Exabytes founder says Malaysian SMEs must rework workflows to get value from agentic AI
- ID
- 30653
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 01 Oct 2026, 9:20 AM
- Fetched
- 01 Oct 2026, 11:47 AM
- Provider
- Digital News Asia
- Category
- malaysia-tech
- Original URL
- https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/startups/exabytes-founder-says-malaysian-smes-must-rework-workflows-get-value-agentic-ai
- Source URL
- https://www.digitalnewsasia.com/rss.xml
Summary
- Score
- 5.5
- Created
- 01 Oct 2026, 11:47 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- foundersdevelopersai_ml_learners
What happened
Exabytes founder and CEO Chan Kee Siak argues Malaysian SMEs get little from agentic AI unless they re-engineer existing workflows and have bosses who personally use AI, recommending phased adoption starting with standalone agents. He cites an Ecosystm and Red Hat study of 133 Malaysian SMEs, supported by the National AI Office, showing only 21% moved past AI pilots and about 60% cited a lack of in-house technical expertise. Exabytes itself is putting more than 50% of its budget into AI, targeting one million businesses adopting AI by 2030, opened an HPC/AI colocation facility in Penang, signed an MoU with Aurora Mobile, and now draws roughly 30% of revenue from AI and cloud.
Why it matters
If you sell or build for Malaysian SMEs, the survey number that matters is the 60% citing no in-house technical expertise and the 79% stuck in pilots, not the model access problem — the paid work is workflow redesign plus ongoing support, not another chatbot. It also sets a concrete benchmark for local demand: Exabytes claims 160,000 business customers (90% SMEs) and 30% of revenue from AI and cloud, so a small team should decide whether to compete on agent delivery or on the unglamorous integration and change-management layer.
Discussion angle
The 21%-past-pilots / 60%-no-in-house-expertise split suggests SMEs can already use ChatGPT but cannot operationalise agents — is the better Malaysian play selling agents, or selling the workflow re-engineering that Chan says is the actual blocker?