By realmnova 
According to the industry annual reports issued earlier, private fundraising in the Internet economy in South-East Asia totalled $7.7 billion in the 12 months up to June 2025, an increase of 15 per cent over the same period of the previous year, but at a slower rate than the overall growth rate of 25 per cent of the global private equity venture.
The report, which was published jointly by Google, the Patrati Holdings in Singapore and Benn, states that the current scale of financing is still about 70 per cent below its historical peak of $27 billion in 2021. For the first time this year, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar were included in the study, which together with Indonesia, Thailand, Viet Nam, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, previously covered, constituted a complete analytical sample. According to the study: “Investments are continuing to be concentrated in late rotations. The share of seed-to-B rounds of financing has declined over the past 12 months from about 30 per cent to about 20 per cent.” Despite the chilling tide of capital, a region with nearly 700 million people, with a young population structure, high penetration of smartphones, rapid urbanization and the expansion of the middle class as the fastest growing global Internet market, is still showing dynamism in the area of artificial intelligence.
In the first half of 2025, AI-related investments accounted for 32 per cent of total private fundraising in South-East Asia, up from 30 per cent in the second half of 2024. Data as of June indicate that more than 680 family-intellectual start-ups in the region received over $2.3 billion in financing, of which over 495 would be based in Singapore. At the same time, the report reveals the boom in data centre construction. If all planned projects are on track, the total data centre capacity in South-East Asia will expand to 2.8 times the current level, well above the average of 2.2 times the rate of increase in Asia and the Pacific. In Malaysia, for example, the planned new capacity of 2415 MW represents more than half of the total additional regional capacity (4620 MW) and, with low land power costs and a strong local AI demand, has attracted the deployment of microsoft, Amazon, Google, and telecommunication, Hua, and Ali Baba.
In January this year, TikTok announced the launch of data hosting services in Thailand worth nearly $4 billion, and Google and Amazon plans to invest $1 billion and $5 billion, respectively, in the country, further confirming the warming trend in infrastructure investment.