Together with Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, Khazanah, Antler has invested US$5.1 million ($6.86 million) in pre-seed deals in 37 verticalised AI start-ups this January — which span across 19 sectors, including fintech and health tech.
A company like OpenAI that founded ChatGPT will never spawn out of Singapore, due to the lack of artificial intelligence (AI) talent and capital, says venture capital (VC) firm Antler’s managing partner for Asia, Jussi Salovaara.
Instead, the early-stage VC investor is taking a bet on a “second wave” of AI start-ups across Southeast Asia, also known as verticalised AI companies. This refers to companies that take existing broad-based foundational AI models built by horizontal AI companies, and craft industry- and case-specific solutions.
