Startup funding in Southeast Asia more than quadrupled to $7.25 billion in the first half of 2026, but a single $4.5 billion data-center financing by Singapore’s DayOne accounted for most of the growth.
In a statement on Thursday, Kickstart Ventures pointed out that the deal numbers fell to their lowest since 2018, despite the hike in deal value.
The Southeast Asia Startup Funding Report for the first half of 2026 recorded 217 equity deals raising $7.25 billion, the strongest half-year total since early 2022. The funding went up more than four times, versus $1.86 billion a year earlier, even as deal volume slipped 5 percent and sat about 62 percent below the 2022 peak.
The DayOne round, tied to the AI and cloud build-out, made up 62 percent of the half-year total. Without it, funding was about $2.75 billion.
Money was concentrated more broadly as the five largest rounds took 75.5 percent of the total and the top 20 took 89 percent, leaving about $800 million for the other 196 deals, the report said.
Singapore-headquartered companies drew 92 percent of the funding, $6.7 billion across 145 deals, or two-thirds of regional volume. The report stressed that many large Singapore-based companies raise money for global expansion.
Outside Singapore, totals leaned heavily on one or two deals each. Vietnam was second by value at $340 million across 10 deals, though Vinpearl’s $255 million round was about three-quarters of that.
Malaysia showed the widest activity, with 27 deals raising $203 million. Thailand raised $130 million and the Philippines $80 million, each dominated by a single company. Indonesia recorded just $104 million across 17 deals and had no company among the 20 largest rounds, a shortfall the report linked to a shortage of growth funding.
The report showed a steady decline in early-stage activity as the bigger concern. Early-stage deals fell to 195, down 11 percent year on year and 63 percent below the 2022 peak, even as early-stage funding rose 56 percent to $1.72 billion on larger cheques; the median seed round reached a record $3.7 million.
Series A remained a bottleneck, with the median round dropping to $8 million from $11.6 million in late 2025.
Late-stage funding reached $5.88 billion across 23 deals, 77 percent of the total, but split between a few very large rounds and much smaller ones. The Series C median fell to $15.5 million while the average was skewed above $500 million. Debt financing grew to $1.36 billion across 23 deals, about 15 percent of combined equity and debt.
Minette Navarrete, president and managing partner of Kickstart Ventures, said capital was returning to the region as data centres, chip capacity and strategic infrastructure, but through a more selective market and mainly via Singapore.
The report noted a firmer economic backdrop, developing Southeast Asia is expected to grow about 4.6 percent in 2026, with technology exports and data-center investment aiding Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. But regional startups still depend on cross-border capital sensitive to U.S. interest rates and exit conditions.
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