Taiwan’s envoy says its startups are capable enough to go global, with Singapore as the first step

SINGAPORE: The aisles around the Taiwan Pavilion at SWITCH 2026 were busy. At Booth Q01 of Sands Expo and Convention Centre, 33 Taiwanese startups spent three days, from 27 to 29 October, meeting visitors, investors and potential partners from across the region.

Among the visitors was Dr Tung Chen-yuan, Representative of the Taipei Representative Office in Singapore, who walked the pavilion and later spoke to e27 about what he saw.

His outlook was an optimistic one. Provided the founders find the right partners, he said, “I believe in the near future they will become very strong companies in the world.”

Also Read: Startup Island TAIWAN leads 33 deep-tech startups to SWITCH 2026, advancing their expansion into Singapore

The pavilion was led by Startup Island TAIWAN, the national startup brand backed by the National Development Council. e27 has covered the full line-up. This story is about what Dr Tung and seven of the founders told e27, and what happened at the booths.

Walking the floor

Asked on camera what he sees in these founders that tells him they will go far, Dr Tung started with the size of the problems they have chosen. “All of them are trying to tackle many difficult issues, including AI, energy, climate change and healthcare,” he said. “All of them are quite innovative and quite efficient.” He expects them to find partners quickly: “I believe they can find a lot of partners in Singapore.”

What happened at the conference

The pavilion was built for meetings, and the three days produced some. Several startups held investment talks with Openspace Capital, Qualgro Ventures and Anatres Ventures. Two more are discussing testing partnerships with a global semiconductor company and a Singapore engineering group. Two signed MOUs, one with a Singapore company on software licensing and hardware distribution and one with a South Korean company on glasses-free 3D content. Others plan to set up in Singapore, using StageOne, Singapore’s official startup platform, to find sites to test their products.

Some of the work was simpler: finding partners, one at a time. MantaGO is an omni-channel AI chatbot that connects social media and e-commerce marketplaces, and its maker reports 2,280 clients worldwide and 25 distributors. Oriana Lau, who heads up the Singapore market, said customers worry that AI can feel too robotic, so the team fine-tunes the bot to sound more human. For Southeast Asia, the plan is to treat Singapore as a kickstart and grow mainly through partners, with a target of 52 partners across the region by 2027, about one a week. “Our key focus is to acquire more partners and accelerate the usage of our solution with small and medium enterprises in the region,” she said.

Innovative, efficient and already international

On what he hopes for them five and ten years from now, Dr Tung talked about experience rather than potential. “All of them have a lot of international experience,” he said. “They already have a lot of clients in this region and in some international markets. So I believe they are quite capable. They are quite outstanding.”

His condition is partnership. As long as the teams find the right partners, he said, he sees them becoming “global players” in the near future, with Singapore and Southeast Asia as the first step in building those relationships, with Singapore being an important hub for the startups’ global ambitions.

LongGood is one example of that reach. The digital rehabilitation company already has customers across Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, Thailand and Hong Kong. In Singapore it wants to connect with hospitals and daycare centres. Ray Chen gave the long-term ambition in one line: “We aim to become the go-to brand for rehabilitation.”

Taiwan’s strengths, in his words

On what Taiwan can offer Southeast Asia that nobody else can, Dr Tung started with the relationship and then moved to capability. “Taiwan and Singapore have a very strong foundation of partnership and friendship in the long term,” he said. “Taiwan currently is very strong at advanced manufacturing capability, including semiconductors and AI-related products. All these companies are building their capability based upon Taiwan’s strengths, so they can bring a lot of integrated ICT capability to cooperate with partners in Singapore and Southeast Asia.”

Also Read: Taiwan Pavilion at SWITCH 2026: Meet the 33 Taiwanese startups heading to Singapore

He gave two examples. In healthcare, he said, companies are using AI and semiconductors to work out how to address people’s health concerns, and “Taiwan has a lot of advantages in this regard.” He sees a match with Singapore’s healthcare sector, which he described as full of innovation. In energy, he said, the same tools are being used to manage supply and demand.

EpiSante Biomedical, a liver cancer screening company, fits the healthcare case Dr Tung described. Its founder, Lance Lu, said Asia accounts for 70 per cent of liver cancer cases globally, and that the company’s patented test detects early-stage cancer with 91 per cent accuracy, against 10 to 20 per cent for conventional methods. The company plans to set up a headquarters in Singapore and then expand to Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam through hospitals and clinics. “We’re looking to build an office here, a headquarters here,” Lance said.

Apollo Power covers the energy case. The company sells AI-driven energy management, and its founder, Sun Hsieh, said the system lets customers track their carbon goals, and that AI data centres are being built quickly across Southeast Asia and need stable power. The plan is to start in Singapore, move into Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, and be working with data centres or factories within six to 12 months. “Show real savings, then we scale,” Sun said.

On the AI side, futurenest builds software to govern enterprise AI. Its Xerno product controls what the AI knows and its Xparse product controls how it acts, which matters to regulated industries. The company reports 12 signed enterprise customers in active deployment across telecom, national defence and national transport. Founder Bob Hsu said the company’s edge is strong technology, and that its clients in Taiwan already include government agencies, financial institutions, healthcare providers and manufacturers.Hsu also said the product was picked this month as one of the world’s top 40 in a global NVIDIA competition. “We hope everyone can use AI safely and with peace of mind,” Hsu said, because AI today comes with too many governance problems and budgets that overrun, which leave users constrained. 

Why Singapore comes first

Dr Tung gave his own reason. “Singapore will be a very important first step for them to build their international partnership,” he said, “because Singapore is a hub of logistics, finance and talent. So this would be a very important step for them to go abroad.”

Hsu gave the most detailed answer from the founders. The company serves many large clients in Taiwan, and sees many top-tier enterprises in Singapore that can afford a high-level product. The plan is to set up a company and local team in Singapore, build reference cases there, and then add distributors and resellers across Southeast Asia. Hsu is looking for two kinds of partners: those who sell to AI data centres, whether in hardware, software or integration, and those who sell software or do system integration for medium and large enterprises.

Speculum AI builds a runtime layer for stable, controlled AI in production and targets regulated industries such as finance, banking, insurance and government. Within six months of entering the market, it secured an enterprise proof of concept with a major Japanese system integrator, according to the company. Dominique Tu, co-founder and CEO, said Singapore is “our most important stepping stone for Southeast Asia”, because it treats governance and AI stability as the core of deploying AI. The company aims to incorporate in Singapore within 2026.

Also Read: Taiwan bets on Gen Z founders to move beyond its chip-supplier image

eCloudEdge works where Taiwan’s manufacturing strength meets software. Rick Peng, CEO and founder, called Singapore the hub of Southeast Asia and the place to find a partner. He said the company governs operational technology (OT) and IT data, and wants a Singapore partner with both OT knowledge and software skills. “If you are purely on the OT side, you may focus on the OT application,” Rick said. “But we need someone with a software background.” Customers can deploy on premises or in the cloud, combined with ISO 27001 for security.

Startup Island TAIWAN describes the division of roles as Taiwan developing and validating the technology and Singapore serving as the base for commercialisation and expansion across Southeast Asia, with room to deepen cooperation in trustworthy AI governance and physical AI, drug validation standards and a clean energy ecosystem. The pavilion has closed. Dr Tung’s test for what comes next is whether the partnerships started in Singapore carry these companies abroad.

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