Startups
Coverage of Asia's most promising AI and tech startups.
Baseten Raises $1.5 Billion Series F at $13 Billion Valuation as Inference Demand Explodes
The AI inference infrastructure company led the week's biggest funding rounds, underscoring how the money is shifting from training models to serving them at scale.
DeepSeek Raises $7.4 Billion at $50 Billion Valuation in First-Ever External Round
China's most valuable AI startup breaks its own 'no fundraising' rule, pulling in Tencent, CATL and JD.com — but only the Chinese state gets voting rights.
General Intuition Raises $320M to Train AI Agents on Billions of Gameplay Clips
Backed by Khosla, Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, the New York lab is betting that action-labeled video-game footage is the richest dataset for teaching AI to act in the real world.
Thailand's Amity Robotics Closes $7M Seed to Expand Physical AI Concierges Across Asia and the Gulf
The Bangkok-based startup's robot concierge system is already live in 30+ properties across Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE and Saudi Arabia — a rare Southeast Asian embodied-AI play.
Chinese AI Chip Startup Dongfang Suanxin Exits Stealth With Bet on 3D Stacking
Led by China Semiconductor Industry Association vice-president Wei Shaojun, the Beijing startup pairs software-defined chips with 3D stacked near-memory computing — built entirely on a domestic supply chain.
Global Startups Raised a Record $510 Billion in H1 2026 — and AI Took Almost All of It
Mega-rounds for OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI shaped the half, with nearly 88% of AI dollars flowing to US companies — while Asia quietly posted its strongest funding recovery in three years.
Iluvatar CoreX Emerges as ByteDance's Third Domestic GPU Supplier in Blow to Nvidia
The Shanghai chip startup is set to deliver at least 50,000 AI chips to ByteDance this year for Doubao inference — joining Huawei and Cambricon in China's post-Nvidia supply chain.
Singapore's Pints AI Raises $5.6M to Deploy Auditable AI Inside Regulated Banks
Tin Men Capital and SBI Ven Capital lead the pre-Series A for the Autothought platform, which has saved 12 financial institutions across four countries more than $10 million.
Quantum Systems Raises $1.2B at $8B Valuation as Defense AI Funding Shatters Records
The Munich drone maker — whose aircraft flew 19,000 missions in Ukraine last year — doubles its valuation in a round co-led by Blackstone, Airbus, Noteus and Advent.
Chamath Palihapitiya Takes CEO Seat at 8090 Labs After $135M Series A
Salesforce Ventures leads the round for the AI coding startup behind Software Factory, as the Social Capital founder returns to a full-time operating role for the first time since Facebook.
Menlo Ventures Raises $3B After Its Anthropic Bet Pays Off Spectacularly
The 50-year-old firm closes the largest haul in its history across two new funds, as its Anthropic stake swells to nearly $14 billion ahead of an expected October IPO.
Venice AI Hits Unicorn Status With $65M Series A for Privacy-First AI
The Erik Voorhees-led platform raised its first outside capital at a $1 billion valuation, betting that users want powerful AI without surveillance.