中文标题待翻译

For many large companies in Southeast Asia, the challenge with artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer access. The models are available, the cloud infrastructure is ready, and boards have approved AI experimentation.

The harder problem is turning that experimentation into systems that work inside heavily regulated businesses without breaking compliance, confusing staff or creating new operational risks.

That is the gap Singapore-headquartered OneByZero, or OBZ, is trying to fill. The company has raised US$20 million in Series A funding led by Jungle Ventures, marking its first external fundraise after three years of operating with enterprise customers across the region.

Also Read: Singapore’s AI dividend will depend on what happens after the pilot phase

OBZ describes itself as a “frontier AI deployment company”, a phrase that reflects a broader shift in the AI market. Rather than selling a standalone software tool, the company places engineering teams inside large organisations to identify where AI can create value, build the technology into existing workflows, and keep improving it after deployment.

Its focus is on regulated and operationally complex sectors such as financial services, telecommunications and retail. These are industries where AI pilots are common, but production deployments tend to move slowly because systems are old, data is fragmented, and mistakes can carry reputational or regulatory consequences.

“Every enterprise can now get access to powerful AI. The value comes when it runs inside the systems that run the business, under the company’s own rules, and gets better every week,” said Niket Vaidya, CEO and co-founder of OneByZero. “That is the work we do every day, and this funding lets us do more of it, in more markets, and more industries.”

The deployment problem

OBZ’s fundraise lands at a time when enterprises across Asia Pacific are under pressure to prove that AI spending can produce measurable returns. Since generative AI tools went mainstream, companies have run pilots in customer service, internal knowledge management, software development, fraud monitoring, marketing and document processing. But many of these efforts remain stuck at the proof-of-concept stage.

The reasons are familiar to enterprise technology teams. AI systems need access to business data, but that data often sits across multiple legacy systems. Customer-facing use cases require strict guardrails. Regulated industries need audit trails. Staff need to know when AI can act on its own and when a human must intervene.

OneByZero says its approach is built around these realities. Its forward-deployed engineers work alongside customer teams to identify high-value use cases, build and deploy systems, then stay involved to run and improve them. It also operates local teams in each market, which it says helps customers deal with language, regulatory and systems differences.

The company claims its deployments have helped enterprises automate more than 90 per cent of some customer-facing interactions, generate measurable cost savings, and accelerate complex data modernisation projects by 50 per cent. It did not disclose customer names or revenue figures, but said it has more than doubled revenue annually over the past three years.

Also Read: Language was never the problem: Inside SEA’s real AI adoption gap

For Southeast Asia, this kind of work is likely to become more important. The region’s largest banks, telcos and retailers often operate across several markets, each with its own rules, languages and consumer behaviours. An AI system that works in Singapore may need significant adjustment before it can be used in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam or the Philippines. That makes deployment expertise, not just model access, a meaningful differentiator.

NEO and the rise of AI coworkers

At the centre of OBZ’s offering is NEO, its AI deployment platform. The company describes NEO as the control layer behind enterprise AI workforces, combining reusable components with governance features such as records of every agent action.

In simple terms, NEO is meant to help companies define what AI agents are allowed to do, where human approval is required, and how those actions are tracked. OneByZero calls these agents “AI Coworkers” — governed AI systems with defined roles and controls. The idea is that AI handles high-volume, repetitive work, while humans retain judgement and accountability.

“We have built NEO so companies can define what AI is allowed to do, where human judgement is required and how every system is governed,” said Vibhore Kumar, PhD, CTO and co-founder of OneByZero. “That foundation lets them introduce more capable AI without losing control.”

The governance point is crucial. As AI agents become more capable, enterprises are moving beyond chatbots and copilots into systems that can take actions: updating records, generating responses, flagging transactions, routing cases or initiating workflow steps. In sectors such as banking, telecoms and healthcare, companies will need clear limits on what those agents can do.

This is also where smaller or open-weight language models may play a role. OBZ said part of the new funding will go into helping enterprises build their own AI on open-weight and small language models. For regulated companies, smaller models can sometimes be easier to customise, control and run in specific environments than general-purpose large models. They may also cut costs for repetitive tasks where a frontier model is not required.

Expansion across Asia Pacific and Japan

OBZ currently operates in nine markets: Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, the US and Vietnam. It plans to use the Series A funding to grow its forward-deployed engineering teams and deepen customer relationships in these markets.

It also plans to enter Japan, one of Asia’s largest enterprise technology markets. Japan is attractive because of its large corporate base, advanced manufacturing and financial sectors, and urgent need for productivity tools as the country grapples with labour shortages and an ageing population. But it is also a difficult market to crack, requiring local relationships, language capability and long enterprise sales cycles.

Also Read: fileAI expands in Japan with new backing from SMBC and Singtel Innov8

Beyond financial services and telecommunications, OBZ wants to expand into conglomerates, healthcare and the public sector. These sectors share many traits with its current customers: complex operations, large volumes of data, and a need for careful governance.

Jungle Ventures’s investment reflects growing investor interest in companies that can turn AI adoption into practical enterprise outcomes rather than simply building model wrappers. “OneByZero stood out because it is already doing what much of the enterprise AI market is still talking about,” said Yash Sankrityayan, Managing Partner at Jungle Ventures. “The team has spent three years deploying AI inside large, complex organisations and delivering measurable results.”

A crowded but evolving field

OBZ is not alone in chasing the enterprise AI deployment opportunity. Globally, it competes for attention and budgets with companies such as Palantir, C3.ai and DataRobot, and with large consulting firms including Accenture, Deloitte, IBM and Capgemini, all of which help enterprises operationalise AI. In Asia, systems integrators, cloud partners and boutique AI consultancies are also moving into the same space.

Its differentiation will depend on whether it can prove that its forward-deployed model and NEO platform deliver repeatable results across markets and industries. That is not easy. Service-heavy AI deployment businesses can be difficult to scale, while platform businesses need standardisation. OBZ is trying to sit between the two: using hands-on engineering to solve messy enterprise problems, then turning what it learns into reusable templates and governance tools.

Also Read: Why Southeast Asian enterprises need AI governance before scaling generative AI

That middle ground could be valuable in Southeast Asia, where companies often need local execution as much as software. But it also means OBZ will have to keep hiring strong technical teams in multiple markets while maintaining quality and consistency.

The broader market direction is clear. Enterprises are moving from asking what AI can do to asking where it can be trusted to act. OBZ’s bet is that the next wave of AI adoption will be won not by the companies with the flashiest models, but by those that can make AI work inside the unglamorous systems that actually run large businesses.

The post OneByZero raises US$20M Series A to help enterprises move AI from pilots to production appeared first on e27.