May Update — 2026
Travel, meetings, product progress, and a very full month in Vietnam.
May was big.
It was one of those months where the calendar looked slightly unreasonable, the travel days blurred together, and somehow the work kept moving in the background. We spent much of the month in Vietnam, moving between Ho Chi Minh City, Cần Thơ and Hanoi, meeting partners, checking in with the team, and getting a much clearer picture of what comes next.
And honestly, we came back very happy.
Meet Australia — a room full of momentum
We started in Ho Chi Minh City for the Meet Australia conference, with hundreds of people moving through the event and a steady stream of conversations across the B2B matching sessions.
Anh and I had a small booth, a lot of handshakes, and some genuinely excellent conversations with people looking at the Australia–Vietnam corridor from every angle: trade, investment, services, technology, legal structuring, grants, rebates, and market entry.
The turnout was fantastic. But what stood out even more was the support around it.
We’re very grateful to Global Victoria, DFAT, Austrade and the Australian Consulate-General in Ho Chi Minh City for the work they put into helping Australian businesses take their first real steps into Vietnam. These things look simple from the outside. They are not. The amount of coordination, trust-building and practical help behind the scenes matters enormously.
For us, Meet Australia confirmed something we have believed for a while: Vietnam is not just an interesting market. It is becoming a serious place to build.
Cần Thơ — back with the team
From Ho Chi Minh City, we travelled to Cần Thơ to spend time with our team and check in on the work properly.
This was one of the best parts of the month.
VoltaRocks has made a huge amount of progress. The new probabilistic engine is now becoming something we can really stand behind: AI-powered, built with Vertex AI, designed to need minimal human input, and focused on producing independent home modelling results that are useful in the real world.
The front-end portal is also looking better than ever. It is sharper, clearer, and much closer to the product we have been imagining for a long time.
We are still aiming toward release in the next couple of months, and the September launch window is shaping up to be exciting.
Cần Thơ 2030 — from idea to implementation
While we were in Cần Thơ, we also spent a lot of time on Cần Thơ 2030.
The website is now in progress and should be ready to launch in the next couple of weeks. It will pull together the work to date, the programme structure, and where we want to take things next.
More importantly, the first challenges are now taking shape.
The workers’ compliance challenge is underway. So is the climate and rooftop solar challenge. Both sit exactly where we want this programme to sit: practical, useful, grounded in local needs, and connected to the broader opportunity around technology, renewable energy and capability-building in the Mekong Delta.
We also had good conversations with telecom, banking, advisory and industry groups across Vietnam and Australia about where Cần Thơ 2030 can go from here.
There is a lot still to do. But it is moving.
Hanoi — understanding the bigger picture
After Cần Thơ, we went north to Hanoi.
There we met with manufacturing companies, venture capital firms, government representatives and banks. The goal was not to rush into anything. It was to understand the ecosystem properly: who is building, who is investing, where the gaps are, and where Australian companies can add value without pretending they understand the market after one visit.
The picture was encouraging.
Vietnam’s ecosystem is maturing quickly. There is serious institutional support, strong technical ambition, and a lot of people thinking carefully about what the next decade of growth should look like.
For us, that matters. We are not looking for quick wins. We are looking for the right partners, the right problems, and the right long-term work.
Back to Ho Chi Minh City — ESG, semiconductors and renewables
We then returned to Ho Chi Minh City for the ESG investment conference, where we joined a panel on semiconductors, investment and technology innovation.
That conversation opened up a much broader set of discussions across renewables, climate technology, manufacturing and investment. We spoke with councils, companies, advisors and institutions from both Vietnam and Australia, and many of those conversations are still continuing now.
This is where the month started to come together.
Meet Australia gave us the corridor. Cần Thơ gave us the team and the programme. Hanoi gave us the ecosystem view. The ESG conference gave us the next set of sector conversations.
That is a good month.
Looking back, looking forward
May was fantastic.
It was full of travel, meetings, product work and operational progress. VoltaRocks moved forward. Cần Thơ 2030 moved into implementation. Our Vietnam relationships deepened. The Australia–Vietnam opportunity became clearer.
June is already busy, with the end of financial year in Australia and the second quarter closing across Vietnam and other markets. But we are heading into it with a lot of energy.
The work is growing in the right places.
More to share soon.
— The Improbability Company