What began as a data gap now draws the attention of Silicon Valley investors
“I hope PetrolPrice can become an example of what’s possible from Sarawak.”
KUCHING: Energy prices affect everything from household spending to business costs and financial markets, but finding reliable information across countries remains surprisingly difficult.
For Sarawak entrepreneur Aaron Nagai, that fragmentation presented an opportunity.
He founded PetrolPrice, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform that tracks, verifies and analyses prices of essential energy commodities, including petrol, diesel and electricity, across 196 markets worldwide.
The idea has since attracted Silicon Valley investor Balaji Srinivasan, with the startup valued at US$2 million following its pre-seed funding round.
“One of the things that resonated with Balaji and our other early investors was that PetrolPrice identified a gap that had largely been overlooked,” Nagai told Sarawak Tribune.
While energy prices affect billions of consumers and businesses worldwide, he said there had been no reliable platform capable of aggregating and standardising the information across global markets in real time.
PetrolPrice is designed to go beyond simply collecting those numbers.
Its AI-powered system also forecasts energy markets, which Nagai said makes it an intelligence platform rather than merely a global price database.
Building such a system, however, means dealing with widely different ways of publishing energy information.
“Every country publishes energy data differently. Some provide APIs, others release PDFs or update government websites manually, and many follow completely different reporting standards,” he said.
PetrolPrice uses AI to continuously discover, extract, validate and standardise the information into a consistent global dataset.
Nagai described it as the equivalent of having energy researchers and analysts working around the clock, but with AI allowing the work to be done continuously and at a fraction of the traditional cost.
This enables the startup to maintain coverage across hundreds of markets while improving both the speed and quality of its data.
The company primarily targets enterprise users, including research institutions, consulting firms and organisations that require reliable global energy intelligence.
Such work has traditionally depended on teams of analysts manually collecting and verifying information from multiple sources, making research both costly and time-consuming.
Nagai said PetrolPrice automates much of that process by acting as an AI research agent, making global energy data and forecasting faster, more accessible and more cost-effective.
“We believe this represents a meaningful shift in how energy market research can be conducted,” he said.
Srinivasan’s involvement has also given PetrolPrice more than financial backing.
Nagai said his support and introductions helped establish credibility with other technology investors and made the pre-seed fundraising process smoother.
PetrolPrice now plans to spend the next 12 to 18 months expanding its AI capabilities, strengthening its enterprise products and increasing its global market coverage.
But Nagai also sees a bigger purpose closer to home.
“I hope PetrolPrice can become an example of what’s possible from Sarawak,” he said.
He hopes the company can contribute to the local technology ecosystem by supporting aspiring founders, creating opportunities and encouraging greater investment in talent development and innovation.
His ambition is ultimately to demonstrate that a globally competitive AI company can be built in Sarawak while serving markets far beyond it.
