One founder, many agents: The Philippines’s answer to a vanishing Series A

For a decade, the Southeast Asian startup scene remained relatively unchanged — find a couple of co-founders, secure seed funding, hire a dozen employees, and race towards the next fundraising round before the money ran out. This script relied on a steady supply of early-stage capital, but a new report from Gobi Partners, titled "Solo Horizons: Redefining Scale for the Philippine AI Economy," suggests that the formula may need to change.

The report highlights the potential of the AI-native one-person company (OPC): a single founder, minimal staff, and a host of AI agents handling tasks that previously required separate engineering, marketing, and support hires.

This concept is appealing and timely for a region where seed capital has become scarce outside Singapore. However, the report also reveals the significant disparity in capital distribution within the region. While Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company supply around US$8 billion annually in regional digital funding, Singapore has secured 94 percent of disclosed Southeast Asian startup funding in 2026's first nine months.

The Philippines, meanwhile, has raised less than US$130 million and seen a 64.5 percent decrease in deal value.

The report identifies the cost of running AI agents as the primary factor driving the change in startup economics. With AI agents now executing 66 percent of benchmark computer tasks at a cost of US$0.07 per million tokens, compared to US$20 per million tokens for GPT-3.5, starting an OPC requires significantly less capital. A traditional seed-stage startup might need US$250,000 to US$500,000 in pre-revenue capital, whereas an OPC only needs US$5,000 to US$20,000.

The report also points out that AI-native startups receive less than one percent of disclosed funding in the Philippines. While GCash operator Mynt's record listing raised ₱60.9 billion (approximately US$960 million), it demonstrates that exits are possible for AI-native companies. However, turning this idea into a viable venture pipeline remains a challenge for the Philippines.

While the country has enacted legislation to facilitate one-person corporations, the majority of OPCs established in 2024 are traditional service businesses, not AI-native enterprises. Furthermore, the impact of AI agents on employment is a concern, as their automation capabilities may displace workers in the BPO sector. Despite these challenges, the report suggests that OPCs can serve as a validation pipeline for venture capital, rather than an end goal, and proposes four levers to foster this growth.