The business of adulting

Square Yards, Lama AI, Innovaid, and more raised funds this week.

Read from your browser FOMO Saturday 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: Hello Betamax, Finally, a week where AI isn't dominating the top deals. Some might say this week's top-funded startups are boring, but I say they're practical. Nothing says adulthood quite like property listings and loan forms. While flashier sectors like AI and robotics still get the most attention, VC firms continue to see something investable about making high-friction, paperwork-heavy tasks less painful. If you've ever tried buying, renting, financing, or verifying anything important, you'll know - the struggle is real. You can find all other important investment deals from the last few days in our weekly funding news wrap-up. Let's dive into the biggest deals that have recently taken place. -- Lilian THE BIGGEST DEALS BY MARKET 🇮🇳 Square Yards is an India-based real estate and mortgage platform. The firm has raised US$95 million in a bridge round from EAAA Alternatives and Muzinich & Co. 🇮🇱 Lama AI provides AI-native loan infrastructure for community banks, regional banks, and credit unions. Based in Israel, which is located in West Asia, the startup has bagged US$12 million in a series A funding round led by EJF Ventures. 🇰🇷 Innovaid operates Dentlink, an integrated system that connects dental professionals with technicians. The South Korean company has secured US$7.8 million in series B money from the Industrial Bank of Korea, Murex Partners, SBVA, Translink Investment, and Wonik Investment Partners. 🇭🇰 TurboFlow runs an on-chain trading ecosystem that provides professional trading solutions to retail users. Headquartered in Hong Kong, the firm has bagged US$6 million in seed funding from Digital Currency Group, Pantera Capital, and Susquehanna Crypto. 🇸🇬 Singapore-based ChemT Biotechnology is a biotech startup building AI-powered solutions for chemistry, biomanufacturing, and controls. It has raised US$4 million in a seed round from Wavemaker Ventures and Seeds. Here's the complete list of this week's funding chart: 27 deals worth over US$211.4 million. STARTUPS THAT ARE RAISING FUNDS Fundraising is hard. To make things slightly easier, we've compiled this list of fundraising startups for our subscribers. Do you run a startup that's raising at the moment or know someone who does? Sign your company up for listing here. Here's a preview of the startups: 🇻🇳 This Vietnam-based startup offers free-roaming VR experiences. 🇮🇳 Headquartered in India, this startup leverages AI to provide student mentorship and guidance for college admissions. 🇨🇳 This startup from China offers end-to-end solutions to enterprise customers by combining computer vision, AI, and data analytics. You can find the full list of fundraising startups in Asia over here. 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. ✅︎ "Quick replies from the investment team on go/no-go. Seemed to be quite sure in the consumer sector about what they want to invest in and how to look at a brand." - Read more ❌ "Notorious for pulling term sheets for no good reason. They promise the world and then pull the rug underneath from you. I have seen this happen with three of my founder friends. Best avoided." - Read more ✅︎ "It's possibly the most knowledgeable team; everyone walks the talk. Allen, David, and Jefferson are the most accomplished yet humble people. They give instant feedback and ask you questions but also guide you through those questions on the spot to understand where your rationale is coming from. Quite a unique process but very enjoyable." - Read more LEAD THE EXPERT CLINICS FOR ENTERPRISE AI EXECUTIVES Put your brand where leaders solve deployment. For enterprise AI leaders, it's not enough that the model demo is promising or that the board may be aligned and the budget already committed. Production is where the real test begins: data quality, legacy systems, security reviews, workflow redesign, internal ownership, and the uncomfortable question of whether the model can deliver measurable business value at scale. This is the gap that the Expert Clinics at Tech in Asia Conference 2026 are designed to address. These focused meetings move beyond high-level AI commentary and bring enterprise AI decision-makers into direct conversations with practitioners who have worked through the messy middle of implementation. Collaborating with us for the Expert Clinics will allow your brand to be featured in high-intent sessions where leaders are diagnosing blockers, stress-testing deployment plans, and looking for credible ways to move AI from pilot to production. Partner with Tech in Asia Conference 2026 to lead the conversations shaping Asia's AI strategy. EXCLUSIVE LISTICLES Lists 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 READS 1️⃣ IPO and behold OpenAI and Anthropic listing soon? SpaceX already testing the public market waters? In this episode of the Masters of Scale podcast, Reid Hoffman weighs in on AI IPOs, sovereign wealth funds, and what makes an AI company defensible. 2️⃣ Future industries, future bubble? China's venture scene is heating up around "future industries" like space, quantum, nuclear, and robotics. This Reuters article looks at how the country's push to support these industries is playing out - and how this strategy is raising concerns about a potential bubble. 3️⃣ Founder is the new grad job Apparently, "fresh grad founder" is becoming more of a thing. This piece from The Wall Street Journal delves into how more computer science graduates are choosing startups over traditional tech jobs. 4️⃣ The AI bill, itemized Companies are spending heavily on AI, but not all AI investments behave the same way. This article from the Harvard Business Review breaks down five types of AI investment and how they fit into business strategies. 5️⃣ Menlo's mid-life AI moment Menlo Ventures is turning 50 and marking the occasion with US$3 billion in fresh capital across two new funds. In this blog post, the Anthropic investor says it is going "all in" on AI, from infrastructure and frontier models to AI-native applications. EVENTS HAPPENING You can also check out our curated list of trending tech events and Tech in Asia's signature events. Put your brand where leaders solve the deployment question At Tech in Asia Conference 2026, the Expert Clinics feature your brand in high-intent meetings where leaders diagnose deployment blockers, stress-test implementation plans, and work through the gap between pilot success and production scale. Partner with Tech in Asia Conference 2026 to lead the conversations shaping Asia's AI strategy. ADVERTISE | SUBSCRIBE | HIRE | FIND JOBS P.S. 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