100x100 is a freshly rebranded climate VC for Asia with $100M to spend
The firm aims to ‘co-build’ 50 new startups that can reduce greenhouse emissions and generate major revenue
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We’re a little late today as your author was up in the early hours watching the World Cup (🏴), but there’s plenty more on the menu today including a big new fund for a newly rebranded climate change fund in Southeast Asia, a long pipeline of upcoming IPOs and a sea change in how Chinese AI models may be used.
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Asia gets a new climate-focused startup fund with $100M to spend
Asia has a shiny new venture capital name after the launch of 100x100, a new fund and venture builder focused on startups related to the impact of climate change and emissions. 100x100 has spun out of Singaporean VC Wavemaker, where it was previously called Wavemaker Impact, and announced a new $100 million fund. That’s its first as a rebranded entity but technically its second to date following Wavemaker Impact’s $60 million raise in 2023.
We’re used to VC going after startups, and more recently AI, but 100x100 says it is scouring South Asia and Southeast Asia for “high-impact, high-growth companies designed to address the planet’s most pressing emissions challenges.”
Rather than simply finding promising companies and writing cheques, 100x100 gets involved from day one like a venture builder. It says it looks for serial founders and experienced operators that want to build companies in the climate space, and works with them to find a problem and build a solution that can grow into a business.
When a business is launched, which is typically within six months after the initial ideation, the firm invests $500,000 on “standard” terms and runs the business with the founder for around 18 months. There’s another investment of $500,000 to $1 million when product market fit is reached, with 100x100 working to find other investors to co-lead that deal as a Series A.
The goal after that is to follow on at Series B when institutional investors arrive and the business takes off with less involvement from 100x100.
It’s an ambitious roadmap, and to date the firm has co-created 27 startups across India, Southeast Asia and Australia covering energy, transport, agriculture, food, industry and land use. That portfolio raised over $28 million from 16 external investors, and the firm claims most were revenue-generating within six months of launch.
The new fund is targeted at creating 50 more businesses. More precisely, the fund wants to reduce 100 million tonnes of CO₂e, a measurement of greenhouse gas emissions, and generate US$100 million in revenue per year. Hence the name: 100x100.
It’s also notable that 100x100 emphasises the financial side of its ventures, not simply climate-related businesses for the sake of impact.
“We believe that solving the world’s most pressing emissions challenges also represents a significant economic opportunity. Our name reflects our conviction that profit and carbon reduction are not a trade-off, but a multiplier,” said Marie Cheong, Founding Partner, 100x100, in a statement.
“We don’t invest in green premium, we look for green discount. For climate tech to scale, it must be cheaper and better than the existing fossil alternative. We build companies that win on unit economics first, carbon second,” the firm writes on its website.
Climate-focused funds are less visible in Southeast Asia, but others include The Radical Fund, which is wholly focused on Southeast Asia with a $40 million fund. Larger and more corporate players include ADB Ventures, the VC arm of the Asian Development Bank which has $60 million, Circulate Capital, which raised $220 million in April, and Clime Capital, a more energy-focused fund with $175 million. India, meanwhile, has more than half a dozen.
Still, 100x100’s differentiator is its hands-on and co-building approach. Much of that comes from the profile of the team. That includes Cheong, who worked with KPMG and others before entering VC, as well as PropertyGuru Group co-founder Steve Melhuish, former HappyFresh CEO Guillem Segarra, and serial entrepreneur Quentin Vaquette.
The jury is still out for venture building VCs in Southeast Asia tech, so it’ll be interesting to see if 100x100’s early promise can continue as it doubles down and its existing portfolio matures and seeks those elusive Series B+ investors.
Deals
SoftBank is said to be struggling to find Latin American startups capable of absorbing its preferred ticket size of $50 million or more, managing just two new regional investments over the past two years [Bloomberg]
Singapore-based Acrab, which builds agentic AI compute infrastructure, has reportedly emerged from stealth with $350 million in financing to date from investors including Vertex. There’s much more to learn about this business given its sudden arrival on the scene. [TechNode]
Kuaishou is in talks with General Atlantic to anchor a first funding round for Kling AI, its video generation unit, targeting more than $2 billion at an $18 billion post-money valuation ahead of a planned IPO. [Bloomberg]
CPP Investments, the Canadian pension fund manager that owns a large chunk of soon-to-list-in-Singapore data centre business AirTrunk, is now doubling down on India after it committed up to ₹70 billion ($741 million) to data centre operator CtrlS, acquiring an 8.2% stake for ₹40 billion ($423 million) and investing up to ₹30 billion ($317 million) more through a joint venture [TechCrunch]
Pramaana Labs, a US-based AI startup founded by IIT Madras alumni, raised $27 million in seed funding led by Khosla Ventures for its technology that makes AI answers mathematically verifiable by converting complex knowledge into machine-readable language [TechCrunch]
Carro has entered Australia after it acquired fellow used-car marketplace CarPlace to push into its eighth market [Reuters]
Genting, the Malaysian conglomerate best known for real estate and gambling, has launched a $20 billion smart city project in Johor that includes an AI research lab [Nikkei Asia]
Markets
Mynt, which operates Philippines-based digital wallet GCash and is backed by Ant Group, received shareholder approval to go after a local listing that’s been rumoured for many years. The company is said to be seeking to raise $1-1.5 billion at a valuation of $8 billion [Wall Street Journal]
Audio startup Pocket FM is said to be in early talks to shift its holding structure from the US back to India ahead of a potential domestic IPO [Economic Times]
Social commerce platform Xiaohongshu is targeting a Hong Kong IPO as early as the end of this year, with investors seeking a valuation of over $70 billion [Wall Street Journal]
Reliance Jio Infocomm is set to file a draft prospectus for its long-awaited $4 billion IPO with India’s capital markets regulator within days [The Financial Times]
Chinese components maker Lingyi iTech is pricing its Hong Kong IPO at a 44% discount to its Shenzhen-listed shares, as it seeks to raise up to HK$8.3 billion ($1.06 billion) [Bloomberg]
China’s securities regulator is loosening the gates for AI companies to list at home following Hong Kong’s emergence as an AI IPO hub [Bloomberg]
In other news:
Microsoft is reportedly exploring whether it can host its own version of DeepSeek for its copilot AI service [Axios]
Sea quietly launched a generative AI companion chatbot called Migoo in the US and other markets. The service, which looks like an OpenClaw-style bot, connected to Google accounts but requires an invite code to get started [Bloomberg]
Alibaba Cloud opened its first data centres in France, extending its European footprint as businesses on the continent push for greater data sovereignty [South China Morning Post]
India’s Kaynes Technology has stationed sales staff in Japan and plans to ship sample products in fiscal 2026 as its semiconductor unit seeks assembly orders from local chipmakers [Nikkei Asia]
BYD, Google, AMD and Tesla are in talks with Samsung about using its contract chipmaking capacity, as soaring AI infrastructure demand strains TSMC’s advanced manufacturing lines [Nikkei Asia]
And finally, in an update to one of yesterday’s main stories: India’s high court has asked the government to present proof that its ban on Telegram is justified [The Economic Times]