Singapore's $19bn fintech investing in agentic AI, cutting staff costs
Singapore's top fintech, Grab, has been gradually bouncing back from a rough few years across the fintech space. Its stock price has risen ~38% in the past year, and its market cap sits at $19.3bn. As it looks to grow further in 2025, it's 'leaning in' on AI and leaning back on staff expenses.
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In Grab's Q4 earnings call yesterday, CEO Anthony Tan cited "AI and robotics" as the most exciting initiatives the fintech is involved in. Tan said Grab "embraced Gen AI from the very beginning," noting that it was OpenAI's first lighthouse partner in APAC. Tan highlighted an AI-based assistant for merchant consumers as one of its AI success stories.
Tan echoed industry sentiment that 2025 is the "year of agentic AI,"adding that Grab will "be rolling out even greater personallized solutions for our ecosystem" using the technology. It will use DeepSeek's models, Tan said the firm already "also work[s] with other multimodal foundational models."
Grab may be investing in AI, but it's also cutting costs. The fintech cut $13m in corporate costs in 2024, driven by "variable and staff costs" collectively falling 15% year-on-year. Stock-based compensation for 2024, which was not included in that figure, fell 8.2% year-on-year.
Grab is hiring AI staff in 2025, however. In California, the fintech hired Jen Yu, a tech lead manager in Adobe's cloud team, as a senior engineering manager in its AI Core team. It also has open job listings for machine learning engineers in both Singapore and Malaysia.
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