Southeast Asia's AI startups raised $9.3 billion. The Philippines is not on the list.
A new tally by the startup tracker Tracxn says nearly all of that money landed in Singapore. Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand split under $40 million between them, and the country breakdown does not include us at all.
Startups in Southeast Asia built around AI have raised about $9.3 billion across 261 disclosed funding rounds, according to a count published Thursday by Tracxn, a firm that tracks startup deals. The tally runs through July 31, 2026.
Singapore took $9.3 billion of it across 227 rounds. That is not a typo. The regional total and Singapore's total are the same rounded figure because everyone else is small enough to disappear. Vietnam is second at $19 million, then Malaysia at $8 million, Indonesia at $6 million and Thailand at $4 million. The country breakdown in the report does not list the Philippines.
The money is also arriving faster. The same count puts 2024 at $869 million across 35 rounds and 2025 at $2 billion across 41 rounds. This year has already passed both, with $4.1 billion across just 23 rounds by the end of July. Fewer deals, much bigger cheques.
Why it matters
We have spent this year talking about the Philippines as an AI destination: data centers, training programs, a hub in Tarlac, a new cable ring. Those are buildings and pipes. This report is about something different, which is who owns the companies. On that scoreboard the region has one address, and it is Singapore, an hour and a half away by plane. A Filipino founder raising an AI round today is competing against a city that pulls in more late-stage money in a quarter than the rest of ASEAN has raised in three years.
The catch to watch
Singapore's number is less impressive than it looks up close. Two deals account for roughly $4 billion of it: a $2.8 billion round for the video generator Kling AI and $1.2 billion for the model maker MiniMax. Another $2.2 billion went to Princeton Digital Group across four rounds, and that is a data center operator, not a software startup. AI infrastructure, meaning the plumbing rather than the apps, pulled $4.3 billion across 56 rounds.
So the honest read is narrower than the headline. This is not proof that Singapore has hundreds of thriving AI startups and we have none. It says a handful of very large deals, most of them infrastructure and big model companies, chose to be booked in Singapore. The gap worth closing is not the $9.3 billion. It is the $19 million line, where Vietnam sits and we do not appear at all.