Author: admin heyokha

“Why is going to the mall so expensive now?”

That’s what a coworker asked me over lunch last week.

He wasn’t talking about a luxury shopping spree. Just a casual weekend outing — lunch, coffee, maybe a bit of browsing. But somehow, it still felt like his wallet had been mugged by a smiling barista and a parking meter.

“It’s not like prices exploded,” he said. “But I always leave feeling poorer than I expected.”

That stuck with me. Because he’s right — something has changed. Not always in ways you can quantify on a receipt, but in how everyday life feels more expensive.

And it’s not just him.

From toothpaste to concert tickets to a bowl of ramen that used to be a daily lunch feature is now a weekend treat instead — the vibes are off. We all feel it. But what’s causing it?

Welcome to the Post-Goldilocks Economy

For 40 years, investors had it good.

• Interest rates kept falling.
• Globalization kept costs low.
• Central banks looked like geniuses.
• Profit margins expanded.
• And your passive 60/40 portfolio? Worked like magic.

This “Great Disinflation” wasn’t divine intervention — it was engineered on five key pillars:

1. Cheap labor (thank you, China WTO 2001)
2. Frictionless trade (hello, supply chains)
3. Central bank credibility (remember when we trusted policy?)
4. Demographic tailwinds (young, productive populations)
5. Tech productivity (more output, same costs)

Goodbye to the Old Normal of low rates, we are now entering the New Reality of sticky inflation

Together, these forces created a world where companies didn’t need pricing power. Margins went up even as prices stayed flat. It was the investor’s version of having your cake and eating it too — delivered via drone, of course.

But then the cake caught fire.

Scarcity Strikes Back

COVID didn’t just break supply chains. It broke the illusion.

• Just-in-time became just-too-fragile.
• Energy nationalism replaced energy abundance.
• Geopolitics re-entered the chat.

Now, inflation isn’t “transitory.” It’s structural.

The U.S. Federal Reserve finds itself in a chokehold: raising rates risks detonating the debt bomb, but cutting rates lets inflation rage on. In fact, by 2025, the U.S. is spending 93% of its tax income on just two things: entitlements and interest payments. That leaves… almost nothing for anything else.

Currently, the U.S. fed fund rate is at 4.5%. If borrowing costs hit even 6% which isn’t that far off, interest alone eats up 40% of tax revenue. And at 9%? The math turns apocalyptic: interest payments could consume more than 100% of revenue under a recession scenario. That’s not fiscal policy — that’s an unsustainable feedback loop.

Paying off just the interest on U.S. debt will quickly deplete U.S. tax revenue. Over 100% of tax revenue will go towards paying back only interest if the U.S. enters a recession!

CPI Is a Mirage — And We’ve Been Here Before

Sound familiar?

We explored this in our earlier blog, The Invisible Inflation We Live With — where inflation wasn’t roaring through your Bloomberg terminal, but sneaking in through smaller chocolate bars, earlier  hotel check out times, and subscription plans with less of everything.

That was the consumer-facing version of inflation.

This is the investor-facing one.

Because the same silent shrinkage is happening inside portfolios.

Your bond allocation? Still there on paper — but its real value is slipping, while its role as a diversifier is being squeezed by rising inflation and yields.

Your passive equity exposure? Margin pressure is coming.

That 60/40 mattress? It may need a serious re-stuffing. To be clear: the 60/40 portfolio isn’t dead. But it was built for a world of falling rates, stable currencies, and declining inflation.

That world is now in the rear-view mirror. In its place, we face higher volatility, persistent price pressures, and the return of macro risks we forgot to hedge for.

In this new world, passive portfolios that track the past may not protect the future.

Are longer term bonds really “risk free”? These 30-year ones seem to be struggling to regain investor confidence

So Where Do You Hide?

Well, you don’t hide.

You own the companies that can name their price.

While the average company is getting squeezed between rising input costs and price-sensitive consumers, Pricing Power Equities (PPEs) are doing the opposite:

✅ Raising prices
✅ Keeping volumes steady
✅ Defending (or even expanding) margins

These businesses are not just inflation survivors. They are inflation beneficiaries.

In short, they don’t take prices — they make them.

Pricing Power: The Anti-Inflation Trend?

Here’s what makes this strategy weirdly contrarian: it goes against almost everything we’ve been taught.

“Buy what’s cheap.”
✅ No. Buy what’s irreplaceable.

“Avoid monopolies.”
✅ Not anymore. Embrace natural monopolies, especially ones powered by scale, brand, or ecosystem lock-in.

“Inflation hurts everyone.”
✅ Not the companies who pass it on without losing loyalty, volume, or market share.

Of course, pricing power isn’t the only hero in the inflation story. Hard assets like gold, supply-constrained commodities, and substitution plays all shine in this regime. But pricing power is a rising co-star — elegant, scalable, and increasingly central to how we think about structural resilience. In the 2010s, winners were defined by how lean they could get — the kings of efficiency.

In the 2020s, winners are defined by how much they can charge — and still be loved.

In this new playbook, you’re not looking for cost cutters. You’re looking for:

• Companies that own their supply chains.
• Brands that make people feel something.
• Platforms with user ecosystems so sticky you need social rehab to leave.
• Businesses riding the tailwind of government-made scarcity — like quotas, export bans, or downstream mandates

Final Thought: Scarcity Is the New Alpha

The world of cheap capital, cheap labor, and cheap oil is gone.

We’re now in the age of expensive everything — except, perhaps, your Netflix subscription (for now). In this world, only one thing protects your capital:

Owning the companies that make the rules — not follow them.

Tara Mulia

Admin heyokha

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The Silver Awakening

The quiet metal that might just outshine gold

For centuries, silver has been gold’s quieter sibling — less glamorous, less hoarded, and often left out of the spotlight. But sometimes, little brothers grow up. And if recent market signals are any clue, silver might be entering its glow-up era.

We’re not talking about speculative hype. We’re talking about a confluence of technical breakouts, fundamental tailwinds, and structural regime shifts — all pointing to one underpriced conclusion: Silver is waking up.

And it might not go back to sleep anytime soon.

Gold has fans. Silver has torque.

It’s no secret that investors have been piling into gold. It’s become a familiar safe-haven story: fiscal dominance, geopolitical risk, and an increasingly unstable USD have made the yellow metal a preferred portfolio hedge. Gold even hit a new all-time high of $3,578 just this week!

Silver is exposed to the same macro risks as gold whether that be fiscal erosion, currency distrust, inflation, but with less acknowledgment and far less institutional love. It’s the vulnerability we ignore. Until we can’t.

If recent trends are anything to go by, we may be seeing the early signs of silver following gold’s monetary comeback.

• According to its Q2 2025 13F filing, the Saudi Central Bank opened new positions in iShares Silver Trust (SLV) and Global X Silver Miners ETF (SIL).
  • While small (1.25% and 0.4% of their U.S. portfolio, respectively), this marks the first-ever silver allocation from a central bank whose gold repatriation has accelerated since 2022.
• Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Finance announced it would allocate $520 million through 2027 to precious metals — including silver.

Think about that for a second.

If central banks — traditionally allergic to silver — are beginning to experiment with it again, perhaps the market is underestimating the next leg of the monetary metals story.

A Metal Out of Time: Supply Can’t Keep Up with the Silver Rush

The market often treats silver as a humble sidekick to gold — the Robin to its Batman, the Luigi to its Mario, the… you get it. But while gold basks in the limelight of central bank vaults and global headlines, silver has been quietly building a case as the most underappreciated protagonist in the precious metals saga. In a crisis, sidekicks often can save the day.

Let’s start with the basics: Silver supply is structurally broken.

According to Metals Focus, mine production peaked in 2016 and has flatlined since. Meanwhile, demand has been ramping up across industrial, investment, and even monetary fronts — leading to five consecutive years of deficits, as the Silver Institute tracks. In 2025 alone, the silver market is expected to see another deficit of 117.6 million ounces, continuing a now-familiar shortfall pattern.

Source: The Silver Institute

There is more demand than supply is able to keep up with for 5 years now

To put that into perspective, 2025’s expected demand is 1,148.3 million ounces, while total supply clocks in at just 1,030.6 million ounces. That’s not a gap — that’s a canyon. And it’s one we’ve been dancing around for most of the past decade.

Adding salt to the shortage wound: silver production is not only stagnant, but concentrated and vulnerable. Just five countries — Mexico, Peru, China, Chile, and Bolivia — are responsible for 62% of global mine supply. And guess what? Production from these top five is expected to fall by 19 million ounces by 2029, led by a 13% drop in Mexico alone, as key mines like San Julián, Fresnillo, and La Encantada approach closure due to reserve depletion.

In other words, the supply picture is looking more like an aging rock band on its farewell tour — tired, stretched, and nowhere near replacing its biggest hits.

Source: Metals Focus

Mine supply outlook is looking bleak and exploration expenditure remains stagnant

 

Meanwhile, demand is living its best life.

On the industrial side, solar photovoltaic demand has grown from 5.6% of total demand in 2015 to 17% in 2024, with projections that 332 million ounces of silver will be needed annually by 2050 just to support new solar buildouts. And remember, that’s just one sliver (pun intended) of silver’s industrial use cases.

On the investment side, silver is no longer just the speculative playground of Reddit-fueled squeezes. According to the Silver Institute, silver-backed exchange-traded products (ETPs) attracted 95 million ounces in net inflows in the first half of 2025 alone, already surpassing the total for all of 2024. Holdings now sit at 1.13 billion ounces, nearing their pandemic-era highs.

Institutional futures traders are piling in too — net long positions on CME silver futures are up 163% YTD, reaching their highest levels since the first half of 2021.

But perhaps the biggest “hello, something’s changed” moment is in the gold-to-silver ratio.

After peaking above 100 earlier this year — meaning one ounce of gold bought you more than 100 ounces of silver — the ratio has compressed into the 80s–90s range. The 10-year average is around 81. Historically, this ratio tends to overshoot before silver plays catch-up — and when it does, it doesn’t just keep pace; it flies. In previous cycles, silver rallies have been twice as large as gold’s.

In 2025, gold is already up around 38%.

If silver’s rally is only just beginning — well, you can do the math.

And yet… most portfolios still treat silver as an afterthought.

In an environment where everyone’s chasing the AI trade, this sets up a perfect contrarian setup — because silver is fundamentally leveraged gold. When gold rises 10%, silver has historically moved 20–30%. If gold is fear, silver is panic.

And panic, dear reader, can be a great trade.

In the shadows of empires

There’s a philosophical angle here, too.

Throughout history, silver has played the role of monetary glue in collapsing empires and uncertain regimes. In ancient China, it was the foundation of dynastic trade. In the Americas, silver funded colonization. And in 19th century Asia, the Mexican silver dollar became the region’s de facto currency — circulating freely across Indonesia, the Philippines, and China.

Why? Because silver isn’t just valuable — it’s usable. Divisible. Ubiquitous. It’s the money of the people, not just the money of kings.

“Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight!” squaked by Long John Silver’s parrot, Captain Flint in the beloved novel ‘Treasure Island’ refers to the Spanish silver dollar!

The silver coin was the actual form of currency during the Spanish Empire and worth eight reales (former unit of currency in Spain). It can notably be cut into eight smaller pieces or “bits to to make smaller change

And in a world where monetary trust is fraying — where sanctions freeze reserves, fiat erodes in silence, and crypto volatility terrifies grandmothers — silver might offer a familiar fallback. A metallic middle ground between central bank distrust and digital confusion.

Silver’s story, in many ways, is about resilience. It doesn’t chase headlines. It doesn’t get invited to Davos. But when trust breaks down, silver shows up.

So what? Why Silver? Why, Now?

At Heyokha, we’ve written extensively about the end of disinflation, the rise of gold, and the need for real assets in a world of monetary erosion. But silver’s time may have come — not instead of gold, but alongside it.

In our view, silver fits squarely into the de-dollarization and deglobalization thesis — a hard asset in an increasingly soft world. It’s small enough to move fast, but big enough to matter.

We live in an era of geopolitical currency distrust, capital flow bifurcation, and monetary weaponization.

• The U.S. is running a fiscal deficit close to 6.5% of GDP.
• The dollar’s role as neutral reserve is eroding — slowly, but clearly.
• Nations like Saudi Arabia are pivoting to hard assets for strategic security.

If gold is the anchor, silver is the accelerant.

Final thought: The Underdog Metal

Silver is rarely the first to run. But when it does, it sprints.

Right now, gold has the narrative — but silver may have the upside.

In a world seeking store-of-value assets beyond central bank reach and dollar dominance, silver’s next chapter could be much louder than its last.

Most investors are still watching gold. But in our view, the real sleeper trade for the next inflation cycle may not just be gold.

It might just be the gray metal that still has some shine.

Maybe we need a staircase for silver too

 

Tara Mulia

Admin heyokha

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You might not see it on official spreadsheets. But if you’ve noticed your Cha Cha chocolate peanuts shrinking, or your hotel check-out times creeping earlier, you’ve already met inflation — not on a Bloomberg terminal, but in your daily life.

In Indonesia, Cha Cha chocolate-coated peanuts — once hefty enough to rival full-sized roasted peanuts — now barely tip the scale. Open the same pack, pay the same price, but feel just a bit… underwhelmed. It’s shrinkflation in its most digestible form. Brands keep the packaging and price, but quietly downsize the contents.

Travelers, too, are feeling the pinch. Globally, the standard hotel check-in time has hovered around 2–3 PM, with check-out at 12 PM. But lately, guests in Indonesia have begun noticing a subtle shift: check-ins pushed to 3 or even 4 PM, while check-outs pull back to 11 AM or earlier. A few hours may seem trivial, but over hundreds of thousands of stays, it’s a silent re-pricing of value — without changing the price tag.

In the age of sticky inflation, it’s no longer about rising prices alone. It’s about shrinking everything else — quantity, quality, and time — in ways so subtle they don’t get caught in CPI baskets. Welcome to the world of invisible inflation.

The Shrinking World of Everyday Things

Let’s start small. Or more precisely, smaller.

Take the once-humble Cha Cha chocolate peanut. For years, this was the Indonesian go-to snack: a crunchy peanut wrapped in a thick coat of chocolate. But as many Indonesians have noticed lately, the chocolate shell has been skimped. A recent purchase revealed shells so thin and a regular roasted peanut is bigger than the actual Cha Cha peanut inside.

Regular roasted peanuts are larger than Cha Cha peanuts now??

It’s not just taste that’s been sacrificed — it’s purchasing power. This isn’t just shrinkflation. It’s inflation disguised as business-as-usual.

This phenomenon stretches across borders. Remember when Toblerone famously increased the gaps between its chocolate triangles? It was the same idea: reduce the product, hold the price. The illusion remains, but the consumer value erodes. And it’s not just in snacks.

This caused an uproar back in 2016. By 2018, Mondelez, the parent company of the Swiss chocolate bar reverted to the original design although lighter at 200g

 

       

Another Indonesian snack favorite “Momogi” which has falled into downsizing to the size of a pinky

The Great Hotel Time Heist

Let’s talk time. If you’ve been traveling recently, you might have noticed the clock has become more expensive.

A decade ago, it was common for hotels to offer check-in at 1pm or 2pm, and checkout at noon. These days? Check-ins have quietly shifted to 3 or even 4pm, while checkouts are now often 10 or 11am.

We asked around a few of our friends who are avid travelers. Sure enough, the new normal is 15:00 check-in and 11:00 check-out. Sometimes worse. Your room rate didn’t go up? Great. But you’re getting 2–3 fewer hours of stay. That’s a 12% reduction in use, for the same price.

This kind of inflation doesn’t show up in official stats. After all, the room rate hasn’t changed. But the value has.

The CPI Mirage: Inflation We Feel but Can’t Measure

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) — the standard for measuring inflation — is built to track average price changes across a basket of goods and services. But it struggles with nuance. It’s slow to register qualitative erosion or quantity shrinkage. If your Cha Cha pack still costs Rp5,000, CPI sees it as unchanged — even if there are 15% fewer peanuts inside.

Globally, inflation feels like it has cooled. In the U.S., the most recent headline CPI reading for July 2025 came in at 3.2%, ticking up from 3.0% in June. Core inflation, which strips out food and energy, remained sticky at 4.0% — pointing to continued cost pressures in services like healthcare, insurance, and housing.

In Indonesia, Bank Indonesia (BI) made headlines by cutting its benchmark rate by 25bps to 5.00% on August 20, a move aimed at stimulating growth amid softer consumer spending. Inflation in Indonesia has cooled from last year’s highs, settling at 2.5% YoY in July, within BI’s target range. But even here, locals are noticing a cost squeeze — especially in daily essentials, dining out, and logistics.

It’s not just the price that’s changing. It’s the value proposition.

Value Erosion by a Thousand Cuts

This new era of inflation isn’t marked by price spikes alone — but by a death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach to value.

• Your cloud storage provider now charges more for less space.
• Airline economy tickets come with fewer perks (read: no baggage, no meals).
• Your favorite burger chain swaps beef for chicken, with the price untouched.
• Retail stores sneakily switch from glass bottles to thinner plastic, reducing durability while calling it “sustainability.”

Even Spotify has just raised prices without allowing more flexibility on sharing accounts nor additional benefits

This is “stealth inflation.” It’s inflation that doesn’t look like inflation — until you realize you’re paying the same (or more) for less.

In behavioral economics, this taps into “money illusion”: the tendency to judge value by price tags, not by utility. If your chocolate bar looks the same on the outside, you may not notice what’s missing inside — until one day, it just feels… off.

This Isn’t a Blip — It’s a Regime Change

At Heyokha, we’ve argued since 2018 that inflation would not just return — it would change form.

As early as Q1 2018, we warned that negative real rates signaled the end of the disinflation era. By 2020, we saw fiscal and monetary policy shifting in ways that echoed Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) — with governments pumping liquidity to solve structural shocks.

That conviction wasn’t based on guessing. It was driven by thesis.

Read our latest reports on our website under “Reports”!

Since then, the evidence has stacked up:

• Global debt levels hit record highs.
• Real wages in many countries failed to keep up with core services inflation.
• Commodity prices became more volatile due to geopolitical risks.
• Supply chains underwent de-globalization and regionalization, adding new frictions and costs.

This isn’t just a blip — it’s a multi-decade regime. A return to fiscal dominance, where real yields stay compressed, and inflation becomes the tool to erode debt — silently.

Polymarket is betting 71% chance of Powell cutting rates by 25 bps

But with Federal debt exploding, can they really afford to cut that much?

A World of Permaflation?

Here’s the kicker: businesses have adapted.

Once a company gets away with shaving 10% off a chocolate bar without losing customers, it rarely brings it back. Instead, it redefines the new normal. The smaller pack, the tighter check-in window, the fewer amenities — they become permanent.

This is why we’re entering what we call the era of “permaflation”: persistent value erosion masked by stable prices. Inflation no longer announces itself with sirens. It knocks softly and rewrites the rules while you’re busy adjusting.

Inflation cycles also tend to be 10-40 years long, so we imagine this new reality of high inflation will be sticky for a long while

So What? What This Means for Investors

If the data doesn’t show the full picture, and central banks are playing catch-up, where does that leave us?

Waiting for CPI to confirm inflation pain is like waiting for a rear-view mirror to help you steer. Instead, we believe investors must adapt to forward-looking signals — those that measure not just price, but value resilience.

That means looking at:

• Hard assets: Gold, energy, and land — stores of value that resist debasement.
• Pricing power: Companies that can pass on costs without sacrificing demand.
• Commodities & food: Where inflation is real, sticky, and necessary.

At Heyokha, this is not new. We’ve always focused on structural shifts — not headlines. Our view remains that inflation is not an event — it’s a new operating system.

Final Thought: Not All Losses Are Loud

It’s tempting to wait for inflation to roar. But often, it whispers.

It trims a chocolate coating. It steals a few hours from your holiday. It skips features in your subscription. And unless you’re paying attention — it wins.

As investors, as consumers, and as citizens — we must read between the lines. The biggest risks aren’t always visible in bold font. Sometimes, they’re nestled between the chocolate and the peanut.

 

Tara Mulia

Admin heyokha

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On a recent stroll through Senayan City mall, I saw something that perfectly captured the current consumer moment in Indonesia: a small, blink-and-you-miss-it booth by Chinese EV maker Xpeng.

But despite its humble exhibition, the hype was real. Their X9 model? Completely sold out. Next batch? Not until June 2026.

XPeng exhibition in Senayan City mall.

Despite its small booth, crowds were forming to see inside the cars

Go towards West Jakarta and Chagee, a Chinese tea brand, launched with a bang. One of their newest branch in West Jakarta in Puri Indah Mall resulted in three-hour lines, just to get a sip of their viral cheese-topped tea drinks. It was less of a store opening and more of a cultural event.

At the same time, the Denza D9 (from BYD) took over the Indonesia Stock Exchange billboard with a bold message: Car of the Year, 2025.

Rather than a “takeover,” these moments show how quickly Indonesian consumers embrace products that match their lifestyle — whether they come from Japan, Korea, or China. And for local malls, dealerships, and marketing agencies, that means more traffic, more deals, and more commissions.

The BYD Denza Flex

Let’s talk about Denza for a second. Their D9 electric MPV didn’t just quietly enter the market. It announced its arrival in ALL CAPS.

• Giant billboards outside the IDX and along main roads
• Crowned Car of the Year and Best High MPV EV by Otomotif 2025
• More advertisements on one of the busiest roads people commute on

We weren’t kidding about the advertisements everywhere

In the luxury EV category, BYD is increasingly catching up, and by mid-2025, its wholesale market share climbed to 3.8%, overtaking brands like Wuling and closing in on Hyundai and Suzuki.

Chinese brands are no longer side quests. They are contenders

Source: GAIKINDO

For context, this growth also means more work for Indonesian distributors and service providers who partner with these brands — showing how the value chain doesn’t stop at the factory gate.

In retail terms, the shift is even more telling:

BYD entered the top 10 by mid-2025, reaching 3.5% retail share in just 18 months. That means these cars aren’t just being stocked—they’re being driven.

Source: GAIKINDO

XPeng, while not as loud in its marketing, is just as methodical. At the 2025 GIIAS auto show, they made waves with:

• Local production of the X9, their flagship MPV
• A rollout plan to reach 70% of cities in Indonesia
• A smart cockpit experience powered by Snapdragon chips and AI

It’s the equivalent of launching a Tesla Model X, but priced and tailored for Southeast Asian sensibilities: luxury feel, family space, and tech bells without the Western price tag.

Oh, and they’re sold out. Did we mention that already?

The Real Engine: Taste

Here’s the thing: Indonesia isn’t falling for gimmicks. The success of these brands comes down to one simple fact:

They understand what the Indonesian consumer wants.

• Spacious family MPVs (check)
• Luxury interiors with massage chairs, a fridge, and screens (check)
• Price points that sit just under their Japanese counterparts (double check)

Why does this work so well?

According to BPS (Central Bureau of Statistics) data, over 60% of Indonesian households are multi-generational, making MPVs the preferred format over sedans or hatchbacks.

Add to that Jakarta’s infamous car-centric infrastructure — in 2022, Google Mobility data showed Jakartans walk 50% less than the global urban average. So when you go out, you go in comfort.

And when comparing prices:

• The Denza D9 starts at around IDR 1.3B, while the Toyota Alphard goes for IDR 1.5–1.7B.
• The XPeng X9 undercuts the Hyundai Staria by nearly 20%, with more features.

So yes, comfort + prestige + a price cut = a winning formula.

Us simulating ultra luxe living whilst beating Jakarta traffic

️ Other Case Studies of the Vibe-Market Fit: Pop Mart, Skintific, Chagee, and Oh!Some

Pop Mart: Limited Editions, Unlimited Hype

Pop Mart officially entered Indonesia in 2023, but its real breakout moment came in 2024 when it launched stores in Grand Indonesia, Kota Kasablanka, and Summarecon Mall. At key launches, queues reportedly lasted 2–3 hours, just to enter the store and secure a blind box collectible.

Social media exploded with unboxing videos, and resale values of some figurines hit 3x original price on local marketplaces.

Today, Pop Mart operates over 10 stores and pop-ups across Greater Jakarta and Surabaya, with more coming.

Chagee: When milk tea goes luxe

Chagee, a Chinese premium tea chain backed by Gen Z hype and minimalist aesthetics, launched in Indonesia in April 2025 at PIK Avenue. The opening weekend saw lines stretching up to three hours.

They now operate 5+ locations and are expanding aggressively — pairing high-end product quality with mall-center real estate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 hour long wait times during the grand opening of Chagee at Puri Indah Mall. Families were seen eager to take photos of the opening day goody bags and cups that looks very reminiscent of Dior’s luxury packaging – another tactic of selling “attainable luxury”

Chagee is less “hangout spot” and more “Apple Store for tea.” With drinks priced from IDR 40–50k, they hit the sweet spot between aspirational and affordable. Now present in 7+ major malls—including fX Sudirman, Puri Indah, MOI, Lotte Mall, and Epiwalk—the brand has entered with a bang.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chagee created a whole campaign promoting another store opening in Gandaria City mall. Created hype by inviting prominent Kpop singer Chen le from NCT. Hundreds flocked to see him and Chagee is now associated with celebrity

Skintific: Skincare, Simplified

Skintific, the Chinese skincare brand with science-led formulas and minimalist branding, has quietly dominated Shopee’s skincare rankings, consistently appearing in the top 5 since early 2024. It has become the #1 retinol cream on the platform.

Their local growth strategy?

• Collaborations with Indonesian KOLs
• Smart TikTok-style reels
• Skin-analyzing vending machines in malls

They’ve opened 20+ offline counters in Watsons and Guardian stores this year, and have plans for dedicated brand stores in 2025.

According to Compas, a Business Intelligence research firm, Skintific has reigned as the #1 brand with the highest marketshare of 4.1% in skincare

Oh!Some & Miniso: Affordable Aesthetic

Miniso now has over 150 stores across Indonesia, but its newer rival Oh!Some is quickly catching up — reportedly opening 25 stores in the past 12 months, many of them in second-tier malls where Gen Z foot traffic thrives.

They’ve taken the Muji formula and added K-pop flash sales, Squid Game notebooks, and skincare fridges. It’s millennial minimalism meets Gen Z maximalism — and it’s working.

So What?

As investors, here’s what we’re watching:

• Can Japanese incumbents keep up, or will they lose premium market share?
• Are local dealerships and service networks ready to support the surge in Chinese brands?
• Could this be a blueprint for China’s playbook in other emerging markets?

Final Thought:

This isn’t just about one country’s brands gaining ground — it’s about a more competitive marketplace that’s forcing everyone to up their game.

For Indonesian consumers, it means more choice, better pricing, and products that fit how they actually live.

For local businesses, it’s a signal to double down on efficiency, strengthen supply chains, and build brand loyalty — because the competition is only getting sharper.

Luxury is no longer about badge status. It’s about smart pricing, high comfort, and a little TikTok clout.
And the brands — local or foreign — that read that brief well will be the ones in the fast lane.

 

Tara Mulia

Admin heyokha

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The crypto market’s latest rally isn’t just about Bitcoin and Ethereum making new highs (again). This time, the spotlight belongs to something… boring. Not in the sense of ‘uninteresting’, but in the sense of ‘infrastructure-grade’. And in crypto, boring might just be the new brilliant.

We’ve written about this before in our blog Stablecoins 101: Chips, Claw Machines, and the Subtle Rebuild of Money, where we compared stablecoins to arcade tokens — fast, functional, and trusted inside high-stakes arenas.

But now, with the passing of the GENIUS Act in the U.S., stablecoins are leveling up from arcade chips to financial infrastructure.

What Are Stablecoins (Again)?

Stablecoins are the crypto world’s answer to volatility. Unlike Bitcoin or Ethereum, they’re designed to be boring: 1 coin = 1 dollar, always.

They combine the flexibility of blockchain with the stability of fiat. You get the speed and programmability of crypto without worrying that your “money” might drop 10% overnight because someone tweeted something.

The 3 Flavors of Stability

 

Fiat-backed: You send $1, you get 1 token. The issuer holds your $1 in cash or Treasuries. When you redeem, the token gets burned. Think vending machine: 1 coin in, 1 snack out.

Crypto-backed: You lock $150 in ETH to mint $100 in stablecoins. Overcollateralization protects against volatility. If ETH crashes too far, your collateral gets liquidated.

Algorithmic: No real backing. Stability via code and incentives. Worked until it didn’t (hi, UST). Most of these now come with a side of trauma.

Source: Bloomberg

USDC (Circle)’s market cap nears $63 billion USD which is bigger than Ford Motors ($45 billion USD)

USDT (Tether)’s market cap nears $160 billion USD which is worth more than Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley founded in 1935 ($146 billion USD)

Why Use Them?

• Transfer money globally in seconds
• Avoid volatility when trading crypto
• Escape inflation in fragile economies
• Use DeFi without touching a bank
• Get paid in dollars, anywhere, anytime

Popular Players

So, What Changed? Enter: The GENIUS Act

In July 2025, the U.S. passed the GENIUS Act: Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins. Finally, a clear federal law for payment stablecoins.

Key Changes:

1. Only licensed entities (banks, OCC-chartered nonbanks) can issue stablecoins
2. Must be 100% backed by USD or short-term Treasuries
3. Must offer monthly audits, segregated reserves, AML/KYC compliance
4. No interest allowed on stablecoin holdings
5. Consumer protection rules + priority claims if issuer goes bust

 

Effectively: stablecoins are now legal, safe, and boringly bank-grade.

The Rally Heard Round the Blockchain

Source: Bloomberg

Source: Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, which is designed to measure the performance of the largest cryptocurrencies traded in USD

Since the GENIUS Act passed:

• Global crypto market cap surpassed $4 trillion, marking one of the biggest surges of the year.
• Ethereum (ETH) rallied to a 2025 high of $3,795, fueled in part by the GENIUS Act’s prohibition on yield-bearing stablecoins — which, according to Deutsche Bank, has driven more capital toward ETH-based DeFi for yield opportunities.
• Altcoins like SOL, LINK, and XRP posted double-digit gains, with Solana reaching its highest since February.
• Circle and Coinbase stocks rose, while BitMine, Bit Digital, and other ETH-holding firms surged between 2.3% and 8%.
• The BlackRock Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) rose over 10%, while the Ethereum ETF soared more than 36% in July.
• Dynamix Corporation (DYNX) skyrocketed 26.2% after announcing a merger with Ether Reserve to create “The Ether Machine.”

 

With regulatory clarity now in place, institutional investors seem to be re-entering the chat — this time with bigger wallets.

Hot Take: Regulation isn’t the kryptonite — it’s the rocket fuel. With the U.S. lending legal cover, capital is flooding in. Four trillion reasons and counting.

Impact? Bullish for Both Crypto & Treasuries

Stablecoins are now required to hold billions in cash or T-bills. That means massive new demand for U.S. debt. Every $1 of stablecoin issued means $1 parked in U.S. Treasuries.

Circle, for instance, will likely grow their reserves into the hundreds of billions. More issuers will emerge. The U.S. gets cheap financing. Crypto gets regulatory clarity.

Everyone wins (except unregulated offshore tokens).

Winners & Losers

Winners:

• Circle (USDC): Already compliant, positioned to scale
• U.S. Treasury: Billions in new T-bill demand
• Banks & Fintechs: Legal path to issue their own stablecoins
• Consumers: Safer digital dollars with redemption rights
• DeFi: Clearer rails for payment and lending infrastructure

 

Losers:

• Tether (USDT): Offshore, less transparent, facing delisting
• Algorithmic Coins: Not legally usable for U.S. payments
• DeFi Maximalists: More regulation, less decentralization
• Non-compliant Exchanges: Will need to delist or adapt

Why It Matters Globally

In emerging markets, stablecoins are already used more than local banks. They’re trusted, 24/7, borderless. With legal clarity now in the U.S., these tools can go mainstream without fear of a Terra-style rug pull.

This isn’t just a crypto win. It’s a blueprint for programmable dollars, with auditable reserves, and global accessibility.

Final Thought: The Dollar’s New Skin

The GENIUS Act doesn’t reinvent money. It reissues it — wrapped in code, guarded by law, and designed for the internet.

We used to say stablecoins were arcade tokens.

Now they’re starting to look more like digital Treasuries.

The chips are real. The stakes are global. And the table just got a lot bigger.

 

Tara Mulia

Admin heyokha

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“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”

Well, Plutarch ,the Greek Platonian philosopher, never paid an electricity bill for a data center.

Energy vs Intelligence: Tennis and Terawatts

Padel might be the weekend warrior’s sport of choice across Indonesia, but for the past two months, it’s been tennis that dominated the world stage. Between the French Open and Wimbledon, fans were treated to back-to-back showdowns of human endurance — none more epic than Carlos Alcaraz vs. Jannik Sinner.

We weren’t kidding about the Jakarta padel craze. We spotted 2 courts being built less than 5km of each other

In the French Open, they pushed each other to five-and-a-half hours of clay-court cinema. Then came Wimbledon, where Sinner defeated Alcaraz in a tight 4-set final. These guys weren’t just hitting balls; they were burning 4,000+ calories, draining glycogen stores, chugging electrolyte shakes, and downing sushi rolls like it was an endurance buffet.

Carlos Alcoraz’s euphoric collapse after winning the French Open

Jannik Sinner’s well-deserved win for Wimbledon weeks after his loss against Carlos

All of this for one thing: to win.

Now imagine this: the energy they burned over five hours? Your AI assistant could rival that just generating a five-second video of a cat doing the Macarena.

Sport has its logic. AI? It just has inputs.

Ask, and Ye Shall Be Billed

We live in an age where asking a chatbot to write your best man’s speech is easier than asking your actual best man. The only thing easier? Forgetting that every witty AI response comes with a side order of carbon emissions and an electricity tab that would make a Bitcoin miner blush.

Here’s a stat to ruin your next AI-generated love poem: creating a single five-second AI-generated video consumes more energy than running a microwave for over an hour.

Remember when people said every Google search is like boiling a pot of water? Well, AI said, “Hold my beer.”

Source: McKinsey

One Token at a Time: The Physics of Thought

Unlike humans who can blurt out nonsense in bulk, large language models generate intelligence the way monks transcribe scripture — one token at a time. Literally.

Each word, each fragment of a sentence, each “uhm… actually”—is calculated, processed, and produced token by token. And each token? That’s energy. A lot of it.

Meta’s open-source model Llama 3.1 405B burns through 6,706 joules per response, enough to move you 400 feet on an e-bike or power your microwave for eight seconds.

And that’s just text. Want a picture of a sloth eating ramen on the moon? Double it. Want a video of that same sloth moonwalking while eating ramen? That’ll be 3.4 million joules, please.

We’re not generating intelligence anymore. We’re mining it.

 

From LOLs to Terawatts: The Rise of the Inference Empire

Training the model is expensive, sure — GPT-4 reportedly cost over $100 million to train, consuming enough energy to power San Francisco for three days.

But that’s just the beginning. Most of the energy burn comes after the model is trained. That’s the inference stage — the moment when you, the user, type “Explain inflation like I’m five” and the AI replies “Imagine you have 10 cookies and suddenly the price of cookies triples.”

That cute reply? Brought to you by thousands of GPUs, humming fans, and water-cooled server racks spread across sprawling data centers. As of 2025, inference accounts for 80–90% of AI’s computing power consumption.

 

⚡ The Coming Energy Crunch: AI Is Not Your Average App

Unlike traditional apps, which got more energy-efficient over time (thank you Moore’s Law), AI is like that kid who eats more and more every year and doesn’t stop growing.

The real kicker? AI’s energy demand is projected to rise so steeply that by 2028, it could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households.

Meanwhile, most data centers are still powered by fossil fuels. Some AI companies are racing to build new nuclear power plants (seriously, Meta and Microsoft are trying), but those take time. In the meantime, expect more methane-powered generators and a few eyebrows from environmental regulators.

 

Enter: Aura Farming, But for Terawatts

In another corner of the internet, 11-year-old Rayyan Arkan Dikha, better known as Dika, has been dancing on the prow of a canoe during traditional boat races called “Pacu Jalur” in Riau. His charisma, sunglasses, and swagger sparked a global meme sensation: “aura farming.”

Dika with 1000x aura points

                                                                     

From K-pop bands like Enhypen, corporate companies like Duolingo, and world famous DJ Steve Aokie – the aura farming goes crazy

The dance has been recreated by everyone from Travis Kelce (star football player and also Taylor Swift’s boyfriend) to the Savannah Bananas baseball team. The phrase now refers to doing something cool, repetitive, and charismatic to build vibe capital — and Dika’s doing it without touching a watt.

Meanwhile, our digital models farm aura a little differently: by torching through megawatts.

So the question is: which aura is more sustainable?

One is rooted in tradition, community, and culture. The other? Burned into silicon and powered by a carbon-heavy grid.

 

Decoding the Compute Layer: The Cost of Brains in the Cloud

Let’s break this down with our Heyokha lens: in our framework of ABC — AI, Blockchain, Compute — compute is the often-forgotten but absolutely vital third sibling. We’ve touched on the “A” and “B” factors in our latest blogs It’s the protein shake behind AI’s intellectual six-pack.

And compute, quite literally, means energy, chips, servers, water, and real estate.

• Want smarter AI? You need bigger models, which means more parameters and more chips.
• More chips? You need more cooling. Some data centers are guzzling millions of gallons of water per day just to keep it all from melting down.
• And unless someone invents an energy-efficient way to hallucinate cat memes, we’re going to need a lot more juice.

 

The Unintended Consequences: When Chatbots Demand Power Plants

The trend is clear: every company wants to “AI-enable” everything. From your fridge recommending recipes to your Excel sheet auto-analyzing Q3 earnings.

But this intelligence arms race comes at a steep cost. As AI gets baked into everything, it threatens to reshape our energy grids, strain our infrastructure, and increase your electricity bill.

Yes — utility companies are already striking deals with data centers that may pass on higher energy costs to you and me. In Virginia, the average ratepayer could pay an extra $37.50/month thanks to data center expansion.

But the cost isn’t just measured in dollars.

Water, the original cooling tech, is now a silent casualty of the AI revolution. According to Bloomberg, about two-thirds of new AI data centers since 2022 have been built in water-stressed regions, from Arizona to India to the UAE. A single 100-megawatt facility — enough to power 75,000 homes — can use 2 million liters of water per day, or the equivalent of 6,500 households’ daily water needs.

Water-stressed areas see the most growth for data centers to be built

Source: Bloomberg

As more data centers rely on evaporative cooling systems, often using fresh or even potable water, communities from Texas to the Netherlands have begun protesting. Because while servers need cooling, so do crops, households, and ecosystems.

So when your smart speaker tells you a joke, just know you might be paying for it twice: once in laughs, and once in kilowatt-hours.

 

So What?

We’re not here to be anti-AI. In fact, we’re bullish on the productivity and innovation it can unlock. But as investors, observers, and humans who still like forests and breathable air, we should ask:

• Who benefits from this AI-driven energy boom?
• Which companies are selling the shovels in this new “intelligence gold rush”?
• Will AI be the catalyst that accelerates nuclear adoption, or will it deepen our dependence on gas?

 

As we see it, energy is quickly becoming the new strategic battleground for intelligence. Not just oil for tanks — but watts for bots.

 

Tara Mulia

 

Admin heyokha

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Souvenirs, Snacks, and Shareholder Sovereignty

You’ve seen the footage.

Hundreds of Indonesian retail investors lining up since dawn. Not for a sneaker drop. Not for a Taylor Swift concert.

But for… Astra International’s Annual General Meeting (ASII IJ).

Yes. The AGM.

What’s the draw? The dividends? The management Q&A?

Not quite. We’re talking souvenirs.

Vouchers. Water bottles. And in recent years?

Digital blood pressure monitors. Xiaomi smartwatches. Bento boxes. And allegedly, headaches for the organizers—cue Bodrex, Indonesia’s beloved aspirin.

Tiktoks of attendees showing off their goody bags and proudly queuing

The scenes look like a scene from Comic-Con, not a corporate meeting. But perhaps that’s the point.

Sure, some come for the freebies. But many stick around for the long haul — not just for the snacks, but for the strategy.

And they’re not just showing up in Indonesia. They’re forming a quiet but powerful force globally.

Japan: Where AGMs Meet Gift Culture

Over in Japan, this retail investor culture has evolved into an art form.

According to a Bloomberg report, more companies than ever are offering gifts at their annual meetings to attract what they call “fan shareholders.” From cash vouchers to collectible items, the movement is clear: companies are courting the crowd.

In 2024, 11% of Japanese firms offered AGM gifts, up from 4% in 2021.

More than 120 companies gave cash vouchers—5x more than in 2019.

Why? Because retail investors vote.

And when activist investors start knocking, those loyal “fan” shareholders start looking a lot like defensive moats.

Source: Bloomberg

One Tokyo-based retail investor said it best:

“I get a HUB card for free drinks… I use it to treat my friends and kind of show off my shareholder status.”

It’s Buffett with a side of beer.

Why Retail Investors Sometimes Move First

In capital markets, retail investors are often dismissed as emotional, erratic, and under-informed.

But here’s a crazy thought: maybe they just think differently.

Where institutions shuffle portfolios quarterly, retail investors show up with umbrellas and lunchboxes at 7AM.

Where the pros dig through terminal screens, the retail crowd is doing Peter Lynch-style scuttlebutt:

“I use this product.”

“I saw a line at their store.”

“My kid wants that toy.”

And sometimes? That works better.

Peter Lynch Knew Before It Was Cool

In Beating the Street, Lynch tells the story of 7th graders from St. Agnes School building a portfolio.

One of Heyokha’s favorite readings

Their secret? Vibes.

They picked stocks they knew: Nike, The Body Shop, Wal-Mart. They liked the products. They saw the lines.

Two years later?

The kids delivered a 70% return vs. the S&P’s 26%. They beat 99% of mutual funds.

The lesson? Retail doesn’t mean random.

It means they observe life and invest accordingly.

Retail: The Most Underappreciated “Whale” in the Market

Let’s look at the structural trends:

Technology has made investing frictionless.

The pandemic triggered millions of first-time investors.

Commission-free trading, fractional shares, TikTok explainers, and Whatsapp groups have turned curiosity into conviction.

The numbers speak for themselves. Though it has not recovered from post pandemic levels nearing 60%, the latest number of 40% is still respectable!
Source: IDX

These retail investors:

• Sit through AGMs — some for the snacks, others for the substance (many for both)
• Vote with surprising consistency in favor of management.
• Stick around longer than most quant-driven funds.

Of course, retail investors aren’t a monolith. Some are day traders. Some are dividend die-hards. Some just want to flex their AGM goody bags. But that’s kind of the point — there’s no single archetype. Just millions of individual minds showing up with curiosity.

It’s the showing up that counts.

And it looks like they’re growing and actually sticking through.

The Indonesian Retail Stock Investors Hit Record High of 7 million in 2025

Source: KSEI

The game isn’t: “How do we get rid of them?”

It’s: “How do we build with them?”

Final Thought: Maybe the Real Freebie… Is Loyalty

Sure, the bento box is cute.

But the real ROI might be in what it represents:

People showing up.

Voting.

Holding.

❤️ Caring.

It’s easy to call retail investors unsophisticated.

But maybe they’re just early to the stuff the pros haven’t priced in yet.

And if you’re worried about following the crowd?

Don’t be.

As long as you packed snacks and got there first.

Tara Mulia and Nicholas

Admin heyokha

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The Wars May Be Short. But the Questions They Raise Are Long.

Twelve days. That’s how long the latest round between Iran and Israel lasted. But while missiles fell, satellites blinked, and markets flinched — the bigger ripple was philosophical:

What does it mean to be sovereign in 2025?

Because today, it’s not just about having borders. It’s about:

• Who controls your power grid.
• Who supplies your fertilizers.
• And maybe even… who gets your TikTok algorithm.

When war breaks out, it’s never just over there. It’s in your wheat price, your energy bill, and your supply chain spreadsheet.

We saw this movie before — in 2022. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turned ammonia into a geopolitical weapon and fertilizer into front-page news. In our past blog Rising Fertiliser and Food Prices: Who Will Be Spared? we warned that ammonia could become the canary in the commodity coal mine.

Well, the bird is still chirping. And the war drums haven’t stopped.

The Ghost of Fertilizer Past (Still Haunting the Present)

Let’s catch up.

When Russia turned off the gas taps to Europe, fertilizer plants went dark. Ammonia prices spiked. Food prices surged. Countries like Egypt scrambled for nitrogen. Farmers in Indonesia relying on fertilizers felt the heat in their wallets — even as we sat thousands of miles from the trenches.

20% of Ukraine’s farmland remains mined, occupied or unusable

Fast forward to 2025: Brent crude jumps above $80, fertilizer prices spike again, and the Strait of Hormuz — the artery for 40% of global urea and 20% of LNG — is back in headlines.

Norwegian fertilizer giant Yara warns: “The food system is fragile.”

They’re not kidding:

• Israel’s gasfields shut down → Egypt’s ammonia supply stalls.
• Iran shuts down its plants “for security reasons.”
• A fifth of global ammonia flows face disruption.
• One more misfire in the region and breakfast gets more expensive.

It’s not just food that’s vulnerable. It’s the whole latticework of modern sovereignty.

The New Arms Race

Back to Israel and Iran.

Beyond the rockets, the deeper question lingered quietly: what happens when sovereignty includes strategic capabilities like nuclear deterrence? It’s a reminder that power today isn’t just immediate — it’s long-term, layered, and loaded with implications.

And while the ceasefire held, the spending race didn’t stop. In fact, it accelerated.

The Numbers Are Loud:

• Global defense spend hit $2.7 trillion in 2024.
• NATO’s new pledge? A whopping 5% of GDP on defense. 20% of the defense expenditures will be devoted to major equipment spending.
• Russia’s defense budget? Up 38% YoY to $149 billion (7.1% of GDP).
• Even China’s chill 1.7% of GDP translates to an estimated $290 billion.

Even traditionally neutral countries are piling in as seen in Switzerland joining the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI), aiming to contribute to a pan-European air and missile defense system

23 NATO countries have met or surpassed the 2% guideline – nearly 6-fold increase from just four in 2014

And 29 NATO countries have already surpassed their equipment expenditure guideline!

Source: NATO

Translation? Defense is no longer just about tanks. It’s bullets, chips, rare earths, and energy security.

We’re not just funding armies. We’re rebuilding the idea of sovereignty through industrial might:

• Chips.
• Lasers.
• Satellites.
• And all the raw materials that make those possible.

Source: The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies

The F-16 Fighting Falcon, the most common fighter jet in the world, costs $25-70 million each!

Sovereignty Is a Supply Chain and Indonesia is a Link

In the Cold War, power was measured in nukes. In 2025? It’s measured in gallium, graphite, and rare earths — the obscure elements that quietly power everything from night vision goggles to missile guidance systems.

You can’t launch a drone strike without a critical mineral checklist.

And here’s the kicker: most of the world’s refining capacity sits in China. Gallium, graphite, and rare earths? All subject to export controls now. China may still dominate the refining process — with over 80% control over rare earth processing — but Indonesia is one of the few nations actually blessed with the raw ingredients. This makes us a crucial character in the geopolitical drama unfolding between the West and China.

Let’s talk nickel.

Indonesia’s got the world’s biggest stash. But instead of shipping it out raw (as we used to), we’re processing it here. We banned unprocessed exports, built refineries, and started climbing the value chain — like adults putting on our own oxygen masks first.

Indonesia is now one of the few places on earth where raw minerals meet refining ambition meets geopolitical non-alignment.

• China wants in — to lock up supply.
• The West wants in — to de-risk from China.
• Indonesia? Sitting in the middle, holding the rocks everyone wants.

The result? We’re not just a passive supplier. We’re a player.

Call it “strategic mineral non-alignment.” A sweet spot — if we play it wisely.

Danantara, Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund, is making moves to invest more nickel down streaming projects

Food for Thought: What Really Makes a Country “Safe”?

It’s not just missiles anymore. Sovereignty now spans:

• Energy security (ask Germany).
• Fertilizer self-sufficiency (ask Egypt).
• Data governance (ask the EU).
• Rare earth access (ask the Pentagon).

The irony? While AI headlines steal the spotlight, it’s the boring stuff — beans, bandwidth, and bauxite — that determines who thrives when the world gets shaky.

Maybe in 2025, the price of sovereignty isn’t measured in warheads, but in warehouses.

Investor Takeaways: What to Watch

1. Resilience > Efficiency
   The “just-in-time” era is over. Countries and corporates alike are paying up for redundancy, not speed.
2. Defense Is the New ESG
   What was once controversial is now compulsory. Defense capex is a new secular theme — from drones to defense semis to supply chain hardening.
3. Supply Chains = Strategy
   Follow the materials. Gallium, ammonia, nickel — the commodity isn’t the story. The control of it is.

Final Thought: The Game Has Changed — But Are We Playing It?

The 12-day Israel-Iran flare-up may have faded from headlines. But its message is loud:

In a world of flash wars and fragile supply chains, sovereignty is no longer a given. It’s something you build. And defend. And fund — year after year.

So whether you’re a policymaker, a CEO, or a curious observer of markets, ask yourself:

“What part of my strategy still assumes the world is predictable?”

Because today’s sovereignty isn’t about waving a flag. It’s about owning your food, your fuel, and your future.

 

Tara Mulia

Admin heyokha

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Remember when we said AI will eat software?
Turns out, we underestimated its appetite.
Because next on the menu is AI itself — and who’s doing the eating? Philosophy.

Check out our previous blog: AI Just Ate your CRM on our website

A 2,400-Year-Old Blueprint

Long before we worried about chatbots hallucinating your medical bill, Aristotle laid down a neat framework for life: SMLSR.

• Substance — it exists on its own.
• Material — made of physical stuff.
• Living — grows, reproduces.
• Sentient — feels and perceives.
• Rational — thinks about thinking.

 

A rock? Just Substance + Material.

A plant? Add Living.

A cat? Add Sentient.

A human? The full stack: Substance, Material, Living, Sentient, Rational.

Aristotle called rationality the soul’s unique gift — our edge over every other beast.

Today? We’ve built machines that can fake Sentience frighteningly well. But true Rationality? That still sits squarely in the human corner.

Viral post asking Chat GPT to simulate being human for a day. Surprisingly well-written and touching. Sentience checks out.

The Big Myth: More Compute Solves Everything

Most companies still treat AI as an engineering puzzle:
More data. Bigger models. Faster chips.

But that’s like pouring rocket fuel into a car with no steering wheel. You don’t just get there faster — you crash harder.

Here’s the truth: All AI is biased.
Bias isn’t a glitch — it’s a choice. It’s in the data we feed it, the trade-offs we hard-code, the outcomes we reward.

As code increasingly governs what we see, buy, believe, and trust, the values embedded in that code shape everything.

What gets rewarded.
What gets suppressed.
Who profits. Who’s left behind.

This isn’t an IT problem — it’s a philosophical one.

Patterns Are Not Purpose

AI today is brilliant at one thing: spotting patterns.
It predicts the next word, the next pixel, the next move — with staggering accuracy.

But should it?
What patterns matter? Which truths do we protect? When does convenience trump accuracy, or vice versa?

These aren’t engineering questions. They’re moral ones.

MIT’s Michael Schrage and David Kiron say this shift is a battle between bounded rationality and bounded patterns. Generative AI doesn’t deduce like a philosopher — it imitates. When conflicting goals collide? It buckles.

Bright minds in MIT have already been researching this topic.

Michael Schrage is a research fellow with the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Initiative on the Digital Economy

David Kiron is the editorial director and researcher of MIT Sloan Management Review and program lead for its Big Ideas research initiatives.

Google Gemini serves as a cautionary tale.

In early 2024 the model began adding forced diversity to historically specific prompts—think Black Vikings or an Asian officer in a WWII German uniform. Two worthy aims, accuracy and inclusion, collided with no hierarchy to resolve the tension. The backlash, apology, and shutdown that followed are what ethicists have dubbed “teleological confusion.”

Patterns only matter when they serve a purpose—and purpose is a philosophical choice.

Some examples of brands we’ve seen here in Indonesia and abroad who nail this mission first thinking:

 

• Sahabat-AI | GoTo & Indosat

The ecosystem that leverages across tech, telco, media, and governmental support

GoTo’s President of On-Demand Services, Catherine Hindra Sutjahyo showcasing the use cases of Sahabat-AI

Indonesia’s GoTo and Indosat teamed up in late 2024 to launch Sahabat-AI — an open-source large language model crafted specifically for Bahasa Indonesia and regional dialects like Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, and Bataknese.

Its mission is clear: strengthen Indonesia’s digital sovereignty and make advanced AI genuinely useful for everyone, not just the urban tech crowd.

By weaving in local language and cultural cues, Sahabat-AI can power everything from chatbots in e-commerce apps to educational tools in rural schools — all in the words people actually use at home. So when the model faces a choice — generic global answer or locally meaningful response — its purpose keeps it grounded in community relevance and trust.

 

• Spotify | AI DJ (Voice-Request upgrade, May 2025)

Spotify’s AI DJ just got a serious upgrade: it now handles voice requests like “Play underground ’70s disco” or “Give me energizing beats for my afternoon slump.” This is more than a novelty — it lives up to Spotify’s north star to “connect fans and artists” and “soundtrack every moment.”

When deciding between obvious hits and hidden gems, the algorithm resolves the tension by favoring discovery and artist exposure over mindless autoplay loops. Listeners say it feels like having a friend who knows your taste and surprises you — because the AI’s purpose demands more than just maximizing screen time.

Purpose is the quiet super-prompt. When it’s crystal clear, AI knows how to act when objectives collide. Leave it fuzzy and you risk becoming the next Gemini-style headline.

Alignment Starts at Zero: A New Society Needs New Ground Rules

Most firms bolt on “AI alignment” after they ship the model. That’s like teaching ethics to a lion after you’ve set it loose in a daycare.

If AI is this powerful, the real question isn’t can it do X?

It’s should it?

And according to whose values?

We’re not just living in an AI age — we’re living in a world where code quietly does what kings once did: it governs.

But code is invisible. So we have to ask:
Whose rules? Whose benefit? Whose blind spots?

This is why a “Responsible AI” team alone won’t save you. You need explicit commitment to:

✅ Understand the real stakes: AI won’t wait for committees to catch up.
✅ Guide it early: aim it at causes aligned with human flourishing.
✅ Build responsibly: every company owning a model should own its moral assumptions too.

One Callback to Our Last Thesis

In AI Eats Software, we said smart interfaces would wipe out clunky dashboards. But as AI replaces software’s role as the worker, trust becomes the real moat.

Power is shifting from visible tools to invisible thinking. When power shifts — central to distributed — the only anchor left is trust in the values behind the code.

What Leaders Should Really Be Doing

Good AI doesn’t just run tasks — it carries your worldview.

So map it:

• What does your AI know? (Epistemology)
• How does it label the world? (Ontology)
• Why does it do what it does? (Teleology)

Schrage calls this responsibility mapping. We call it good sense in an age of self-writing code.

Final Thought: The Last R Still Belongs to Us

Aristotle gave us a map: from rocks to cats to humans — and that final jump: Rationality.

We’ve taught machines to mimic the living and the sentient. Next up is mimicking Reason. But real Reason isn’t just data. It’s values. Trade-offs. Choosing what matters.

So before you brag about your next trillion-parameter model — check if it has a soul. Or at least a philosophical backbone.

Software ate the world.
AI ate software.
And now?
Philosophy will eat AI.

Better feed it wisely — or risk being dinner yourself.

 

Tara Mulia

Admin heyokha

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