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This month, three things keep coming up in client meetings. First, “companies have become more complicated in Thailand.” That is half true. Second, AI is no longer a tool, it is becoming a second version of you. Third, more expats than ever are quietly restructuring their lives to be location-free. This newsletter unpacks all three, and tells you what to do about them.
1. Companies in Thailand (2026 Update): What Actually Changed
Most of my clients this year are hearing the same thing. “Thai companies have become more complicated, especially because of nominee shareholders.” It is true, but it is also misleading.
The structure of Thai companies has not fundamentally changed. What has changed is how strictly the rules are being enforced. Once you understand that distinction, the path forward gets much simpler.
Why companies exist in the first place
A company is a juristic person, a legal entity that exists separately from you. Look around the room you are sitting in. Your phone, your condo, your car, your furniture. All of it was created, owned, or operated by companies. That is not a coincidence.
Companies exist because they offer advantages individuals do not:
- Lower and more optimized taxation
- Limited liability, your personal assets are protected
- Easier scaling and structuring of business activities
- Access to work permits, visas, and proper legal frameworks
Key Update Since 7 February 2023
Since 7 February 2023, you only need 2 shareholders to form a Thai company, down from 3. That single change opens up a structure that was nearly impossible before. A couple can now incorporate directly. An expat with a Thai partner, husband, wife, or business co-founder, can run a 2-person company without dragging a “ghost third shareholder” into the picture, which is exactly the dynamic that pushed so many founders into nominee territory in the first place. Full details in our updated guide on Thai company registration.
What about foreign ownership?
This is where most of the confusion happens. Under the Foreign Business Act, foreigners cannot freely own all categories of businesses. So solutions have to be structured, not improvised.
One of the most effective tools, and one most people still do not use correctly, is:
Preferred Shares
Properly drafted preferred shares allow you to hold minority equity but control majority voting rights. In simple terms: the company is legally Thai, but strategically controlled by you. This is not a workaround. It is a Thai legal mechanism that has existed for decades, written into the Civil and Commercial Code.
When is this useful?
If you cannot obtain:
Then a properly structured company using preferred shares is often the most efficient, the most flexible, and the most realistic solution. Compare that with a nominee arrangement, which since the April 1, 2026 DBD verification rules now exposes both you and your Thai shareholders to criminal liability.
Bottom line
Yes, enforcement is stricter. No, the system has not fundamentally changed. The key is proper structuring, not avoidance. If your current company was built on the old “find three Thai friends and split the shares” formula, the structure is obsolete. It needs a review, not panic.
2. AI & Your “Second Brain”: The Real Opportunity
For the last few months, I have been talking to you about building your Second Brain.
But not as a productivity tool. A second brain, the way I use it, is closer to your own memory or a copy of yourself. It is what allows AI to act in context, the way a trusted assistant who has known you for ten years would act.
Think of it as a second version of you.
What does that actually mean?
Imagine an AI that knows how you think. Your values. Your past decisions. Your business. Your writing style. And that can act on your behalf. This is no longer theoretical.
The tools behind it
One of the most powerful approaches comes from people like Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI, who recently shared how he uses Obsidian.
Obsidian works with Markdown (.md) files, which are simple, structured, and easily readable by AI. That makes it ideal as a personal knowledge database. No SaaS account, no cloud lock-in. Just files on your own machine that an AI can read.
A real example, from my own life
In the last three months, I tested this concept on something concrete. I asked AI to:
- Analyze around 60,000 personal photos
- Identify locations, dates, and trips
- Organize everything into structured Markdown files
Total time: about 2 hours. Now I can ask: “Where should I travel next?” and the AI answers based on my past trips, my preferences, and patterns I had not even noticed about myself.
The shift that just happened
Before (2023): You ask → AI answers → You execute.
Now (2026): You ask → AI executes.
This is what the industry calls agentic workflows. The AI does not just generate text. It runs tasks, opens tabs, edits files, sends drafts, talks to other AI agents, and reports back when finished.
Second Brain = Second Identity
Once you have a structured knowledge base, you can also export your emails (Google Takeout works fine), analyze your writing style, and map your relationships and habits. Then store all of it in clean Markdown files. That is, in practical terms, a digital version of you.
A concrete example from this month
I asked my own AI system to take some of my Facebook posts, expand them into proper articles, illustrate them with photos already tagged in my Second Brain, and publish them on www.sebastienbrousseau.com. It did this independently, while I was sleeping, adjusting the tone and the imagery based on what it knows about me.
Real examples from the last few weeks: a month in Phnom Penh, Okinawa in December, three months living in Nepal. But also the weirder ones, the kind nobody else will write about, like my Nuru massage experience in Bangkok and the noisiest massage in the world at Bangkok’s Bradbury Massage Club. Each one started as a Facebook post, was rewritten in my voice, illustrated with my own photos, and published while I slept.
A year ago, that would have been a science fiction sentence. This month, it ran on autopilot.
Here is the part most people miss. When everyone uses the same AI in the same generic way, you will notice within minutes. The articles will start to sound the same. The photos will start to look the same. The opinions will start to soften into the same beige. Identity and originality become the differentiator. You do not want an AI that copies. You want an AI that sounds like you, defends positions you believe, and writes about the strange corners you actually find interesting. The Second Brain is not a productivity hack. It is the only way to stay yourself in a world where everyone else is starting to sound like the same chatbot.
AI Will Still Make Mistakes. Including Inventing Supreme Court Decisions.
Two years ago, I genuinely thought AI was going to replace humans. I was wrong, and I want to say that out loud, because I see the same overconfidence settling into the market right now.
Even the most powerful models make mistakes. AI must be structured, framed, and supervised. Humans will always need to be the layer that watches, contests, and verifies. That is not a temporary limitation, it is a structural one.
Two recent surprises in my own work
Twice in the last few weeks, I caught AI systems inventing Thai Supreme Court decisions. Real-looking case numbers. Plausible holdings. Realistic citations. All fake. The AI generated them because the prompt asked for support that did not actually exist, and the model did what it is trained to do, which is please the user.
I am a lawyer. I caught it because I cross-referenced the citations. A non-lawyer reading the same output would have walked into court with hallucinated case law. That is not a hypothetical, it is already happening in jurisdictions around the world.
The rule for working with AI in 2026, especially in anything legal, financial, or medical, is simple: contest, double-check, verify. Treat every confident-sounding answer as a draft until you have personally confirmed the source. The output looks polished. The substance still has to be earned.
Even with all of that overhead, here is the honest math: you still save roughly 80% of your time if you know how to use it. The 20% you spend on verification is the 20% that keeps you out of trouble, and that is the entire skill.
Two important limitations
1. Cost (tokens). AI runs on tokens, which behave like fuel. More context means higher cost. More complex models mean higher cost. The good news is that costs are dropping fast, but efficiency still matters. A well-organized Second Brain costs less to query than a messy one.
2. Too much context = confusion. More data is not always better. If you overload the system, it may hallucinate or lose focus. The trick is relevant context only, not all context.
Where this is going
AI improvement curve, in plain language:
- 3 years ago → usable
- 2 years ago → good
- 1 year ago → very good
- Today → excellent, university-level expert in many fields
Will it replace humans? Not completely, not yet. But it is already replacing how we think, decide, and execute. If you understand that, you stop fearing AI and you start designing with it.
3. Trend This Month: Remote Structures & “Location-Free” Income
A growing number of expats in Thailand are quietly shifting toward location-independent business structures. Last year I saw it in maybe one client out of forty. Today it is closer to one in ten. That is a 4x jump in twelve months, and the curve is still bending up.
The motivation stack is consistent:
- Visa flexibility (DTV, LTR, Privilege)
- Tax optimization
- Global clients, paid in stronger currencies
- Lower operational costs
What we are seeing more of
Hybrid Thai + offshore structures, where the Thai company handles local operations and the offshore entity holds IP or invoices clients. Service-based online businesses where the founder spends 6 months in Thailand and 6 months elsewhere. AI-assisted solo companies where one person plus a stack of agents replaces what used to be a 5-person team. Remote-first teams where contractors live in 4 different countries and meet on Zoom once a week.
The visa side has finally caught up to the lifestyle. Three options worth knowing about:
The key idea
You do not need a large company anymore. You need a well-structured system. One Thai company built correctly, one or two AI agents that handle your admin, the right visa, and proper tax planning so your remitted foreign income does not surprise you in March.
This is the model the next generation of expats is going to default to. The ones who set it up in 2026 will be 18 months ahead of everyone else by 2027.
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