Week of the rising chip

Stefanie, Tech in AsiaOct 31, 2026

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Happy Halloween!

It sure seems like a spooky time, and not necessarily in a fun way. As I’m writing this, Binance has been hacked, and Polymarket has halted trading due to a security breach. Then there was the whole PHP shebang last week. Yikes.

What’s a lot less spooky is this week’s funding numbers. We’ve crossed the billion-dollar mark in funding raised across the ecosystem, and FuriosaAI, a chip company from South Korea, sits at the top of the list.

Chipmakers are getting a lot of attention because, well, they underpin everything we do. You can’t have AI without semiconductors. As the demand for compute increases, we’ll need to find ways to make the hardware we need more effectively, and hopefully, affordably.

One thing’s for sure: The chips aren’t down for the semiconductor sector.

You can find all other important investment deals from the last few days in our weekly funding news wrap-up.

Let’s dive into the biggest deals and M&As that have recently taken place.

— Stefanie

THE BIGGEST DEALS BY COUNTRY

🇰🇷 FuriosaAI is an AI chip startup from South Korea. It has raised US$620 million in series D funding from Cisco Investments, DSC Investment, Hanwha Asset Management, Infinitum, Intellectual Discovery, Jericho Capital, KDB Bank, Kakao Investment, Korea Eximbank, Korea Investment Partners, MJM Investments, Naver, Naver Ventures, National Growth Fund, NeoFort Holding, Nextrans, QUDA Capital Partners, Quantum Ventures Korea, UAMCO, and Worldline Capital.

🇨🇳 NeuroXess, a China-based life science company specializing in brain-computer interface technologies, has bagged US$104 million in a series B round. Investors included China Fortune-Tech Capital, CoStone Capital, Huafu Securities, IDG Capital, Jiangxi Financial Holdings, SDIC Juli, Shanda Capital, Shanghai Junxi Capital, Shenzhen Capital Group, Triwise Capital, Xichen Capital, ZWC Partners, and Zhongping Capital.

🇮🇱 Mave reinvents security operations for the modern enterprise. Headquartered in Israel, which is located in West Asia, it has raised US$34 million in series A funding from Lumir Growth Partners and Red Dot Capital Partners.

🇯🇵 Based in Japan, Knowledge Work is a company focused on developing sales enablement solutions. It has bagged US$30.72 million in debt financing from Fukuoka Bank, MUFG Bank, Mizuho Bank, Shizuoka Bank, Shoko Chukin Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.

🇦🇺 MP Space makes power systems for spacecraft. Hailing from Australia, it has raised US$16 million in seed funding from Blackbird, Seraphim Capital, Speedinvest, and Systemiq Capital.

Here’s the complete list of this week’s funding chart: 74 deals worth over US$1.1 billion.

M&A

🇮🇱 Classiq Technologies, a quantum software engineering platform from Israel, has been acquired by chipmaker Intel for an undisclosed sum.

STARTUPS THAT ARE RAISING FUNDS

Fundraising is hard. To make things slightly easier, we’ve compiled this list of fundraising startups for our subscribers. Do you run a startup that’s raising at the moment or know someone who does? Sign your company up for listing here.

Here’s a preview of the startups:

🇸🇬 This Singapore startup offers an AI-powered personal health manager.

🇮🇳 Hailing from India, this company develops high-performance electric motorcycles for the mass commuter segment.

🇯🇵 This Japanese startup uses tech to digitize professional cooking processes so kitchens can reproduce chefs’ techniques consistently.

You can find the full list of fundraising startups in Asia over here.

STARTUP IN THE SPOTLIGHT

This startup turns idle data center batteries into revenue

Stéphane Leyo (left) and Gabriel Schiano, co-founders of Amplicity. / Photo credit: Amplicity

Singapore’s data centers hold an estimated 160 megawatt-hours of backup batteries that almost never get used. Amplicity wants to turn that into revenue.

The gap: Data centers and factories keep large backup battery systems fully charged for rare outages, and operators avoid touching them for fear of causing one. In the city-state, that idle capacity sits alongside rising power bills.
The fix: Amplicity’s software draws on a site’s spare battery capacity to cut power bills: charging when electricity is cheap, discharging during price spikes, and earning revenue from the grid. On-site controllers enforce backup reserve limits locally, so emergency cover isn’t compromised.
The pitch: The startup keeps roughly 50% of the net value it generates and bills operators monthly based on realized savings and market revenue. In March, it raised a US$1.01 million seed round from backers including Loyal VC and Pacific Channel.

This article is part of our Startup Spotlight series. To get your startup or portco covered, fill out this survey.

EXCLUSIVE LISTICLES

Lists of most active investors in the region

List of top-funded startups in Asia

THOUGHTFUL READS

1️⃣ Art and VC

Meet Artery, a non-profit arts accelerator positioning itself as “Y Combinator for artists.” It aims to help create sustainable careers and bridge the funding gap for artists in Singapore, with the five-year Artist Accelerator Programme at the core of its work. Read more about it on The Peak.

2️⃣ The security opportunity

AI is rewriting the rules of cybersecurity, with recent incidents – like OpenAI’s agents breaking into Hugging Face and last week’s PHP vulnerability panic – highlighting that to keep pace, new solutions and services need to emerge. This piece from the Andreessen Horowitz blog unpacks this further and explores some of the key areas businesses and investors are watching.

3️⃣ In loving memory

2026 has been touted as the year biotech investment came back to life. Still, several companies in the space have had to call it quits this year. This piece from Fierce Biotech looks at which biotech startups have shuttered their doors and unpacks the reasons why.

4️⃣ MBAs all around

This piece from Poets&Quants investigated where AI VCs went to school – and found out that 38 of the top 100 VCs have MBAs, mostly from Harvard and Stanford. Does this mean anything? Probably not, but it’s interesting data to look at.

5️⃣ What’s next for AI?

In this episode of the Masters of Scale podcast, host Reid Hoffman sits down with OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar. The conversation covers a variety of topics, from building trust to how the AI giant balances risk and mission.

Today’s edition was written by Stefanie Yeo. It’s edited by Mina Deocareza.

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