%) lead in scaled adoption. Across Asia Pacific, 78% of SMEs are already using AI tools on digital platforms, rising to 93% in Vietnam and 79% in Indonesia.

The businesses capturing disproportionate value from this shift share one trait: they've embedded AI directly into the messaging channels where their customers already are, with 70% of AI-driven value concentrated in sales, marketing, supply chain, and pricing.

Sephora in Asia Pacific demonstrated this by treating conversational messaging as AI-native loyalty infrastructure.

"We ran a WhatsApp pilot and the results blew us away: 100x engagement rates versus email. I really believe in the potential of technology like WhatsApp to help improve strong human-centric experiences." — Stuart La Brooy, Vice President, Marketing, Sephora APAC*

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Agents That Act

What makes this moment different is the shift from AI that responds to AI that executes. Meta recently launched Meta Business Agent, an AI agent that works across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. These agents verify real-time inventory, update CRMs, and complete transactions without the customer ever leaving the conversation. Over one million businesses are already using it.

For cross-border businesses, this solves three constraints simultaneously: instant 24/7 response across time zones, multilingual support without localized hiring, and the ability to scale in minutes rather than months.

Vietnamese sports brand HADAKI implemented Business AI on Messenger to address the operational bottlenecks preventing global expansion.

"Before Business AI, our team was overwhelmed handling thousands of messages daily, which meant inevitable errors. Now, every interaction is accurate and instant, 24/7. This success has enabled us to scale our cross-border business model across three other markets seamlessly." — Phan Thi Quynh, Business Manager, Thanh Vinh Holdings (HADAKI)

Singapore's PRISM+ scaled ten WhatsApp Business use cases in four months by letting AI handle practical tasks first, earning trust before introducing commercial interactions.

"Revenue per recipient on WhatsApp is nearly ten times what we see from email, and that's because the audience quality is fundamentally different." — Jonathan Wong, CEO, PRISM+

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The Returns Are Already Measurable

Meta's AI infrastructure investment of US$145 billion in 2026 is built to drive outcomes at this scale:

  • $3.47 average ROAS across APAC, a 15% increase from 2022
  • $4.13 ROAS with Advantage+ AI-driven campaigns
  • US$154 billion in annual revenues driven by Meta ads across the region

A recent Deloitte study found that 83% of APAC SMEs consider personalized advertising a good financial investment, with 78% reporting direct revenue increases. The companies that have made this structural shift are achieving 1.9x higher revenue on 40% less capital.

Key takeaways

  1. Change your operating architecture, with distinct localisation, pricing, creative, and supply chain strategies across mature and growth markets running simultaneously.
  2. Redesign your business around AI. The shift underway is from AI that passively responds to autonomous agents that plan, maintain context, and complete tasks end-to-end. Meta's Business Agent, now live globally with over one million businesses, is built for this model.
  3. Focus on speed. Speed is the differentiator. Seventy percent of AI's value is concentrated in sales and marketing, supply chain, and pricing: exactly the areas where cross-border brands compete.

The next chapter of AI-native growth is being written in this region, by the businesses operating here.

Look out for the Performance Talks series on Meta for Business LinkedIn Meta for Business LinkedIn to hear from these leaders in their own words.

Learn more about Meta Business Agent here.

*Source: Client data.