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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, A realization hit me while looking at this week's list of top-funded companies: Without the "AI" tag, these businesses made sense five years ago, and they absolutely would have gotten funding back then, too. Mobility, insurance, and infrastructure - these are all areas where people continue to face challenges. AI does help, to some extent, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to solving the very real problems individuals and businesses have. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same. 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 and M&As that have recently taken place. -- Stefanie |
THE BIGGEST DEALS BY MARKET🇮🇱 Xsight Labs is a fabless semiconductor firm based in Israel, which is in West Asia. It has raised US$300 million in series E funding from Artisan Partners, Atreides Management, Battery Ventures, Intel Capital, T. Rowe Price, and Valor Equity Partners. 🇦🇪 Mobility company Moove, which is headquartered in the United Arab Emirates, has bagged US$250 million in series C funding. Participating investors were BlueCrest Capital Management, Ion Pacific, Mubadala Investment Company, Sona Asset Management, and Woven Capital. 🇨🇳 PaXini is a robotics firm focused on haptic technology and humanoid robots. Based in China, it has secured US$148 million in strategic investment from BOC International, CDH Investments, Chengdu Jiaozi Financial Holding Group, Hexin Fangce Equity Investment Management, Jingming Capital, and Kunpeng Capital. 🇮🇳 InRisk Labs is an insurtech company from India. It has raised US$27 million in series A funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Northpoint Capital. 🇯🇵 Knowledge Work offers a sales enablement solution for businesses. Headquartered in Japan, it has scored US$22 million in series C funding from Canon Marketing Japan MIRAI Fund, Dentsu Ventures SGP Fund, Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance Company, Hakuhodo DY Ventures, Japan Post Bank Asset Management, MUFG Innovation Partners, NTT DoCoMo Ventures, Ricoh, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank. Here's the complete list of this week's funding chart: 55 deals worth over US$1.1 billion. |
M&AS🇮🇱 StreamElements, an Israel-based platform for livestreaming on Twitch, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming, has been acquired by tech company Razer. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. 🇸🇬 Bells Institute of Higher Learning, a lifelong education and training provider for job seekers in Singapore, has been acquired by Imarticus Learning, a professional education platform from India, for US$84 million. |
STARTUP IN THE SPOTLIGHTThis startup fixes AI model drift in high-stakes workflows  Some studies have generative AI at sub-30% reliability in critical domains like legal contracts and technical specifications. Nudgen Intelligence is building a platform to close that gap.
- The gap: While AI models are becoming increasingly capable, a pair of deep learning researchers found that they were consistently stalling in legal and financial workflows. Outputs were too unreliable to use in those sectors.
- The fix: Nugen Intelligence provides a low-code platform that aligns general-purpose AI models with specific domain data. Think fine-tuning, but live, not locked at one point in time.
- The pitch: The Antler-backed startup is betting that its approach, which allows deployed models to self-improve over time, will help it capture a share of the lucrative finance, healthcare, and legal sectors, where adherence to regulation is key.
This article is part of our Startup Spotlight series. To get your startup or portco covered, fill out this survey. |
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.
- ✅︎ "The process was clear and moved at a sensible pace, and what stood out was that they cared more about substance than a polished story." - Read more
- ❌ "An old school traditional PE [private equity] mindset trying to be a VC. Extensive due diligence, multiple site visits, multiple investment committee rounds, then pass. Reasons for passing could have been determined from the first pitch deck provided." - Read more
- ✅︎ "Their process was fairly fast end-to-end, and they brought in a bunch of strategic angels for us that were fairly senior in the vertical we were building in. Low profile guys but definitely one to watch." - Read more
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CELEBRATING SG61 WITH 61 SPECIAL CONFERENCE PASSESA one-time National Day offer  Singapore at 61 represents a legacy of building. This September, we are bringing that same rigor to the enterprise AI era. While many organizations are still in the testing phase, leaders from Google DeepMind, Microsoft, Changi Airport Group, and more are already delivering results at scale, and they're sharing their insights at this year's Tech in Asia Conference. To celebrate SG61, we are unlocking 61 General Passes for just S$61 each, a 25% discount. Gain tactical playbooks from practitioners while engaging with functional products. This exclusive National Day offer ends on August 11 or when discounted passes are sold out. Secure your access here. |
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 Going social Lightspeed Ventures made a buzz when it announced that Claire Zau, an investor and popular tech content creator, had joined the firm as a partner. In this episode of Equity, a podcast by TechCrunch, Zau and fellow partner Josh Machiz share their thoughts on social media's role in connecting VCs to new audiences, as well as the opportunities it can offer not only to the firm but also to its portfolio. 2️⃣ A different approach Venture capital doesn't work for the life science sector, where the timeline between a scientific breakthrough and an actual clinical trial can involve years of R&D and millions of dollars. The solution may lie in venture formation, where investors identify exciting intellectual property, build companies around it, and lay the foundations bridging research to reality. This piece from Life Science Leader goes deeper on the topic. 3️⃣ Growing pains Corporate venture building can yield amazing results - Amazon Web Services, for one, was originally developed to address Amazon's tech infrastructure challenges. However, in a time where capital is tight, businesses are expecting more from their corporate ventures. This article from Global Corporate Venturing explores some key questions that corporate venture builders need to answer to prepare for what's next. 4️⃣ Building the foundations AI is dominating headlines, while money keeps flowing into AI companies - and the infrastructure powering the tech. This is where blockchain is proving to be an area of interest, offering a way to power autonomous agents, digital identity, payments, and trusted AI systems. Read more in this piece from Blockster. 5️⃣ Culture is key In an age of disruption, the answer to successfully turning things around lies in culture, not strategy. In this episode of the HBR IdeaCast podcast, Verizon CEO Dan Schulman shares how reshaping company culture helped with navigating change and set the firm up for the AI era. Today's edition was written by Stefanie Yeo. It's edited by Mina Deocareza. |
EVENTS HAPPENINGYou can also check out our curated list of trending tech events and Tech in Asia's signature events.
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In conversation with Google DeepMind's JJ Geewax JJ Geewax, director of applied AI at Google DeepMind, understands that even the most advanced models are only as good as the infrastructure they run on. Having spent 15 years designing massive-scale systems at WhatsApp, Meta, and Google, JJ brings a deep practitioner's perspective to the brutal challenges of real-world deployment. Secure your access here. |
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