Antler Pumps USD 7.4M into Southeast Asian Startups in H1 2025

Antler invested USD 7.4 million in Southeast Asian startups in the first half of 2025, including USD 2.8 million in seven companies through its new Singapore-based AI Disrupt residency. The deployment spans Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia, which indicates Antler's efforts to support early-stage innovation amid a sharp regional funding drop.

All AI Disrupt participants Iris, Nugen, IndustrialMind.ai, Lambdai Space, Anamaya AI, AppSecAI, and 5.Y (GLUCOSE) received a grant of USD 400,000 along with more than USD 650,000 in AI-specific cloud, infrastructure, and tooling credits. Their offerings range from workflow automation through AI agents, manufacturing intelligence, radar imaging, corporate business travel optimisation, application security, and personalised customer experience.

Key highlights:

USD 7.4M invested in Southeast Asian startups, including US 2.8M for 7 AI Disrupt participants.
Startups receive USD 400K funding each and USD 650K in AI resources to accelerate growth.
Antler steps up support amid 68 percent drop in seed funding across the region.

Antler Partner Winnie Khoo added, "AI startups are going 10x quicker than they were two years ago, and AI Disrupt is designed specifically for founders with market-validated products to go and grow so much quicker. AI founders don't wait. Going hard and fast is a moat founders can build in the AI era."

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In the face of a 68 percent year-over-year decrease in seed funding and a 53 percent decline in early-stage investments throughout Southeast Asia, Antler is writing bigger first checks and offering specialized resources.

“The funding environment today requires founders to be more acute than ever in approach and execution. As soon as a team can show us a solid use case for their tech and global scaling ambitions, we will support them wholeheartedly." said Jussi Salovaara, Co-founder and Managing Partner Asia at Antler.