SEA of Startups

🎙EP4: Funding’s Up, Startups Down? Southeast Asia’s Barbell Economy in 2025

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Episode notes

🎧 Episode 4A: Funding’s Up, Startups Down? Southeast Asia’s Barbell Economy in 2025

Welcome to Part 1 of our two-part deep dive on the state of startup funding in Southeast Asia.One month into the SEA of Startups podcast, we’re marking the milestone with a special two-parter that cuts through the noise — and goes straight to where the money’s moving (or not moving).

In this episode, we unpack the hard numbers behind Southeast Asia’s $2B funding snapshot for H1 2025 — and what it reveals about the barbell effect:→ Fat late-stage rounds.→ Starved early-stage pipeline.→ Not much in between.

Spoiler: If you’re raising a seed round, this might explain a few things.

🧠 What We Cover:

The 80% drop in seed deals since 2022

Why Singapore accounted for 92% of all VC funding

Flight-to-quality behavior: big checks only for proven bets

Why the unicorn drought may signal a longer-term innovation gap

What this barbell dynamic means for the future of the SEA ecosystem

🔍 Key Stats:

$2B total raised in H1 2025

56 seed-stage deals (vs. 200 in H1 2024, 245 in H2 2022)

Only 1 unicorn minted: Sygnum Bank (Singapore)

10 late-stage deals accounted for $1.4B — avg. $140M per deal

92% of all funding routed through Singapore entities

🎧 Listen now on your favorite platform:Spotify | YouTube | Substack | Apple Podcasts

🛎️ Stay tuned for Part 2 — where we dig into Jakarta’s $2.3B AI data center, Malaysia’s startup policy reboot, and the infrastructure tailwinds shaping what comes next.

📌 Disclaimer: Everything discussed reflects personal perspectives only. This is not financial advice, and we’re not speaking on behalf of any organization.

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