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East/West AIpha Daily · Thursday 29 October 2026
The day in one headline
Vietnam's Alibaba-Amazon Moment in AI
My Bloomberg Businessweek Vietnam interview on AI agents and the Global South.
San Eng at the Autumn Economic Forum, Ho Chi Minh City, 28 October 2026. Photo: Bloomberg Businessweek Vietnam
My view. Bloomberg Businessweek Vietnam published my interview on 29 October, recorded on the sidelines of the Autumn Economic Forum in Ho Chi Minh City on 28 October. Vietnam is country 10 on my global tour this year. Felix Arndt, Alvin Foo, and I are on track to publish the sequel to The Ten Commandments of Investing, Ten Commandments of Investing: Age of AI.
Vietnam is well positioned for an Alibaba-Amazon moment in AI agents. Zalo, with 81.3 million monthly users (VNG), and MoMo, with more than 30 million (MoMo), already give it a consumer layer. Alibaba gave sellers a shop. Amazon gave them fulfilment. AI agents give a small Vietnamese business a global team. As I said at the forum: partner with all, own it at home.
Build here, sell everywhere.
tā shān zhī shí, kě yǐ gōng yù
"Stones from another hill can polish jade."
Watch: My 15-minute interview in English. Read: the article in Vietnamese or the English translation. Views are my own and do not reflect the organisers, other speakers or any government body.
What it means: a shop, fulfilment and a global team
Alibaba gave a small seller a shop, and Amazon added fulfilment and trust.
Agents add a global team for sales, service, operations and finance, at a cost a small business can pay.
Own the brain, keep data and deployment local, and use the best model East or West.
When you become knowledgeable in a field, you no longer need experts to guide you through the process. You feel at home and own your space.
Implications for builders and allocators (opinion, general principles, not recommendations)
Builders: sell the workflow, not the model. Build hybrid, East and West, and price compute in. Own memory and the trust layer.
Allocators: stage capital against cash conversion. Treat compute commitments as debt in disguise. Read China's repricing as a timing signal, not an exit.
Top 5 China and East
Vietnam builds the trust layer. Agents inside trusted local apps like Zalo and MoMo are closer to revenue (VNG).
Korea shows the buyable layer. BC Card cut GPU costs by 70% and saves 102,000 work hours a year (Red Hat).
Japan and Korea push physical AI, led by deployment, safety and cost, not model launches.
Unitree closed down 4.8% on 29 Oct as profit fell 17.4%, after an 8,000 times oversubscribed IPO (Yicai).
Top 5 US and West
Anthropic files for its IPO. First half revenue $16.29 billion; first operating profit $974 million (S-1).
Meta raises spending, and free cash flow turns negative: minus $2.12 billion, with 2026 capex guidance of $135 billion to $145 billion (Meta).
Microsoft shows the cash can come. Azure rose 48% to $33.17 billion; free cash flow $18.6 billion (Reuters).
The Fed holds at 3.75% to 4.00% on 28 Oct, in a 10 to 2 vote (Federal Reserve).
The West's test is cash: revenue, margin and cash flow, not the size of the capital plan.
Money moves today (USD as disclosed)
Anthropic: last confirmed at $965 billion (May 2026); IPO talk $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion. Reported, not confirmed (TradingView).
OpenAI: up to $30 billion at $1.25 trillion pre-money. Reported, not confirmed (AI Stock Wire).
STAR 50: about 100 times trailing earnings, against about 30 times for the Nasdaq 100 (Reuters).
At the time of writing, San Eng and entities he controls hold no positions in the companies named, other than through broad index funds. Research and opinion, not investment advice or an offer of any security.
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The West is loud. The East is quiet. You get both stories.