RESIDENCIES
Residency programs for builders who don't need permission — just time, peers, and a room full of people as serious as they are.
WHAT THIS IS
A residency is not an accelerator. There are no pitches, no demo days, and no forced problem statements. You don't graduate with a certificate. You don't leave with a term sheet.
What you leave with is three months of unbroken time — surrounded by people who build things nobody asked them to build, in an environment designed to remove every excuse not to ship.
AISEA runs and supports a network of residency programs across Southeast Asia. Each has its own character, its own city, and its own focus. What they share: a serious filter, a serious peer group, and the belief that the best thing we can do for ambitious builders is get out of the way.
NETWORK RESIDENCIES
Three programs in the network right now. More coming.
For exceptional young people in Southeast Asia who are already pointed at something specific and need nowhere left to go but all the way. A house of 10–14 people. Hard problems. Supervisions from practitioners who won't let you get away with vagueness. Three months of unbroken time. No curriculum. No certificate. No hand-holding.
Applications open for Cohort 1 — July 2026, Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur.
For AI-native founders building startups and shipping globally from Malaysia. Based at 500 Global's permanent space in KL — a real home where residents cowork, build, and ship together every day. Weekly Show and Tell Thursdays. Mentorship from founders who've done it. Community partners include AISEA, Build Club, AI Tinkerers, and others.
Cohorts rolling. Apply directly with Malaysian AI.
Work embedded inside Carousell's product and engineering teams on defined AI problem statements. Real data access. Real constraints. Real engineering counterparts. Selected builders join for 4–6 weeks and deliver a structured technical handover at close. This is not an internship and not a hackathon. It's what happens when you put serious builders in a serious context and get out of the way.
Applications reviewed on a rolling basis.
NOT SURE WHICH ONE
Year Zero Residencyis for builders at the frontier — people working on problems with no clear answer, who want to be surrounded by others at the same level of seriousness. The filter is hard. The expectation is that you ship something real. If you're 21–27, have an active project, and are considering leaving SEA because you don't know what staying looks like at your level — Y0R is for that.
Malaysian AI Residency is for AI-native founders building a startup who want a permanent base, a peer group, and access to mentors who have done it in Malaysia. If you want more structure and support, and are building a company rather than a research or frontier project — Malaysian AI is the right fit.
Carousell × AISEA Residency is for builders who want to work on a hard, real AI problem inside a production environment — with real data, real engineering counterparts, and real stakes. No house, no cohort. Just you, a defined problem, and 4–6 weeks to move it forward.
All three are serious. None are for tourists.
RUNNING A RESIDENCY
If you're running a residency program for builders in Southeast Asia and want to be part of the AISEA network, get in touch. We're selective about what we list — the standard is high-signal, builder-first, and genuinely useful to the people in our community.
Get in touch →