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Hello Betamax, If you’re Singaporean or have lived in Singapore, you’ve most likely used one of the products made by Open Government Products (OGP) – whether that’s an app for paying parking fees, one for redeeming government vouchers at the supermarket, or a web platform for booking public badminton courts. An experimental unit within the Singapore government, OGP has developed over 40 products since it was founded in 2019. A few weeks ago, I sat down with its director, Li Hongyi, after he took the stage at Tech in Asia Conference 2026. We spoke about a range of topics, from his philosophy when it comes to building to his personal journey that led him to start OGP. Developing products for the public sector is like “fighting with sticks and rocks,” Li said candidly. What many people don’t see are the products his team has had to kill over the years to focus on those with a higher chance of success and the months it can take for its offerings to find their first user. Today’s Top Story offers a rare peek into how products get built inside a bureaucracy, what Li believes the public sector can learn from high-performing private companies, and why, despite the challenges, he believes this is a job worth doing. Melissa Goh, senior editor
TOP STORY Inside Singapore’s government team that kills its own products
Digital collage by Ulla, photo courtesy of Open Government Products
Li previously worked at Google, and his description of the differences between product management at the tech giant and the government was instructive. He said product managers at a company on the scale of Google solve tiny problems with the best resources in the world, while at OGP, he solves big problems without the same arsenal. That’s something founders everywhere can surely relate to.
A VISUAL STORY YOU SHOULDN’T MISS The machine age begins in Seoul? 
While not close to the heady days of 2021, funding in South Korea has seen a comeback this year. Our data shows US$2.8 billion has been raised so far this year – US$600 million more than all of 2025. The country’s proficiency in AI hardware production is part of the reason why, and there may be more good news on that front soon. A16z’s infrastructure team is reportedly visiting the country, fresh after announcing a “Machine Age” fund worth US$1.1 billion aimed at AI hardware and infrastructure.
TRENDING NEWS 1️⃣ Moonshot faces $700m shareholder dispute ahead of HK IPO The Beijing-based AI startup’s executives are reportedly in settlement talks with Recurrent.ai over allegations of misleading investors and transferring or deleting AI data. 2️⃣ Mastercard, WEX to launch fleet payments network in APAC The system would combine fuel, maintenance, tolls, parking, and other vehicle-related expenses in one platform, replacing fragmented payment tools and becoming Asia Pacific’s first unified fleet payments network. 3️⃣ Xpeng says it can adapt driver-assist AI with little data The Chinese electric vehicle maker says it can adapt its advanced driver-assistance software for European markets with limited local data, as little as one ten-thousandth of the data needed to train its underlying AI models. 4️⃣ Dropbox launches data access governance tool in Singapore The Singapore launch comes as the city-state’s Personal Data Protection Act requires stronger personal data protection. 5️⃣ Sequoia-backed chip startup Nuvacore seeks $2.5b valuation The six-month-old company is focused on developing processors for data centers, though it has not yet released a product.
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