DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, partners with VC giant Granite Asia to counter the region’s lack of capital | Fortune

The partnership, which can proceed for 3 years, is a component of a push to present extra capital for Asia’s startups, which have fewer funding choices obtainable to them in contrast to these primarily based in additional mature Western economies. 

“The U.S. is abundantly funded, if not overfunded,” Jenny Lee, senior managing companion at Granite Asia, tells Fortune. (The U.S. accounted for 10 of the 11 largest offers of the final quarter of 2025, in accordance to KPMG). “The remainder of Asia is underneath invested […] and Asia isn’t small,” Lee provides.

Southeast Asia’s funding scene has struggled in recent times as traders maintain again amid a difficult macroeconomic setting and a combined file of returns. 

Conventional banks are hesitant to lengthen loans to startups, which frequently burn by means of money of their early phases of development, DBS CEO Tan Su Shan famous. By means of its collaboration with Granite Asia, DBS hopes to make investments early in promising corporations 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 associates. “Jenny and I meet in all the strangest locations—corridors, conferences, bogs,” Tan quips. This present partnership grew from a gathering in a convention in Qatar in 2025, the place they mentioned the development of Asia’s tech and AI sector. “We have been bemoaning the proven fact that there was a lot expertise, however not sufficient capital to fund these guys,” the DBS CEO recollects.

Even 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 accordance to 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 entry” to “high-growth AI-driven corporations in the area,” and has gotten participation from purchasers primarily based in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Europe, the two corporations stated in a press release. Granite Asia will handle the pooled capital, sending it to IPO-stage corporations.

Courtesy of DBS

DBS, No. 7 on the Southeast Asia 500, has its “roots in growth,” Tan says. The financial institution was based in 1968 as the Growth Financial institution of Singapore, arrange to deal with the industrial financing duties of Singapore’s Financial Growth Board. 

“We have been at all times about backing entrepreneurs, and supporting companies from early- to mid-growth, and past,” Tan says. 

DBS’ wealth purchasers can even achieve from new alternatives to put money into development belongings and personal markets. “That’s the place quite a bit of the alpha could be created,” Tan explains, noting that the new partnership will seemingly generate larger returns on funding for DBS clients in contrast to extra conservative belongings like ETFs. “If you’d like alpha, you’ve acquired to go up the worth chain, up the provide chain, to extra upstream corporations.”

Granite Asia has round $10 billion in belongings underneath administration, and has supported 65 IPOs round the world. 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 of GGV’s first China workplaces in 2005, and has backed some of the area’s main tech companies, like telephone producer Xiaomi and ride-hailing platform Seize. Granite Asia has additionally expanded into different kinds 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.

“All of them gel fairly properly collectively.”