DBS partners with Granite Asia to help counter the region’s lack of capital with $110M AI IPO fund

The partnership, which will continue for three years, is part of a push to provide more capital for Asia’s startups, which have fewer funding options available to them compared to those based in more mature Western economies. 

“The U.S. is amply funded, if not overfunded,” Jenny Lee, senior managing partner at Granite Asia, tells Fortune. (The U.S. accounted for 10 of the 11 largest deals of the last quarter of 2025, according to KPMG). “The rest of Asia is under invested […] and Asia is not small,” Lee adds.

Southeast Asia’s funding scene has struggled in recent years as investors hold back amid a challenging macroeconomic environment and a mixed record of returns. 

Traditional banks are hesitant to extend loans to startups, which often burn through cash in their early stages of growth, DBS CEO Tan Su Shan noted. Through its collaboration with Granite Asia, DBS hopes to invest early in promising companies and develop long-term relationships with them. 

Lee and Tan, both of whom spent decades in Asia’s finance sector, have long been friends. “Jenny and I meet in all the strangest places—corridors, conferences, toilets,” Tan quips. This current partnership grew from a meeting in a conference in Qatar in 2025, where they discussed the growth of Asia’s tech and AI sector. “We were bemoaning the fact that there was so much talent, but not enough capital to fund these guys,” the DBS CEO recalls.

Even the most successful of Asia’s rising AI startups raise significantly less money than their U.S. counterparts. Chinese startup Moonshot, developer of the open-source Kimi model, raised $500 million earlier this year, according to local media. By comparison, Anthropic, developer of the Claude model, raised $30 billion earlier this month.  

The new DBS-Granite Asia IPO fund will give investors “early access” to “high-growth AI-driven companies in the region,” and has gotten participation from clients based in Southeast Asia, South Asia and Europe, the two companies said in a statement. Granite Asia will manage the pooled capital, sending it to IPO-stage companies.

DBS, No. 7 on the Southeast Asia 500, has its “roots in development,” Tan says. The bank was founded in 1968 as the Development Bank of Singapore, set up to handle the industrial financing responsibilities of Singapore’s Economic Development Board. 

“We were always about backing entrepreneurs, and supporting businesses from early- to mid-growth, and beyond,” Tan says. 

DBS’ wealth clients will also gain from new opportunities to invest in growth assets and private markets. “That’s where quite a lot of the alpha can be created,” Tan explains, noting that the new partnership will likely generate greater returns on investment for DBS customers compared to more conservative assets like ETFs. “If you want alpha, you’ve got to go up the value chain, up the supply chain, to more upstream companies.”

Granite Asia has around $10 billion in assets under management, and has supported 65 IPOs around the world. The firm was born from U.S. venture fund GGV Capital, which split its Asia and U.S. operations in 2024. Granite has partnered with other Asian organizations, like sovereign wealth funds Khazanah and the Indonesia Investment Authority.

Lee opened one of GGV’s first China offices in 2005, and has backed some of the region’s leading tech firms, like phone manufacturer Xiaomi and ride-hailing platform Grab. Granite Asia has also expanded into other forms of financing, like private credit.

Both Tan and Lee hope that their collaboration will create a larger ecosystem that enables Asia’s founders to thrive.

“This multi-asset partnership is deeply rooted in Asia,” Tan says. “It brings together the understanding of Asian needs, Asian capital, Asian purpose, Asian knowhow, Asian hardware and software.

“They all gel quite nicely together.”