Funded: I keep a notebook by my bed with one question about SEA climate

I keep a small notebook by my bed. Not for ideas. Just things I don’t want to forget.

Last week I wrote: “What does this place look like in 2040?”

Not for a deck. Not for a client. I don’t have kids. The usual anchors people use to think about the future, school fees, inheritance, legacy through bloodline, none of that applies to me. So I find other anchors. Climate is one of them. It’s personal in a way that’s hard to explain at a conference but easy to feel at midnight.

I’ve been watching SEA climate capital closely for a few years now. And a number in a recent Tracxn report stopped me cold.

Over 900 backers have put money into climate tech in SEA. You can count the ones who kept showing up on one hand.

Let that sit for a second.

The crowd that showed up once

900 is an impressive number until you look at what it actually means. One check. One conference announcement. One ESG box ticked somewhere in an LP deck. Then back to whatever they were doing before.

The ones who kept showing up are SEEDS Capital, Entrepreneur First, 100×100 (formerly Wavemaker Impact, rebranded June 2026 after spinning out as an independent fund manager with a fresh US$100M mandate to build 50 climate companies across SEA and India), SGInnovate and East Ventures. Between them, they’ve done the unglamorous work of showing up round after round across companies that haven’t yet become household names.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s conviction. And conviction in climate is rare because the timeline is long, the exits are slow, and the narrative keeps shifting between optimism and panic depending on what’s burning that week.

The others weren’t lying about caring. They just weren’t prepared for what caring actually costs in this space.

Also Read: Investing in impact: High-growth tech for climate and community

What the data says about where the money went

The top five funded sectors are all infrastructure plays. Solid waste, smart grid, energy efficiency, air pollution, renewable energy. The top five funded companies are almost all in electric mobility. Beam, Neuron, Dat Bike, ALVA. Hard assets, visible units, clear revenue models.

This isn’t surprising. Capital backs what it can underwrite. Infrastructure and mobility fit the frame. What doesn’t fit — adaptation, resilience, the harder climate problems without a clean SaaS analogy — stays unfunded.

Geographically, three-quarters of all climate capital went to Singapore. Indonesia and Vietnam are emerging, but the map is thin outside the main hubs.

2026 so far has been even quieter. Four rounds. US$17M. Down 59 per cent from the same period last year.

The crowd didn’t just come once. Some of them have already left.

What the data can’t see

Here’s the thing about a report that tracks 900 backers. It only sees what gets disclosed. Formal rounds. Announced deals. Tracxn does this well. But there’s a whole layer of capital doing real ground-level work that never shows up in any database.

Funds like Bali Investment Club, Indonesia-focused, impact-first, backing waste, agritech and climate ventures at the earliest stages in a market most Singapore-based funds fly over, won’t show up in the top five. They’re not doing 10 rounds in the data. They’re doing the first round in places nobody else is looking.

That gap between what the data captures and what’s actually happening on the ground is where a lot of the real conviction lives.

Also Read: Climate tech’s shift from doing good to doing well

What the five who stayed understand

100×100 doesn’t just write checks. They co-found companies from scratch, sit inside them, find the first customers, and build the team. That’s a different level of commitment than a seed round from a platform investor diversifying into climate for a season.

The difference between the handful who stayed and the hundreds who didn’t isn’t access to data or deal flow. It’s tolerance for a long, uncomfortable, uncertain road. Climate doesn’t reward impatience. The founders building in this space know that. The capital that stays knows that too.

The capital that came once was looking for a climate story. The capital that stayed is building one.

The notebook question

I still haven’t answered what I wrote last week. What does this place look like in 2040?

It depends on which kind of capital wins. The kind that showed up for the photo. Or the kind that’s still here when there’s nothing to announce.

I know which one I’m watching.

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