Asia startup funding hit $573.5 million across deals in week 45 of 2026, led by two major China AI raises and a cluster of Singapore rounds that signal continued confidence in the region’s deep tech pipeline. Sand.ai crossed the unicorn threshold with a $200 million Series A+ round, Moffett AI secured nearly $137.5 million for its sparse computing chips, and Singapore’s Nium consolidated its global payments position with a $338 million Series E from Temasek Holdings and Ripple.
The week of November 3 to 10, 2026 also brought a Hong Kong IPO from Ada Space, the spacetech company backed by Hongshan Capital, and notable biotech licensing deals out of China worth more than $8 billion in combined value. Across China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand, the week’s activity reinforced Asia’s position as a parallel funding engine to the United States market.
Asia Startup Funding Week 45: What Happened November 3 to 10, 2026
Asia startup funding in week 45 of 2026 came from multiple sub-regions simultaneously. China led the total with two AI hardware and software raises. Singapore contributed a fintech mega-round and a robotics deal. Hong Kong saw a spacetech IPO open on the HKEX. Thailand secured up to $590 million in data center financing. The week’s headline figure of $573.5 million covers disclosed venture rounds and does not include the data center debt facility or the multi-billion biotech licensing deals from China.
That figure places week 45 above the median weekly total for Asia in 2026 but below the record weeks driven by megadeals in the AI semiconductor space. What distinguishes this week is the breadth of sectors: generative video AI, sparse inference chips, global payments, industrial robotics, and commercial spacetech all posted deals in a 7-day window.
Top Asia Startup Deals: November 3 to 10, 2026
Sand.ai raised $200 million in a Series A+ round co-led by Cornerstone Capital and Wangsu Science & Technology. The Beijing-based company develops generative video models and operates VidMuse, a paid video creation platform. Sand.ai has now raised $300 million across three rounds in 2026 and crossed unicorn status with this close. The company plans to release MAGI-2, a larger video-generation model built on a mixture-of-experts architecture, alongside expanding internationally.
Moffett AI secured nearly $137.5 million in a Series C extension from Renai Capital, Haitang Fund, Dongheng Petroleum, Biqiu Capital, Paila Capital, and Zhongcai Capital. The Shenzhen company builds sparse-computing AI inference chips designed to cut the cost of running large language models. Its technology reportedly raised inference throughput by up to 2.88 times in a collaboration with Peking University and compressed models by up to 7.64 times. Moffett reported several-fold revenue growth in Q3 2026 and has deployed its chips across four regions in China.
Nium closed a $338 million Series E from Temasek Holdings, Tribe Capital, Ripple, Riverwood Capital, and Vertex Ventures. The Singapore-headquartered global payments infrastructure company operates across more than 100 countries, connecting banks, fintechs, and enterprises to real-time payment rails. The Series E positions Nium among Singapore’s most highly capitalized private fintech companies and reinforces the city-state’s role as a payments hub for the broader region.
Ada Space opened its IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this week, with Hongshan Capital (formerly Sequoia China) among its backers. The raise was approximately $127 million. Ada Space builds commercial remote sensing satellites and was one of several China-linked spacetech companies to seek public market access in Hong Kong in 2026 as domestic IPO conditions tightened on the mainland.
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Asia Startup Funding Week 45: More Deals Across the Region
Augmentus Robotics raised $11 million in a Series A+ round led by Woori VP. The Singapore-based company develops no-code industrial robot programming software that enables factory operators to program robotic arms without specialized coding knowledge. The round underlines the continued investor appetite for robotics software that democratizes access to automation across Southeast Asia’s manufacturing base.
Haoyang Data Center 1 in Thailand secured up to $590 million in debt financing for the first phase of an AI-focused data center project. This deal, while structured as project finance rather than a venture round, signals the scale of AI infrastructure investment now flowing into Southeast Asia. Thailand has positioned itself as a regional data center hub, with proximity to Singapore’s high-cost land market driving demand.
AutoSwift, an AI automation company with Australian operations, secured close to A$10 million from Singapore’s X Star Technology to scale its AI WINGMAN product. The investment reflects Singapore-based capital increasingly backing Australia and Southeast Asia cross-border deals in the enterprise automation space.
Multipolitan, a Singapore-based global mobility startup, raised $2 million in a seed round led by EmergentX. The company builds a platform for professionals seeking to manage international residency, work permits, and citizenship pathways. The small seed round attracted attention given the platform’s direct monetization model on a high-net-worth audience.
China AI Dominates Asia Startup Funding Week 45: Sand.ai and Moffett Signal a Divided Race
The two largest Asia startup funding deals of the week came from China’s AI sector, and they represent the two sides of the country’s AI infrastructure bet. Sand.ai is a software-layer play: a generative video company that sits at the application and model layer, competing with Runway and Kling for enterprise and consumer video generation market share. Moffett AI is a hardware-layer play: a chip company trying to solve the inference cost problem that sits at the foundation of AI deployment economics.
Both companies raised in November 2026, within days of each other, from overlapping but distinct investor pools. This is not coincidence. China’s AI investment community has divided itself between model-layer and infrastructure-layer bets in a deliberate portfolio construction strategy. The combined $337.5 million raised by Sand.ai and Moffett in a single week shows that both bets are still attracting institutional capital at scale.
China also produced major biotech licensing activity this week that exceeded the venture totals by an order of magnitude. SinoBiopharmaceutical and Boehringer Ingelheim agreed to a $7 billion license and joint venture for oncology drugs. Hinova signed a $1.07 billion license for autoimmune drugs with US-based Evommune. These deals, while not startup funding in the traditional sense, reflect the maturation of China’s pharma sector into a global licensing partner rather than just a manufacturing base.
Singapore Startup Funding Week 45: Nium, Augmentus, and the City-State’s Deepening AI Edge
Singapore produced the week’s most geographically diverse deal in Nium’s $338 million Series E. Nium operates global payments rails and counts Temasek Holdings among its investors, which signals that Singapore’s sovereign investment arm continues to back fintech infrastructure rather than consumer apps. The company’s presence in more than 100 countries makes it one of the few Singapore-headquartered companies with genuine global payments scale.
Augmentus Robotics at $11 million represents the other end of the Singapore funding spectrum: an early-growth industrial software company targeting the automation gap in Southeast Asian manufacturing. No-code robotics programming is a category that sits at the intersection of the labour shortage problem and the AI-driven automation wave. The Woori VP lead brings Korean institutional capital into Singapore’s robotics ecosystem, a cross-border dynamic that reflects the growing integration of Northeast and Southeast Asian tech investment communities.
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Asia Startup Funding Week 45: Key Takeaways for November 3 to 10, 2026
Asia startup funding in week 45 of 2026 showed that the region’s AI investment engine is running on two parallel tracks. China is funding both the model layer and the chip layer simultaneously. Singapore is funding both global-scale fintech infrastructure and early-stage industrial robotics software in the same week. Neither market is showing signs of narrowing its investment thesis.
The Hong Kong IPO market is absorbing spacetech companies that cannot access mainland listings. Thailand’s data center infrastructure is attracting project finance at a scale that dwarfs the venture rounds. And Singapore-based capital is flowing into Australian and Southeast Asian enterprise automation in deals too small for regional headlines but meaningful for the ecosystem’s depth.
The $573.5 million disclosed across venture rounds in week 45 understates the week’s true capital deployment. When biotech licensing, data center project finance, and private equity buyouts are included, the week’s Asia tech capital activity ran well above $10 billion. This is the new baseline for a region that was once described as a follower market.