Aside from injecting capital, the group is also looking to increase the dynamism of Singapore’s market. For instance, a dual-listing bridge between the Singapore Exchange Group (SGX) and the Nasdaq to promote market connectivity is now in the works.
The results of those efforts so far have been promising. Singapore’s flagship Straits Times Index closed at 4,996 points on May 14 and is up by over 50% from 3,235 points on Aug 12, 2024. IPO activity has also been picking up. More than $2.4 billion in total funds were raised from IPOs in 2025, the highest since 2019.
One way to sustain the momentum of the review group’s work is to nurture our own base of start-ups. Start-ups that are able to graduate from the private market to the public market will help provide a healthy pipeline of potential listings. That seems to be what Singapore’s government is setting its sights on.
Singapore’s growth capital hub ambitions
See also: Why fintech’s next bottleneck isn’t funding, but permissioned capacity
In his Budget 2026 speech, Wong announced the formation of a new Growth Capital Workgroup that will work closely with the industry “to position Singapore as a leading centre for growth capital”. The group will be chaired by Chee and is supported by both the MAS and the Ministry of Trade and Industry.
“Globally, growth-stage capital has tightened,” Wong says. “As a result, many firms, especially in deep tech, find it harder to raise the larger and longer-term funding that is needed to scale.”
In a doorstop interview on Feb 13, Chee told reporters that the workgroup will complement the work done by the Equities Market Review Group. While the review group’s work has “helped to energise and bring about greater interest in our public markets”, the workgroup will take a “look at the entire value chain” and provide support to companies “who are growing in the earlier stages before they are ready for listing”.
See also: ‘Making illegal things legal’: How Estonia accelerates innovations to the market
“If you do it well, different components of the ecosystem will reinforce one another, and that network effect will then enable us to be able to grow the range of services, the range of options for companies and for investors,” says Chee. “That is what we hope to achieve.”
Venture capitalists and entrepreneurs who spoke to The Edge Singapore say they welcome the new workgroup. The lack of growth capital has indeed been a constraint for start-ups based in Singapore and the region, they add.
“There’s genuine momentum at the seed and Series A level. That ecosystem feels like it’s matured considerably, not just in Singapore but across the region,” says Shahril Hamdan, head of Southeast Asia and managing director at Bullhound Capital, the tech investment manager and sister company to the investment bank GP Bullhound. “But for Series B, C and onwards, growth capital at scale still feels scarce relative to what you see in comparable markets.”
One possible reason for the shortage of growth capital is what Shahril says is a “denominator problem.” There are just fewer companies reaching the scale that will justify a US$50 million ($64 million) to US$100 million round.
Amanda Cham, a vice president at Bullhound Capital, holds a similar view. For Cham, the lack of sufficient start-ups means there’s a “chicken-and-egg problem”.
“If you don’t have the companies, why would a foreign VC of that stage come to Singapore or this region to deploy? The reverse is also true. If there are fewer growth-stage or late-stage VCs in the region here than in the West, how would we be able to deploy capital meaningfully?” Cham says.
The playbook exists
To stay ahead of Singapore and the region’s corporate and economic trends, click here for Latest Section
This is not the first time Singapore has sought to supercharge its start-up and funding ecosystem. Back in July 2008, the National Research Foundation (NRF) launched the Early Stage Venture Fund (ESVF) scheme. The goal of the ESVF scheme was to help catalyse venture capital for high-tech start-ups based in Singapore.
As part of the scheme, NRF seeded venture capital funds to invest in early-stage start-ups by investing on a 1:1 matching basis. NRF’s investments were capped at up to $10 million per fund. Some notable recipients of NRF’s funding include Golden Gate Ventures, Jungle Ventures and Monk Hill’s Ventures.
James Tan, managing partner at Quest Ventures, says the same strategy can be used to bolster Singapore’s growth capital ecosystem. “The playbook is the same, pretty much worldwide. Seed them with some money,” says Tan, who is also the former chair for the Action Community for Entrepreneurship, a trade association that represents start-ups in Singapore.
“The challenge then is will they continue to stay here after they run their first or second fund?” Tan adds, noting that venture capital funds such as Golden Gate Ventures have shifted their focus to other markets such as the Middle East. “So after the initial fund, will we continue to have them, to continue to invest in the belief of this ecosystem?”
Another potential source of capital will be the family offices that have set up shop in Singapore, says Magnus Grimeland, founder and CEO of the early-stage venture capital firm Antler. According to the MAS, the number of single family offices (SFOs) who received tax incentives at the end of 2024 was more than 2,000, over five times larger than the 400 SFOs recorded at the end of 2020. “What percentage of them actually deploy capital for innovation, and what can we do to push that?”
“I’m not saying it needs to be a regulation or law or anything,” Grimeland says. “how can we deploy some of that capital into the productive part of the ecosystem and not only put it into real estate - which obviously are good assets to invest into but they are not productive assets.”
Going public not a priority for start-ups
To be sure, start-ups do not necessarily have to go public in order to achieve an exit for their investors. They can get acquired by another company instead. This is the preferred option for Junxu Lye, founder and CEO of Acme Technology, a Singapore-based fintech company. Before starting Acme Technology, Lye was a chief product officer and partner at the digital wealth advisory platform Endowus.
“There are only three exit options for homegrown start-ups here: stay private and run as a cash‑generating SME, list, or get acquired,” Lye says. “Going public is always a viable path, but one problem is that it takes too long. The biggest question about going public is: so what? Let’s say you list on the SGX and you’re public — what’s next after that? Going public is not an exit in and of itself, because you don’t automatically get the same benefits you might get from a good acquisition.”
“As a founder, if you get acquired, it gives you more money, you can give back to the ecosystem, you get to be part of a bigger platform,” Lye adds. “Going public doesn’t really give you those things, and you’re now under the gun and on your own even more because you’re a listed entity. So I’d say IPOs are generally overrated compared to a strong strategic acquisition, especially in this region.”
Benefits aside, it is much more onerous and costly for a start-up to pursue a public listing. Shao-Ning Huang is the founder of Angel Central, an angel investment network in Singapore. Before becoming an angel investor, Huang cofounded online job portal JobsCentral Group in 2000. JobsCentral was later acquired by US-based CareerBuilder in 2011.
While Huang has encouraged her portfolio companies to consider a public listing, she recognises that the cost of getting listed can put most founders off. “First of all, I need to make sure my auditors, my legal [team] and everything [are] all from the panel that SGX has appointed. That panel itself is not necessarily the Big Four, but it has to be on the panel and usually that means a lot higher costs.”
In addition, companies who are not accustomed to oversight might struggle with the transition toward becoming a public company. “If the founders or the companies were previously not so stringent in their governance, there is a requirement for heavy change. There are a lot of process changes and process changes [which] actually can be very painful.”
Unlocking Singapore’s deep tech investments
One potential bright spot within Singapore’s start-up scene would be the city-state’s deep tech start-ups. According to the NRF, deep tech start-ups here have drawn at least $1 billion of venture capital funding annually in the past five years. That makes up 20% of Singapore’s total venture capital investments.
Investors say that while Singapore has invested heavily into deep tech, more can be done in terms of commercialisation so as to unlock the value of these investments. Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jeremy Au says Singapore needs to ramp up its efforts to commercialise locally-developed intellectual property (IP) and technology.
“Singapore has already done the hard work of investing in deep tech to build a world-class R&D foundation. It’s just that all the valuable intellectual property is still stuck in the labs. Now by investing in start-ups for deep tech, we are building the engines to commercialise what the academics and engineers have already built,” says Au, who is the host of the BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech podcast.
“IP has a perishable shelf life and will be leapfrogged by other ecosystems. We have to aggressively turn great science into great companies. Translating that gap from the lab to the market of paying customers is the key to unlocking all of Singapore’s R&D investments over the past 30 years.”
Since 1991, Singapore has invested over $125 billion into its national research and innovation efforts over a series of eight five-year R&D masterplans. The first plan, the National Technology Plan 1995, ran from 1991 to 1995 and set aside $2 billion. The latest plan, Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2030 will run from 2026 to 2030 and has a budget of $37 billion.
Quest Ventures’ Tan says the hefty investment has not borne much fruit for Singapore in terms of public listings. “I really hope that the RIE plans can focus a lot more on commercialisation of IP as opposed to funding research that never gets commercialised and sits on a shelf. Centres for research are built but nothing gets commercialised.”
“This is a waste of our current opportunities that are open to us. So many people are looking at this space and there are plenty of investors interested in deep tech. Somehow our researchers, perhaps, are content with just researching and not commercialising,” Tan adds.
Growth capital not the only lever
In some cases, it’s not capital but managerial nous that’s missing for start-ups trying to take their business to the next level. Angel Central’s Huang recommends having incubators or accelerators that are able to provide the proper training and mentorship to founders trying to professionalise their businesses.
“We need to make sure the founders know that if you really want to grow the business but your structure is not there, you are going to have more fires to fight along the way,” she adds. “You will have constant turnover if you cannot retain people. If you are keeping people by offering them salary increments, that’s not a lasting way. Building culture and building the capabilities of the management is a more long-term solution.”
Growth capital aside, policy makers should not neglect early stage capital as well, says Au, the podcast host. In fact, the government does not always have to step in with its own capital if they are able to cultivate a vibrant community of angel investors.
Angel capital is one of the largest sources of capital for early stage start-ups in the US. Besides providing their own capital, angel investors are able to lend their expertise if they are investing in areas they are familiar with. This will vastly improve the odds of a start-up succeeding.
“Activating angel investors is a great opportunity to create a vibrant innovation ecosystem where the government doesn’t have to be the sole funder of the capital pipeline.” Au says, adding that tax incentives can increase angel investment funding in Singapore-based start-ups.
This is the same incentive mechanism being used to encourage charitable donations in Singapore today. Donors will enjoy a 250% tax deduction if they donate to charities that are approved Institutions of Public Character.
“Much like how tax incentives for donors empower our 'many helping hands' charitable sector to be responsive and diverse, similar levers for early-stage investing would catalyze the talent-spotting and mentorship required for us to remain an internationally competitive entrepreneurship hub,” Au says. “Silicon Valley’s high-velocity networks of angels and SPVs (special purpose vehicles) prove that private capital can absorb the initial high risks that ultimately catalyze job creation, accelerate productivity gains and stay ahead in the global innovation race.“
Antler’s Grimeland says the government may not even have to rely on capital to help grow local start-ups. Instead, they can step up themselves by becoming the first customers of companies that are being built in Singapore. For instance, government agencies can come together to issue a few problem statements that start-ups can use to develop products that they can then sell to the government.
“That’s what really creates momentum in the early days,” says Grimeland. “A product will never be perfect when it’s being launched and the only way to make a product perfect is to start working with your first few customers to make it perfect. Once you make it work for the first few customers, you can make it work for the next few customers and scale it all the way abroad.
