Singapore’s tech start-up scene has grown lately, and the city-state ranked seventh in the newest Global Innovation Index 2022.
Ore Huiying | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Global enterprise dollars could have dropped in 2022, but Singapore’s government-owned tech investment firm is optimistic about 2023.
“2023 might be going to be a fairly decent 12 months for enterprise capital in Singapore,” Hsien-Hui Tong, executive director of investments at SGInnovate, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” Wednesday.
Unlike global markets more generally, the enterprise capital scene in Singapore is “still very energetic,” Tong said. That is because corporations within the country tend be at the sooner, nascent stages of development, and “within the seed and Series A stages, there’s still a lot of liquidity. There’s a lot of capital there,” he added.
Global markets, alternatively, are inclined to be on the “more mature” stages of Series B and C, where enterprise capital has “dried up a bit bit.”
A seed funding round — also often known as the initial investment — is followed by various rounds, often known as Series A, B, C and so forth.
Enterprise funding for the primary nine months of 2022 totaled $369 billion, down 25% 12 months on 12 months, based on Crunchbase.
“2022 has been 12 months for us, quite unlike another investment categories. It was 12 months for emerging tech startups where a whole lot of breakthroughs have happened,” Tong said.
For instance, Singapore-headquartered biotech company MiRXES launched a “T10 ultra-high throughput sequencing platform” — which it says would help with the early detection of diseases and precision medicine — in Asia-Pacific last month.
And clean-tech company SunGreenH2, which raised $2 million led by SGInnovate in August, is conducting trials of its materials with global electrolyzer manufacturers.
Tong added that Singapore has been “sheltered from a whole lot of the consequences” of world macro economic headwinds. In consequence, Singapore has been in a position to “construct up its infrastructure probably a bit bit higher.”
He also named energy as a sector to observe in 2023 in light of breakthroughs in nuclear fusion and hydrogen.
“Quantum technology is one other area where I feel there are going to be some significant announcements and breakthroughs,” he added.
Correction: This report has been updated to accurately reflect global enterprise funding for the primary nine months of 2022. An earlier version misstated the figure.
