Asia’s AI founders do not lack investor attention. What they lack is the expensive plumbing frontier AI demands: models, compute, technical help and patient capital. Granite Asia and Google AI Futures Fund want to bundle all of it into one programme.
The Singapore-headquartered VC firm, which manages around US$11 billion in assets and co-managed capital, will co-invest up to US$2 million per startup alongside Google, through the Granite Asia Fellows Program. Selected founders also get up to US$350,000 in Gemini and Google Cloud credits, early access to models such as Gemini, Nano Banana and Lyria, and direct support from Google DeepMind researchers and engineers.
The programme targets five areas: science and knowledge, industrial transformation, work, creativity and entertainment. Granite Asia promises founders full choice over their AI stack, a notable pledge when most startups fear lock-in to a single provider.
The bigger question is whether platform deals like this build durable companies or merely subsidise early infrastructure bills, as Microsoft, AWS, Nvidia and Google all court the same founders with credits and model access. Cloud credits are not revenue. The real test comes later: paying customers, defensible products and proof that a startup is more than a clever demo.
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INTERVIEWS AND FEATURES
DayOne’s Nasdaq filing shows who is capturing SEA’s AI value: The data centre operator’s revenue tripled to US$512M in H1 2026, yet one customer supplies 69% of sales. The region provides land, water and power while most of the AI equity upside leaves.
Jenni hits US$10M ARR selling researchers more than a chatbot: The US-based academic writing platform has six million users who have written over 15 million papers. It turned profitable after raising only a small angel round, and makes its case against general-purpose tools.
SEA engineering teams embrace AI agents, but keep them off production: Developers from Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City now use agents to plan tasks, refactor repositories and generate tests. Tech leaders still stop short of production access, where the cost of a mistake is highest.
SEA insurers must prepare for customers who send AI agents instead: A Google Cloud and CoverGo whitepaper argues early generative AI wins, from claims extraction to call-centre drafts, may leave insurers unready for a shift to customer-side agents.
When carers have dementia too, Japan turns to physical AI: The feature unpacks rōrō kaigo and ninnin kaigo, where frail or dementia-affected elderly people care for one another, and why Japan is relying on physical AI to fill gaps in eldercare.
Southeast Asia’s foodtech winners are the least glamorous players: Lab-grown shrimp and 15-minute grocery delivery grabbed headlines, but the 2022 correction, eFishery’s scandal and TaniHub’s collapse thinned the herd. The survivors tend to solve duller, harder problems.
REGIONAL
Endeavor Catalyst closes oversubscribed US$320M fifth fund: The fund, announced from Singapore, lifts assets under management past US$850M and lands as startup markets outside Silicon Valley begin to stir after several difficult years for venture-backed companies.
Khazanah’s Dana Impak mobilises US$635M for 130 Malaysian firms: Every dollar Khazanah deployed drew 48 cents of external capital. Its Jelawang Capital arm holds up to US$244M to grow Malaysia’s fund manager pool, while mid-tier firms and semiconductors form the other priorities.
Manus parent raises over US$500M after China forces Meta deal unwind: Boyu Capital and IDG Capital co-led the round, with Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund returning. The Singapore-headquartered agent developer disclosed no valuation or plans for the money after Beijing blocked Meta’s US$2B-plus acquisition.
MAS gives Singapore financial firms a year to meet AI risk rules: The principles-based guidelines cover banks, insurers and payment firms as AI moves from back-office experiments into systems that make customer, risk and execution decisions in the region’s leading financial hub.
Revolut commits nearly US$274M to Singapore, targets 300-plus staff: The UK fintech signed a five-year Collyer Quay lease, opening in early 2027, and will hire across engineering, data and AI. It still lacks a Singapore banking licence, operating as a Major Payment Institution.
StarHub to acquire MyRepublic Mobile as Singapore telcos consolidate: The deal completes a multi-year journey that began with StarHub’s 2021 investment in MyRepublic Broadband, and follows reports of StarHub talks to buy M1 from Keppel. Subscribers move onto StarHub’s network without disruption.
EDBI backs Universal Quantum’s US$100M+ round and Singapore R&D hub: The British trapped-ion computing firm’s Series A, co-led by DCVC and Firgun Ventures, will fund its first R&D centre outside Europe. It is the largest Series A by a UK quantum company.
MDI Ventures narrows SEA thesis to AI and digital asset infrastructure: TelkomGroup’s corporate VC arm will prioritise enterprise AI, AI infrastructure, governance software, real-world asset tokenisation and custody, and regulated digital asset rails, citing a shift in the region’s technology cycle.
EnterpriseSG puts US$94M into innovation centres, cuts 27 to 10: The five-year plan simplifies SME support and absorbs technology-matching services from Innovation Partner for Impact, which winds down in March 2027. EnterpriseSG says affected staff will be redeployed where possible.
Pine Labs launches unified payments platform in Singapore: The Indian fintech combines acquiring, acceptance, point-of-sale instalment plans and loyalty via its Fave app, with Courts, CapitaLand and FairPrice already clients. The launch follows its Philippine debut with GCash.
VinFast takes its electric buses to the US through NexMove: US deliveries start in Q1 2028 under an all-in-one service model bundling buses, charging and maintenance. About 2,000 VinFast e-buses already run in Vietnam, and Europe is next on the list.
INTERNATIONAL
US bars Microsoft, Infosys, Wipro and others from green card scheme: Washington accused the firms of fraud and will reject new and pending labour certifications. With nearly three-quarters of H-1B visas going to Indian workers, the move hits Asian talent pipelines.
OpenAI’s annualised revenue nears US$50B, not the reported US$70B: The FT says the higher figure came from investors trying to match Anthropic’s revenue methodology. The gap matters for a company that raised US$122B in March and pushed its IPO to early 2027.
New York alleges TikTok fed minors a placebo safety feature: The lawsuit claims thousands of users, including children, switched on TikTok’s Algo Refresh tool but saw no feed change. It is one of more than two dozen state cases over addictive design.
Apple reportedly co-develops LG-branded smart home devices: Bloomberg says the smart lock, thermostat, doorbell and cameras will pair with Apple’s upcoming hub, expected on 13 October, in a direct challenge to Amazon’s Ring line-up.
CYBERSECURITY
58% of Singapore firms hit by AI-driven phishing attacks: Yubico and Okta’s survey of 1,890 security professionals found 81% enforce multi-factor authentication, yet 41% still rely onpasswords — while 95% want human oversight before AI agents act autonomously.
Hackers breach Asos via Snowflake, then message customers in its app: The Xuanye Group reportedly impersonated a trusted contact to obtain logins, taking names, addresses and profile notes. Asos, with 17 million customers, faces extortion; Snowflake denies its own systems were breached.
Anthropic launches Cyber Mission to arm critical infrastructure defenders: The programme pairs AI models with CrowdStrike’s security tools for power, water, and transport operators, alongside a free OSS Scanner — though its unreviewed vulnerability reports risk inaccuracies and added noise.
SEMICONDUCTOR
GlobalFoundries to make AI chip interposers for TSMC in US$2B deal: Output at GlobalFoundries’ New York plant ramps from H1 2028 under a five-year pact, adding a US source for CoWoS packaging. GlobalFoundries also operates a fab in Singapore.
TSMC posts record quarterly revenue on AI chip demand surge: The world’s largest contract chipmaker’s Q3 revenue hit $46.71 billion, up 50% year-on-year and ahead of forecasts, as AI-driven demand from clients like Nvidia and Apple continues to outpace expectations.
A third of chipmakers plan APAC expansion as AI demand surges: FedEx: Singapore is now the world’s largest chip importer at over US$105B, while Vietnam’s chip exports have grown 32% a year since 2006. Respondents ranked geopolitical disruption the biggest growth risk.
AI
Singtel’s RE:AI, SIT-NVIDIA centre tackle AI deployment gap: Running a pilot is no longer the hard part for companies; turning pilots into reliable operations is. The partnership with the Singapore Institute of Technology targets that step.
Websites are shutting the door on personal AI shopping agents: Amazon blocked Meta’s Muse, while anti-bot checks trip up others. Meta, Walmart, Stripe and others are building an open agent standard to separate legitimate agents from malicious bots.
ChatGPT adds interactive visuals with GPT-6’s Intelligent UI: Answers can now include calculators, editable graphs and charts, which users can dial back. The feature rolls out globally, including to the free and lower-cost Go tiers.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
ASEAN’s startup ecosystem is entering its accountability phase: Citing post-Enron America and post-Luckin Coffee China, Bobby Yulandika Putra argues every maturing ecosystem faces scrutiny, and Southeast Asia’s turn has arrived.
Why SEA is underbuilt in the categories behind durable companies: Grab, Sea and GoTo won by amassing users and burning capital. Chris Chen argues the consumer playbook leaves gaps in the categories that produce the region’s longest-lasting companies.
AI labs want the corporate foothold Excel once gave Microsoft: Alexander Khomenko argues frontier labs are chasing enterprise lock-in across Southeast Asia, aiming to embed themselves in company workflows as deeply as spreadsheets once did.
Operators risk scaling on ASEAN’s old trade rulebook after upgrade: For firms shipping into several ASEAN markets, the question has moved from tariffs to certificates and proof of origin. Fathhi Mohamed argues most are unprepared for the paperwork.
SEA is digitising health records; making them portable is harder: Patient portals and health wallets are the easy part. With WHO and Temasek Foundation backing a three-year initiative, Ubaid Pisuwala argues interoperability is the real challenge.
AI writes code faster, but engineers now struggle to trust it: Citing Google’s 2025 DORA report, James Kithokoi argues faster code generation has moved the bottleneck to review and verification, so teams are not shipping as fast as promised.
DePIN and RWA alliances find fertile ground in Southeast Asia: Astrid Dang argues decentralised infrastructure networks and tokenised real-world assets could address high infrastructure costs, thin banking reach and volatile local currencies across the region.
AI could make concierge medicine the new front door to healthcare: Concierge practices cap panels at 400 to 600 patients, against 2,000-plus for a typical primary-care doctor. John Millar argues AI could scale scarce physician attention to far more people.
Europe’s trade truce with the US has not restored trust in US firms: Shawn Balakrishnan argues American companies can no longer assume they are seen as predictable and reliable commercial partners, even after the latest phase of US-European détente.
Why founders should sometimes say no to paying customers: More contracts look like progress, but Julien Ricciarelli-Bonnal argues the wrong customers can damage growth, even for early-stage firms that feel unable to turn down revenue.
Creative talent is plentiful; dependable production capacity is not: Xiaohu Hou recounts dropping a production team despite the client accepting the video, arguing that polished samples rarely prove a vendor can deliver reliably.
Are you leading with people, or leading with tech?: Vincent Tan argues leaders who ignore where scarcity now lives keep supplying crowded markets with little demand, forgetting the basics of economics.
Light liquidations and flat funding: Is Bitcoin about to break out?: Bitcoin held a tight US$85,400 to US$85,550 band on 7 October with no sustained breakout. Anndy Lian reads low liquidations and flat funding as signs of a market coiling for a move.
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