Welcome back to Asia Tech Review, your curated digest to keep up to date with tech news across Asia.
Private credit is on the agenda today. Granite Asia cut the ribbon on its Libra Hybrid fund that continues to diversify its focus beyond VC deals. Then Switzerland-based ResponsAbility Investments announced an Asia fund that comes in at $461 million. Today’s investment landscape is more varied than traditional equity deals as we explain.
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Granite, formerly GGV Asia, closes $500 million private credit fund
Southeast Asia has been challenging for venture capital investors in the last few years with limited exits and few paper returns, factors that make raising new funds more difficult than ever. Alternative options are increasing among funds, with private credit one particularly popular route. This week Granite Asia, formerly the Asia-based unit of GGV Capital, launched its first private credit fund as an independent entity.
Its Libra Hybrid fund is $500 million and it includes commitments from sovereign-linked funds in Singapore (Temasek’s Aranda private credit unit), Malaysia (Khazanah) and Indonesia (Indonesian Investment Authority), alongside Singapore’s DBS and others.
The fund completed a first close last year, and during that time it has completed eight deals with two exits, the firm said. Its focus has spanned healthcare, consumer and advanced manufacturing.
Private credit funds are interesting for deals since they typically provide loans or debt financing as an alternative to equity investments. So founders don’t have to trade significant equity for capital, and that particularly suits growth businesses with steady revenue. Investors can anticipate steadier returns. This isn’t replacing the core VC model for Granite, and it is part of the fund’s expansion into different investment areas since it split from GGV more than two years ago.
Back in February of this year, it partnered with DBS to launch a dedicated IPO fund of $110 million to back AI companies wanting to go public. The fund is distributed exclusively to the Singaporean bank’s wealth clients.
Climate fund ResponsAbility Investments closes $461 million Asia fund
We’re in the mood for private credit today, not only did Granite Asia’s Libra Hybrid fund close but climate-focused responsAbility Investments (yes, they don’t capitalise that R) announced the closure of a $461 million fund for Asia.
The Switzerland-headquartered fund said it has already committed just over $200 million of the fund to deals with 17 companies across renewable energy, electric mobility, energy efficiency and circular economy verticals. World Bank’s IFC is among the backers of the fund, which was expected to reach $500 million.
ResponsAbility Investments has more than $6 billion in assets across 70 countries, but it has identified Asia as a key opportunity.
“As economies expand, urbanise and electrify, demand for renewable power, distributed energy, electric mobility and efficiency solutions is expected to increase substantially. At the same time, much of the region remains undercapitalised relative to the scale of its infrastructure and transition needs, creating a significant opportunity set for experienced private market investors,” the firm wrote.
Its Asia deals this year have included Battery Smart in India, green lending in Sri Lanka, Singapore’s Skye Renewables and an India-based energy-efficient wastewater treatment company.
Climate-focused investing is on the up in Asia. We wrote in June about Singapore-based climate fund 100x100 which takes a different approach by essentially venture building new startups focused on the environment. The firm, which spun out of tech VC Wavemaker, closed a $100 million fund.
Deals
Indian drone startup Airbound raised $37 million in Series A funding, taking total capital to nearly $50 million [TechCrunch]
South Korean AI platform Wrtn Technologies raised about 100 billion won ($72 million) in Series C funding at a 1.2 trillion won ($870 million) valuation to fund its global expansion [Bloomberg]
Indian voice-AI startup Ringg raised $10 million from Peak XV, taking its Series A to $15.5 million as it expands AI agents that automate customer calls [TechCrunch]
DeepSeek is nearing a $7.4 billion funding round at a roughly $74 billion valuation, ahead of a potential Shanghai STAR Market listing [SCMP]
DeepSeek generated 475 million yuan ($70.7 million) in revenue in the first seven months of 2026, around 10 times its full-year 2025 total, while recording a 715 million yuan loss [The Information]
Indian startup Runable raised $21 million in Series A funding at a $65 million valuation to build tools that help businesses find customers and grow as AI lowers the cost of making software [TechCrunch]
Markets
Indonesia plans to invest up to $28 billion in international financial centres in Jakarta and Bali as it tries to compete for global capital with Singapore and Hong Kong [Nikkei Asia]
SK Hynix’s union rejected a tentative wage deal that included pay rises and share-based bonuses by the narrowest of margins, sending both sides back to negotiations [Bloomberg]
What goes up, often comes down: shares in Unitree fell 45% after surging more than 5x on their Shanghai debut [Reuters]
Alibaba founder Jack Ma bought more than HK$600 million ($77 million) of the company’s Hong Kong-listed shares, while chairman Joe Tsai and chief executive Eddie Wu also added stock [SCMP]
AI and Chips
Z.AI, formerly Zhipu, has been revealed to be behind Ox Alpha, the free AI model that has risen sharply in usage charts [Bloomberg]
China’s supply of advanced chips is projected to grow 46% a year through 2035, although equipment bottlenecks mean domestic foundries will still fall short of demand [SCMP]
Indian AI infrastructure company AM Intelligence ordered 9,000 Nvidia Vera Rubin systems, which it plans to bring online in southern India next year for cloud providers, AI labs and local-model developers [Bloomberg]
Xiaomi is expanding its in-house chip portfolio for smartphones and cars, with its 3nm Xring O3 processor due in September and new AI and autonomous-driving chips expected next year [SCMP]
AI startup Rogo Technologies is making Singapore its Asia-Pacific hub and hiring across Tokyo and Sydney as it automates tasks for investment bankers [The Straits Times]
Huawei proposed building AI data centres in Egypt using more than 2,000 Ascend chips for government and military uses, putting the plan at the centre of a growing US-China technology contest [Bloomberg]
Vietnam’s FPT began building a 10.5-hectare education complex focused on semiconductors, drones and advanced technology, with the first phase due to open in 2028 [TechNode]
Moonshot AI is negotiating revenue-sharing deals with Microsoft, Amazon and Google to host its Kimi K3 model, potentially marking a rare major pact between a Chinese AI firm and US cloud providers [Reuters]
MiniMax reported first-half revenue up 283% to $116.6 million, although its top-line AI model releases continue to trail rivals including Z.AI [MiniMax]
Zhipu launched GLM-5.3-Flash, its first natively multimodal GLM-5 model, with 320 billion parameters and 18 billion active parameters [Z.ai]
Crypto
Visa joined Singapore’s BLOOM initiative, led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to test whether regulated dollar- and euro-backed stablecoins can support settlement every day of the week [PRNewswire]
Vietnam will require crypto-asset service providers to report suspicious transactions to the State Bank under new anti-money-laundering rules [TechNode]
Japan plans to develop blockchain infrastructure for 24/7 settlement of stocks and government bonds, with a development plan possible by early 2027 [Nikkei Asia]
Policy
Malaysia is fast-tracking an e-commerce law to tighten consumer protection, regulate digital platforms and give small businesses a fairer position in cross-border trade [Bloomberg]
Google, OpenAI, Meta and TikTok joined Japanese authorities and businesses in a new anti-scam alliance aimed at criminal networks linked to Southeast Asia [Nikkei Asia]
The US said it disrupted a China-linked hacking operation that breached the Justice Department, NASA, the Federal Reserve and the Senate, seizing domains tied to two hacking platforms [Reuters]
We don’t often see Chinese technology adoption from US companies but HP signed a multi-year agreement to license Wi-Fi patents from Huawei [CNBC]
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