Southeast Asia’s AI economy will not be built on tools alone. It will depend on whether workers and businesses can actually use those tools well. That gap between deployment and capability is where the region’s most urgent education challenge sits.

Workforce and skills solutions still represent about a third of the region’s most promising edtech startups, per the 2025 Southeast Asia EdTech 50 by HolonIQ, a sign that investors and founders are increasingly interested in employability versus content delivery. The platforms that are gaining traction aren’t generic course libraries but are mobile-first, job-linked and built for working adults who want to upskill without putting their careers on hold.

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Ruangguru

Ruangguru, which began as a tutoring marketplace for Indonesian students and has since grown into one of the region’s most scaled edtech platforms. Founded in 2014, it now serves over 22 million users and has partnered with more than 300,000 teachers across 100 subject areas, operating across Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Its relevance to the workforce conversation lies in where it is headed. The platform has expanded into corporate upskilling, integrating generative AI tutors and career guidance tools alongside its core academic offering. More than 70% of its users come from outside major urban centres, which means its distribution model already reaches the dispersed, underserved workforce that most corporate training platforms do not. With US$212.5 million raised from investors, including General Atlantic and Tiger Global, it has the infrastructure to operate at the scale the region requires.

Cakap

In markets where English proficiency directly determines access to better-paying roles, that is not a soft skill. It is an economic one. Language remains one of the most practical barriers to workforce mobility in Southeast Asia. Employees at businesses expanding internationally need English, which Cakap addresses directly.

The platform provides online language training and vocational upskilling for working adults and children, using proprietary live-streaming technology to deliver both B2B and B2C courses in English, Mandarin, Japanese and Indonesian. It actively connects qualified learners with prospective employers across various sectors. Cakap has over 4 million users across Indonesia and more than 2,000 teachers from 10 countries. Its corporate client base includes Bank Syariah Indonesia, and it has achieved centaur status with a valuation exceeding US$100 million. For a workforce preparing for a more globally integrated economy, the combination of language training, industry certification and employer connections is more useful than most AI literacy programmes.

Gnowbe

Most corporate training fails not because the content is wrong but because it is delivered in formats workers do not actually use. Gnowbe, founded in Singapore, was built on the premise that learning must happen in the flow of work rather than in a separate classroom session.

The platform deploys AI-powered microlearning for enterprise clients, including General Mills, Shangri-La and MetLife, with use cases spanning onboarding, sales enablement, compliance and upskilling. In 2024 and 2025, Gnowbe rolled out AI Agents for automated course creation alongside a Study Buddy and Curator Coach for personalised learning at scale. It integrates with over 200 enterprise tools, including Slack, Microsoft Office and SAP SuccessFactors, and is SkillsFuture-accredited in Singapore, making it eligible for up to 90% government co-funding for corporate training. HolonIQ has recognised Gnowbe as a leading B2B workforce edtech solution in Southeast Asia for consecutive years. For SMEs without dedicated learning and development teams, a platform that automates content creation and tracks learning outcomes on mobile closes a real operational gap.

ReSkills

Most online course platforms assume learners have the time and discipline for self-paced study. ReSkills, founded in Malaysia by Jin Tan, takes a different approach: daily live classes delivered by coaches in real time, available on a low-cost subscription.

The platform gives subscribers access to unlimited daily live classes, recorded sessions, self-paced modules and virtual conferences across topics including leadership, AI and communication skills. Completions come with micro-certificates accredited by four international accreditation bodies. As of 2023, ReSkills reached over one million registered users across more than 70 countries and in 2024, the company filed an S-1 to go public on Nasdaq, targeting international expansion beyond its Southeast Asian base. Scheduled classes with real coaches drive participation in ways that asynchronous libraries do not.

Edukasyon.ph

The Philippines has a structural problem that most edtech platforms don’t solve: millions of students graduate each year without a clear idea of which programmes lead to what careers or what skills employers actually want. That information gap is the reason why Edukasyon.ph was founded in 2015.

The platform has evolved from a school search engine to a full education-to-employment platform, linking students to online courses, technical-vocational programmes and internships with over 500 educational institutions and 50 corporations. Today, it reaches nearly 10 million students annually. Its partnership with AWS re/Start, which placed hundreds of Filipino learners into entry-level cloud engineering roles, is the strongest signal that the platform is moving from information provision to real employment outcomes.

What this tells us about the next wave of edtech

Globally, workforce training accounted for 38% of edtech deal volume in 2025, the largest category for the second consecutive year. In Southeast Asia, the platforms gaining ground share one characteristic: they connect learning directly to employment rather than treating content consumption as an end in itself.

The next edtech success stories in the region will not come from the biggest content databases. They will emerge from the edtech companies able to prove their ability to increase a user’s employability, earning capacity, or performance at work. This change is clear in action within the region’s edtech markets. The platforms that will define the next chapter are not the ones with the most content. Rather, they are the ones who can answer a simple question: Did the learner get a better job because of this?