Grab and OpenAI to Train 30,000 Partners; Bonbon Raises $500k

Grab and OpenAI will equip 30,000 driver, delivery and merchant partners across Southeast Asia with practical AI skills over the next two years. The programme, called "GO Forward with AI," launches through GrabAcademy and starts in Singapore before expanding to Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines later this year.

The initiative builds on a partnership between the two companies that began in May 2024. Their earlier projects include Grab's Driver AI Assistant, an in-app tool powered by OpenAI models that gives drivers personalised guidance on demand, earnings and day-to-day queries. The tool has reached nearly 500,000 drivers, according to the companies.

Under the new programme, participants will learn to use AI for tasks ranging from business planning and sales analysis to inventory management and building simple websites. OpenAI and Grab will run in-person masterclasses across participating markets and train GrabAcademy's regional trainers to extend the programme to more partners.

The scale of the effort signals how central AI literacy has become to Grab's platform strategy. For OpenAI, the programme deepens its footprint in Southeast Asia beyond model licensing, embedding its technology in the workflows of hundreds of thousands of gig-economy workers and small merchants.

Tasco leads pre-seed round in Vietnam's Bonbon Mobility

Vietnamese automotive services platform Bonbon Mobility has secured a $500,000 pre-seed funding round led by Tasco CVC, with Southeast Asia-focused GenAI Fund participating as a co-investor, according to an announcement.

Bonbon operates an online-to-offline platform connecting car owners with garages and automotive care service providers. The startup plans to use the funding to expand its network of partner garages, develop its technology platform, improve user experience and broaden its service offerings.

The company emerged from Tasco Foundry Wash3000, a venture-building programme jointly run by Tasco and GenAI Fund that sought to develop solutions for Vietnam's automotive services market. That lineage explains the lead investor's involvement: Tasco is backing a startup built inside its own foundry.

Bonbon is initially focusing on car-wash and vehicle-care services, connecting customers with existing independent garages rather than developing its own physical service network. The asset-light model targets a fragmented market — the programme estimates Vietnam has more than 12,500 car-wash and vehicle-care facilities.

The startup plans to expand into maintenance, detailing and other services across the vehicle lifecycle.

"The investment and support from Tasco and GenAI Fund provide Bonbon with additional resources as we enter our next stage of development," said Bonbon founder and CEO Nguyen Chi Dung.

The half-million-dollar cheque is modest by regional standards, but it points to a broader pattern: Vietnamese corporates are increasingly using venture-building vehicles to seed startups in traditional industries, then recycling capital through their own CVC arms. Bonbon's test will be whether an aggregator model can consolidate a market of more than 12,500 fragmented service points before better-funded competitors move in.