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Welcome to Tech in Asia's free Saturday VC newsletter! Register to get full access to our subscribers-only premium content and other insightful analysis on the big and messy topics of Asia's tech and startup community. Ensure our articles appear in your Google searches: 
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Hello Betamax, One of my favorite things about writing this newsletter is seeing the sheer variety of startups that raise funds every week. Some weeks, consistent themes emerge. Others, it can feel like the 1985 film The Breakfast Club, with all sorts of different companies making our list of biggest deals. This week feels like the latter at first glance, with intelligent driving, semiconductors, and even e-signatures making the list. But if you look a little deeper, there's a common thread that ties most of these companies together: AI. Indeed, the next opportunities for the tech will be focused on solving specific problems, instead of just AI at large. I'm excited to see what that brings.  Let's dive into the biggest deals and M&As that recently took place. -- Stefanie |
THE BIGGEST DEALS BY MARKET🇨🇳 DeepWay develops intelligent driving technology. The Chinese firm raised US$310 million in late-stage funding from ABC Impact Fund, Guosheng Fund, NGS Super, Ronghe Venture Capital, and Stone Venture. 🇵🇠Salmon, a consumer finance app based in the Philippines, bagged US$60 million in series B money from FJ Labs, Moore Strategic Ventures, Spice Expeditions, and Washington University. 🇦🇺 Syenta is an Australia-based semiconductor startup. It raised US$26 million in series A funding from National Reconstruction Fund Corporation and Playground Global. 🇸🇦 Signit is building digital trust infrastructure with its Arabic-first e-signature platform. The Saudi Arabian firm bagged US$15 million in a seed round from Raed Ventures, Seedra Ventures, STV, Suhail Ventures, and Takamol Ventures. 🇮🇳 Gaming studio LightFury Games, which is based in India, raised US$11 million in pre-series A funding from Blume Ventures, Mixi, Times Internet, and V3 Ventures. Here's the complete list of this week's fundraises: 52 deals worth over US$779 million. |
M&AS🇺🇸 Armis, a cyber exposure management and security company, was acquired by software firm ServiceNow for US$7.7 billion. 🇮🇳 Lumina CloudInfra, an India-based developer of cloud infrastructure, was acquired by data center company AirTrunk. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. 🇦🇪 Rubikal, a software engineering firm from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), was acquired by edtech company iSchool for an undisclosed sum. 🇦🇪 Viral Wave, a UAE-based startup operating a digital music distribution service, was acquired by music publisher and independent label PopArabia. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. |
PUT YOUR STARTUP IN THE SPOTLIGHT Want your startup featured on Tech in Asia? We're trying something new: You share your story, and we turn it into a Startup Spotlight article using generative AI. The article is then reviewed by editors, published, and promoted like any other story. Here's a look at some of the startups we've put in the spotlight recently:
- Invoi.vn makes mandatory e-invoicing easier for Vietnam's SMEs.
- TribeROI helps firms connect community activity to revenue.
- Addlly AI is building the SEO toolkit for the AI era.
Want to see your startup or portfolio company here next? Just fill in this form. |
BEHIND THE GLASSWALL Fundraising often involves reaching out to several contacts, many of whom founders might not have dealt with before. To provide some transparency to this process, we created Glasswall, a platform for founders to give feedback and recommendations on investors. Check out the full list here.
- ✅︎ "They have the right balance of asking the right questions and trusting the founders to keep empowering and enabling the founders to be successful." - Read more
- ❌ "It might seem like complaining, but we didn't get an investment from them. That is fine, but for the time and effort that the process took up, it was a complete waste of time. A lot of back and forth, meeting up, several video calls, all of which were filled with question after question and us teaching them." - Read more
- ✅︎ "Raising money from Prasetia was a great experience for us. They understood our business very quickly." - Read more
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FROM FUNDING BOOM TO EXIT REALITYExclusive at Asia Economic Summit 2026  Across Southeast Asia, the funding story has changed. Capital is still there, but exits are not. The challenge now is proving readiness for liquidity, accountability, and long-term value creation. At the Asia Economic Summit 2026 on June 17, Amvesindo chairman Eddi Danusaputro joins the main stage panel "Bridging private and public markets: The next phase of capital in tech" to examine how startups, investors, and capital markets must realign as the era of accessible funding gives way to a stronger focus on fundamentals. Drawing on experience investing in over 30 startups - including Bukalapak, GoTo, Amartha, and PrivyID - he brings a practitioner's perspective on IPO readiness, ecosystem alignment, and exit strategies. The Asia Economic Summit 2026 convenes over 250 policymakers and C-suite leaders to tackle structural shifts across capital, AI, and market dynamics that are shaping Southeast Asia's next phase of growth. Explore the full agenda to see the breadth of topics covered. Save US$354 with Early Bird access at US$234 (from US$588). Offer ends on April 26. |
EXCLUSIVE LISTICLESLists of most active investors in the region China | India | Indonesia | Japan | Singapore | Southeast Asia List of top-funded startups in Asia China | India | Indonesia | Israel | Japan | Hong Kong | Singapore | South Korea | Vietnam |
THOUGHTFUL READS1️⃣ The winds of change VC firm General Catalyst published its first-ever quarterly investor letter, and there were some interesting takeaways. The company warns that the old way of investing in software is broken because companies aren't selling for as much as they used to, and it's adapting by moving US$43 billion into steadier investments, including a new "bank-style" fund, massive tech projects in India, and even buying a hospital. This piece from Yahoo Finance goes deeper. 2️⃣ M for Maritime According to Singapore-based maritime venture fund Motion Ventures, the shipping industry is "on the cusp of a technology transformation." It posits that this presents a tremendous opportunity - one that many investors have overlooked. Read more here. 3️⃣ All in the numbers It may seem like startup funding is being dominated by the same few names from a single industry, which can be pretty disheartening for seed-stage founders. However, the funding environment is stronger than it looks, and according to this piece from Crunchbase News, the winning strategy for startups today is to solve a specific industry problem and build a business that larger companies will be eager to buy. 4️⃣ A winning combination? Projects combining cryptocurrency and AI are winning investor favor more so than purely crypto efforts, says CoinDesk. While this can be attributed to the overall surge in AI investments, it's also a look into how AI has changed the way crypto firms navigate the funding environment. Dive deeper here. 5️⃣ On the AI bubble Elad Gil, Silicon Valley's top solo venture capitalist, has a clear message for AI founders: sell your company soon, while conditions are still favorable. This comes as alarms have been raised over the AI bubble bursting, with Gil seeing parallels between the current AI boom and the dot-com bubble. Read more on Business Insider. |
EVENTS HAPPENINGYou can also check out our curated list of trending tech events and Tech in Asia's signature events.
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