[SINGAPORE] Private funding for South-east Asia’s digital economy grew 15 per cent from a year earlier to US$7.7 billion in the 12 months to June 2025, lagging the global growth rate of 25 per cent for private equity and venture capital investments, an industry report said on Tuesday.
The annual report, by Alphabet’s Google, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings and global business consultants Bain & Company, also found that the funding was about 70 per cent below 2021’s record high of US$27 billion.
“Investments are presently concentrated in late-stage rounds, with the funding share for seed to Series B deals declining from about 30 per cent to about 20 per cent in the last twelve months compared to the prior period,” they said.
The report was expanded this year to cover Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, in addition to Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The region has almost 700 million people and is one of the world’s fastest growing internet markets, due to a young population, widespread smartphone usage, high rates of urbanisation and a growing middle class.
Despite the funding chill, AI startups in the region continue to attract significant investments, the report said.
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AI-related investments made up 32 per cent of the private funding raised in South-east Asia in the first half of this year, compared to 30 per cent in the second half of 2024.
More than 680 AI startups in the region attracted more than US$2.3 billion in the year to June, with more than 495 such startups based out of Singapore. The report also found strong data centre capacity expansion, with countries rushing to build the capacity required to serve the AI boom.
Once all planned projects are completed, data centre capacity in South-east Asia is expected to grow by 2.8 times, outpacing the rest of the Asia Pacific region, which is expected to grow by 2.2 times.
In January, Bytedance’s TikTok announced plans to set up data hosting services in Thailand valued at nearly US$4 billion. Google and Amazon are also planning to invest US$1 billion and US$5 billion respectively in the country.
Data centre capacity growth is expected to be strongest in Malaysia, where 2,415 megawatts (MW) of new capacity is planned, accounting for more than half of the 4,620 MW for the entire region.
Malaysia has attracted investments from Microsoft, Amazon and Google as well as their Chinese counterparts Tencent, Huawei and Alibaba, spurred by cheap land and electricity costs and robust local AI demand prospects. REUTERS