DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest financial institution, and Granite Asia, an Asia-focused funding fund, are launching a brand new “first-of-its-kind” partnership to assist new startups, underpinned by a brand new $110 million AI-focused IPO fund provided completely to DBS’s high-wealth purchasers.
The partnership, which is able to proceed for 3 years, is a part of a push to supply extra capital for Asia’s startups, which have fewer funding choices out there to them in comparison with these based mostly in additional mature Western economies.
“The U.S. is amply funded, if not overfunded,” Jenny Lee, senior managing associate at Granite Asia, tells Fortune. (The U.S. accounted for 10 of the 11 largest offers of the final quarter of 2025, in line with KPMG). “The rest of Asia is under invested […] and Asia is not small,” Lee provides.
Southeast Asia’s funding scene has struggled lately as traders maintain again amid a difficult macroeconomic atmosphere and a blended document of returns.
Conventional banks are hesitant to increase loans to startups, which frequently burn by money of their early phases of progress, DBS CEO Tan Su Shan famous. Via its collaboration with Granite Asia, DBS hopes to speculate early in promising firms and develop long-term relationships with them.
Lee and Tan, each of whom spent a long time in Asia’s finance sector, have lengthy been mates. “Jenny and I meet in all the strangest places—corridors, conferences, toilets,” Tan quips. This present partnership grew from a gathering in a convention in Qatar in 2025, the place they mentioned the expansion of Asia’s tech and AI sector. “We were bemoaning the fact that there was so much talent, but not enough capital to fund these guys,” the DBS CEO recollects.
Even essentially the most profitable of Asia’s rising AI startups elevate considerably much less cash than their U.S. counterparts. Chinese language startup Moonshot, developer of the open-source Kimi mannequin, raised $500 million earlier this 12 months, in line with native media. By comparability, Anthropic, developer of the Claude mannequin, raised $30 billion earlier this month.
The brand new DBS-Granite Asia IPO fund will give traders “early access” to “high-growth AI-driven companies in the region,” and has gotten participation from purchasers based mostly in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Europe, the 2 firms stated in an announcement. Granite Asia will handle the pooled capital, sending it to IPO-stage firms.
Courtesy of DBS
DBS, No. 7 on the Southeast Asia 500, has its “roots in development,” Tan says. The financial institution was based in 1968 because the Growth Financial institution of Singapore, set as much as deal with the commercial financing tasks of Singapore’s Financial Growth Board.
“We were always about backing entrepreneurs, and supporting businesses from early- to mid-growth, and beyond,” Tan says.
DBS’ wealth purchasers may also achieve from new alternatives to put money into progress property and personal markets. “That’s where quite a lot of the alpha can be created,” Tan explains, noting that the brand new partnership will doubtless generate higher returns on funding for DBS clients in comparison with extra conservative property like ETFs. “If you want alpha, you’ve got to go up the value chain, up the supply chain, to more upstream companies.”
Granite Asia has round $10 billion in property beneath administration, and has supported 65 IPOs around the globe. The agency was born from U.S. enterprise fund GGV Capital, which break up its Asia and U.S. operations in 2024. Granite has partnered with different Asian organizations, like sovereign wealth funds Khazanah and the Indonesia Funding Authority.
Lee opened one in all GGV’s first China workplaces in 2005, and has backed among the area’s main tech corporations, like telephone producer Xiaomi and ride-hailing platform Seize. Granite Asia has additionally expanded into different types of financing, like personal credit score.
Each Tan and Lee hope that their collaboration will create a bigger ecosystem that permits Asia’s founders to thrive.
“This multi-asset partnership is deeply rooted in Asia,” Tan says. “It brings collectively the understanding of Asian wants, Asian capital, Asian objective, Asian knowhow, Asian {hardware} and software program.
“They all gel quite nicely together.”
