Singapore, 10 April 2026: Day two of GITEX AI ASIA 2026 turned the spotlight on the global startups, scientists, investors, and frontier technologies riding Southeast Asia’s next big inflection point. The region is moving beyond a foundational digital economy into a more intelligent AI future, with AI investment in Southeast Asia projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 25% and surpass US$ 110 billion by 2028. Amid the AI surge, global tech firms, venture capitalists, and startup ecosystems are rallying towards expanding in the region.
This momentum was evident at GITEX AI ASIA and its startup showcase, North Star Asia, presented by GITEX, the world’s largest tech and AI startup events network. More than 300 startups from over 50 countries met investors managing upwards of US$350 billion in assets, creating one of the region’s more concentrated areas this year for startup discovery, deep-tech matchmaking and commercial scrutiny. Across the show floor and the conference programme, the conversations sharpened around the technologies and business models best placed to scale in an AI economy shaped by regulation, industrial urgency, critical energy, and the race to turn research into revenue.
North Star Asia draws a new geography of startup scale
Alongside tech pavilions from Hong Kong, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Pakistan, and South Korea, new first-time country pavilions from Belgium and the Philippines reflected not only broader participation, but also the increasingly cross-border scale of the innovation economy converging at North Star Asia.
Hub.Brussels brought companies operating at the intersection of AI, enterprise software and regulated industries. Among them, Artech focused on digital product passports, AI-based compliance, secure data exchange and regulatory knowledge modelling aligned with European frameworks – precisely the kind of infrastructure likely to shape new frontiers of collaboration and transparency. Another Belgian company, AW Labs, applied intelligent sensing and analytics to indoor air quality, bringing scientific precision to airborne-risk management.
From the Philippines, TAPI introduced startups spanning AgriTech, Smart Cities, Education and SaaS. Cerebro unified school operating systems, from enrolment and attendance to grading and reporting, while GreenVisionsPh featured precision and sustainable farming tools designed to restore soil health and improve productivity.
Industry 5.0 brings safety, sustainability and speed into sharper focus
As AI systems begin to make decisions, amplify human productivity, and sit deeper inside national and industrial ecosystems, the central question is no longer how quickly organisations can deploy them, but how intelligently they can govern them. This dilemma was addressed in one of the most closely watched sessions where Demetris Skourides, Chief Scientist for Research, Innovation & Technology, Republic of Cyprus, examined the governance angle of Industry 5.0: how companies keep checks and balances as intelligent systems become deeply embedded in everyday life.
Demetris said, “Sovereign AI is about far more than just running a model in your own country. It’s about whether you control the data, the decisions, and the algorithms that define those decisions. Too often we treat AI as just the application layer and forget the full stack beneath it – the hardware, models, engineering, and data science. That blind spot can create serious systemic risks, from bias in training data to over–reliance on specific infrastructure and vendors.”
Another urgent theme was the environmental footprint of industry itself. With manufacturing alone accounting for one-fifth of global emissions and more than 54% of global energy use, the push towards greener production is fast becoming a matter of competitiveness.
At GITEX AI ASIA, Dr. Arvind Bodhankar, Chief Sustainability Officer at Arcelor Mittal Nippon Steel – the world’s second largest steel company by market capitalisation – set out how AI, robotics and next-gen materials are pivotal to building greener, circular factories. Dr. Arvind shared: “We have adopted a three‑pronged approach: reduce, recycle and repurpose, so that materials are fed back into the steel–making process or used as substitutes in cement and road–building – exactly the kind of circular thinking that defines Industry 5.0, where the human angle and sustainability are embedded into the future of manufacturing.”
Investors push founders beyond vision to business resilience
Investors from more than 30 countries arrived not simply to scout the next generation of companies, but to offer a clearer reading of an evolving funding climate. A key theme running through these discussions was the twin challenge of commercialisation and persistent growth.
Addressing the realities of capital in a shifting macro environment, Saemin Ahn, Managing Partner at Rakuten Capital, one of the world’s leading corporate venture capital firms, shared the lessons of past investment cycles and the attributes that distinguish the next big startup from the rest. His remarks suggested that capital is concentrating around startups in durable themes such as AI and infrastructure, particularly those solving mission-critical problems for customers and proving themselves as indispensable business enablers, not just side experiments.
In another session, Yinghui Kuang, Partner of Granite Asia, a leading global multi-asset investment platform and VC behind 127 unicorns, turned to the more difficult end of the startup spectrum: commercialising hard science. He shared: “One pragmatic path is to get commercial traction and scale first, then keep building on the technology. Early-stage investing is hard because you often do not have product validation, so you are really backing the team. In the last 12 months alone, we have looked at more than 100 humanoid startups, and in many cases, we only write the cheque after knowing a company for three to five years and seeing how it executes.”
Supernova Challenge rewards startups ready to build at market speed
Across rounds of pitching, debate and scrutiny at North Star Asia’s Supernova Challenge, the competition tested not only the technical merit of startups, but their ability to communicate commercial clarity, market fit, and scalability under pressure.
From a competitive field of high-potential founders, Ailytics was crowned Supernova Champion, for its groundbreaking workplace safety platform, which can convert standard CCTV into AI-powered monitoring tools. The Singaporean-based winner received SG$30,000 in equity-free prize money.
Tan Wei Zhuang (Lenard), CEO at Ailytics, commented on the win and participation, “We were very happy to see GITEX come to Singapore last year, and we signed up this year almost immediately after the 2025 edition. The quality of footfall has been excellent. From a tech campus perspective, the ROI has been extremely strong at GITEX AI ASIA Singapore, and we look forward to continuing our support in the years ahead.”
Japan’s health-tech pioneer, Lifescapes, secured the first runner-up prize of SG$20,000, while South Korea’s talent upskilling and hiring platform, Codespresso, took second runner-up, receiving SG$10,000.
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About GITEX AI ASIA
GITEX AI ASIA, Asia’s largest and most global tech, startup, and digital investments event, takes place at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore, from April 9-10, 2026. Powered by the world’s largest tech and AI show, GITEX GLOBAL, it serves as a global hub for innovation and collaboration, featuring dedicated industry verticals covering artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cybersecurity, data centres, digital health and biotech, industry 4.0-5.0, and deep tech. The 2026 edition brings together over 550 global technology enterprises and startups, 250+ influential investors, 175+ speakers, with participation from more than 110 countries across the exhibition and conferences.
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Sean Muir, PR Director, GITEX AI ASIA | [email protected]
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