Asia’s top tech startups move beyond software towards physical AI

[SINGAPORE] Asia’s growth-stage technology companies are increasingly taking artificial intelligence beyond software and into the physical world, deploying it across wind farms, warehouses, construction sites, operating theatres and even low-Earth orbit.

More than half of the 30 companies named in this year’s NextGen Tech 30 (NGT30), a list of Asia’s top 30 growth-stage technology companies by Singapore-headquartered investment platform Granite Asia released on Wednesday (Sep 30), reflect this shift.

Now in its third year, NGT30 is Asia’s first public-private initiative to recognise and support the region’s top growth-stage technology companies.

Run by Granite Asia in partnership with the Singapore Exchange (SGX), the programme brings together sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors, government agencies and industry leaders to support companies with the potential to scale globally from Asia.

Granite Asia said this year’s cohort stands out for how far it has moved beyond enterprise software.

“Three years ago, a lot of software companies were building software to try and change the world,” said Jenny Lee, venture capitalist and senior managing partner at Granite Asia.

“This year, we have companies creating robots to repair wind turbines, doing underwater vessel repair and using AI models to screen for cancer.”

Lee was speaking at the NGT30 event at the SGX IPO Arena on Wednesday morning, where the honourees were announced.

Chee Hong Tat, minister for national development and deputy chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), said the 30 companies recognised this year reflected the growing depth and breadth of Asia’s innovation base.

“For this year’s companies, the question is what comes next,” he added. “What will it take for these promising companies to make their next leap in growth?”

This means a startup has to prove that an idea can work and scaling up has to make it work repeatedly across markets beyond its home shores and at much greater scale, said Chee.

“This requires capital that can grow with the company, organisational capabilities that can keep pace, and the ability to adapt to different customers and markets,” he added.

Tapping growth capital

Chee also noted that this year’s cohort offers a “useful indication” of Singapore’s role as a base for growth.

The share of NGT30 honourees headquartered in Singapore rose from 18 per cent in 2024 to 42 per cent this year. This suggests that the Republic is increasingly serving as a base, including for companies looking to grow beyond its shores.

Singapore-based companies include Clobotics, which makes autonomous drone inspection for infrastructure; Hummingbird Bioscience, which uses AI to discover antibodies for cancer and autoimmune diseases; Menlo Research, an open-source humanoid robotics platform; Tookitaki, which offers AI-powered anti-money laundering and financial compliance tools; and VeloDB, a real-time analytics database for dashboards and AI.

Meanwhile, a third of the honourees are from Japan, home to category leaders in legal AI, cancer diagnostics, healthcare software and warehouse robotics. Across the cohort, the top 30 are growing revenue at more than 100 per cent year on year.

As such companies expand across markets, they may need larger pools of growth capital and investors who understand their longer-term potential, Chee said. At a later stage, some may also look to the public markets.

This is why MAS and the Ministry of Trade and Industry convened the Growth Capital Workgroup earlier this year to strengthen Singapore’s growth capital ecosystem and connect promising companies with the capital they need as they scale, he added.

Chee’s call for stronger links between companies and capital was echoed by Koh Boon Hwee, chairman of SGX Group, who also spoke at the NGT30 event.

Koh said Asia needs a “stronger ecosystem that gives its best companies the capital, connections and confidence to scale globally”.

He added that Singapore continues to take “practical steps” in this direction.

He said that the initiatives announced on Tuesday put more of these plans into action, supporting Singapore’s ambition to be, in the minister’s words, “the place in this region where capital can connect with opportunities and create the next generation of growth”.

“Not every company here will eventually list on SGX, and that is fine,” said Koh. “What matters is that good Asian companies can continually tap global capital as they grow.”