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Singapore’s tech start-up scene has grown in recent years, and the city-state ranked seventh in the latest Global Innovation Index 2022.

Ore Huiying | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Global venture dollars may have dropped in 2022, but Singapore’s government-owned tech investment firm is optimistic about 2023.

“2023 is probably going to be a pretty decent year for venture capital in Singapore,” Hsien-Hui Tong, executive director of investments at SGInnovate, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” Wednesday.

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Unlike global markets more generally, the venture capital scene in Singapore is “still very active,” Tong said. That’s because companies in the country tend be at the earlier, nascent stages of development, and “in the seed and Series A stages, there’s still lots of liquidity. There’s lots of capital there,” he added.

Global markets, on the other hand, tend to be at the “more mature” stages of Series B and C, where venture capital has “dried up a little bit.”

A seed funding round — also known as the initial investment — is followed by various rounds, known as Series A, B, C and so on.

Venture funding for the first nine months of 2022 totaled $369 billion, down 25% year on year, according to Crunchbase.

2023 may be a 'decent' year for Singapore venture capital: Government-owned tech organization

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“2022 has been a good year for us, quite unlike some other investment categories. It was a good year for emerging tech startups where a lot of breakthroughs have happened,” Tong said.

For example, Singapore-headquartered biotech company MiRXES launched a “T10 ultra-high throughput sequencing platform” — which it says would help with the early detection of diseases and precision medicine — in Asia-Pacific last month.

And clean-tech company SunGreenH2, which raised $2 million led by SGInnovate in August, is conducting trials of its materials with global electrolyzer manufacturers.

Tong added that Singapore has been “sheltered from a lot of the effects” of global macro economic headwinds. As a result, Singapore has been able to “build up its infrastructure probably a little bit better.”

He also named energy as a sector to watch in 2023 in light of breakthroughs in nuclear fusion and hydrogen.

“Quantum technology is another area where I think there are going to be some significant announcements and breakthroughs,” he added.

There are 'big opportunities' in China's tech sector: VC partner

Correction: This report has been updated to accurately reflect global venture funding for the first nine months of 2022. An earlier version misstated the figure.

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Chinese tech giant Tencent’s quarterly revenue jumps 15% on AI investments, gaming unit boost

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Chinese tech giant Tencent's quarterly revenue jumps 15% on AI investments, gaming unit boost

The Tencent logo is displayed on the exterior of a building at the company’s headquarters, with a surveillance camera visible in the foreground, on November 30, 2024, in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China. 

Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Tencent on Wednesday reported a 15% jump in second-quarter revenue as a strong performance in its gaming unit and AI investments boosted growth.

Here’s how Tencent did in the first quarter of 2025:

  • Revenue: 184.504 billion Chinese yuan ($25.7 billion), compared to 161.117 billion Chinese yuan in the same period last year
  • Operating profit: 63.052 billion yuan, versus 57.313 billion yuan last year

Domestic games revenue, which accounts for sales from China, rose 17% year-on-year to 40.4 billion yuan thanks to the performance of the company’s newly-released “Delta Force” game and evergreen titles such as “Honor of Kings,” “VALORANT” and “Peacekeeper Elite.”

Revenue from its international gaming business totaled 18.8 billion yuan, a 35% year-on-year increase driven by games such as “PUBG Mobile,” and the recently-released “Dune: Awakening.”

Meanwhile, Tencent said that AI-driven improvements to the company’s advertising platform and Weixin transaction ecosystem helped boost marketing services revenue by 20% in the quarter to 35.8 billion yuan.

“During the second quarter of 2025, we delivered double-digit revenue and non-IFRS operating profit growth on a year-on-year basis, as we invested in, and also benefitted from, utilising AI,” said Tencent CEO Ma Huateng.

Tencent said its capital expenditures surged 119% to 19.1 billion yuan in the second quarter, as the tech giant invested in AI upgrades for advertising, its gaming business and social media service Weixin.

The Shenzhen-headquartered company’s music unit posted better-than-expected results thanks to growth in strong growth from subscription and non-subscription online music revenue, according to Citi’s Alicia Yap. The firm said Tencent Music had 124 million music subscribers, up slightly from 123 million subscribers noted in Tencent’s first-quarter report.

Looking ahead to the second half of the year, Tencent Music “continues to drive high-quality growth in subscription revenues, growth momentum from fans economy, concert and ad revs will support faster-than-previously expected full year growth,” Yap said in a note.

Tencent, like other cloud computing firms, has put a higher focus on selling artificial intelligence tools as a way to boost revenue and differentiate its offerings from those of its rivals.

Earlier this summer, Tencent revealed it is looking to bring its cloud computing capabilities to Europe, pitching it against U.S. hyperscalers AmazonMicrosoft and Alphabet-owned Google, which collectively make up 70% share of Europe’s cloud market.

“We are striving to bring further benefits of AI to consumers and enterprises through powering more use cases within Weixin, driving usage of our AI native app Yuanbao, and upgrading the capabilities of our HunYuan foundation models,” Huateng said in the Wednesday earnings release.

— CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.

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Circle shares fall after stablecoin issuer says it will offer 10 million shares

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Circle shares fall after stablecoin issuer says it will offer 10 million shares

Circle Internet Group Initial Public Offering at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025.

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Circle Internet Group stock tumbled more than 5% in extended trading Tuesday after it said it would offer 10 million Class A shares to the public.

Of the total stock being offered, 2 million shares will be offered by Circle. The remaining 8 million shares will be sold by stockholders.

The stablecoin issuer’s shares have soared more than 450% since it went public on June 5.

As part of the offering, Circle is offering its underwriters a 30-day option to buy an additional 1.5 million shares.

Circle shares closed Tuesday up 1.3% after the company reporting its first quarterly results as a publicly traded company. While charges tied to its IPO weighed on its second-quarter results and led to a loss of $4.48 per share, it saw revenue rise 53% on the back of strong stablecoin growth.

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CoreWeave shares drop even as revenue tops estimates

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CoreWeave shares drop even as revenue tops estimates

Mike Intrator, co-founder and CEO of CoreWeave, speaks at the Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images

CoreWeave shares fell about 6% in extended trading on Tuesday even as the provider of artificial intelligence infrastructure beat estimates for second-quarter revenue

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: Loss of 21 cents
  • Revenue: $1.21 billion vs. $1.08 billion expected

Revenue more than tripled from $395.4 million a year earlier, CoreWeave said in a statement. The company registered a $290.5 million net loss, compared with a $323 million loss in second quarter of 2024. CoreWeave’s earnings per share figure wasn’t immediately comparable with estimates from LSEG.

CoreWeave’s operating margin shrank to 2% from 20% a year ago due primarily to $145 million in stock-based compensation costs. This is CoreWeave’s second quarter of full financial results as a public company following its IPO in March.

CoreWeave pointed to an expansion in business with OpenAI, a major client and investor. Also during the quarter, CoreWeave acquired Weights and Biases, a startup with software for monitoring AI models, for $1.4 billion.

In May, management touted 420% revenue growth, alongside widening losses and nearly $9 billion in debt. The stock still doubled anyway over the course of the next month.

CoreWeave shares became available on Nasdaq at the end of the first quarter, after the company sold 37.5 shares at $40 each, yielding $1.5 billion in proceeds. As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was trading at $148.75 for a market cap of over $72 billion.

A CoreWeave data center project with up to 250 megawatts of capacity is set to be delivered in 2026, the company said in the statement.

Executives will discuss the results and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

WATCH: Citi’s Tyler Radke’s bullish call on CoreWeave, upgraded to buy

Citi's Tyler Radke's bullish call on CoreWeave, upgraded to buy

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