THREE out of every four smartwatches in the world run on chips made by Ambiq, an NYSE-listed company that recently made its trading debut on the Singapore Exchange.
Ambiq specialises in semiconductor solutions for battery-powered devices in the wearables, healthcare and Internet-of-Things space.
Set up in 2010 at the University of Michigan, the company went public in 2025. It is now valued at over US$1.5 billion (S$1.9 billion) and has shipped over 300 million devices globally to date.
Singapore has featured in Ambiq’s growth journey since 2018, when EDBI (now part of SG Growth Capital) participated in the company’s Series E funding round, providing capital and support to build its high-value engineering, product development and innovation capabilities. In 2021, Ambiq established its Asia headquarters in Singapore, followed by a Technology Design Centre a year later.
Earlier this year, with EDB’s support, it announced a new Singapore office and Centre of Excellence dedicated to developing next-generation edge AI technologies for global markets.
“Singapore is a crucial hub for Ambiq’s advanced R&D and engineering efforts,” says Ambiq CEO Fumihide Esaka.
“Singapore’s strong talent base, robust research ecosystem, and close collaboration across industry and academia make it an ideal location for advancing our most complex edge AI technologies.”
Ambiq is the type of high-growth venture EDB wants to anchor in Singapore, with the potential to grow into a globally significant business.
This strategy refreshes EDB’s investment promotion approach. While it continues to attract headquarters, advanced manufacturing and innovation activities by leading companies, it is hunting for opportunities to bring in top founders to build ventures that will grow cutting-edge and frontier capabilities from Singapore.
Growing from a meaningful base
Singapore already has a meaningful base to build on, with 31 of South-east Asia’s 55 unicorns having been built from Singapore, including Carousell, Razer, and Nium, all of which have expanded globally.
“We intend to build on that momentum,” says executive vice-president Choo Heng Tong, adding that EDB is working with leading venture capital and private equity firms to identify, anchor and support high-growth companies.
EDB’s new approach has yielded early results. Its Global Founder Programme (GFP) – launched in April 2025 – has helped close to 80 experienced serial founders grow more than 45 new ventures, over half in AI and deep tech. As of July, these ventures have garnered investor interest and collectively raised more than US$2 billion in venture capital funding.
There have also been several companies identified as potential industry leaders that have sunk roots in Singapore, such as Sierra.
Founded by former Salesforce co-CEO and current OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor, as well as former Google executive Clay Bavor, Sierra works with many of the world’s biggest brands to build AI agents that deliver better customer experiences and drive revenue.
The company established its regional headquarters in Singapore in late 2025 to support its rapidly growing South-east Asian customer base. It has partnered with local players like Singtel, going live in less than 10 weeks with meaningful business results, while building an AI agent development team here that works closely with its US R&D counterparts to tailor products for regional needs.
“Singapore is home to incredible talent, both in technology and the multicultural expertise that’s so important as we build Sierra across South-east Asia,” says Bavor, co-founder of Sierra. “Having people on the team who understand the local markets and nuances helps us build better products and ultimately be better partners for our customers.”
A launchpad for global ambition
Singapore’s pitch to founders has focused on its value as a trusted hub, access to a growing region, strong global connectivity, talent pool and innovation ecosystem.
Ankur Singla, who previously built and scaled enterprise infrastructure companies, says this is why he chose Singapore to start Exaforce, an agentic cybersecurity company that uses AI to detect, investigate and respond to cyber threats autonomously.
Through EDB’s GFP, Exaforce is expanding its AI research and engineering presence in Singapore to develop the next generation of intelligent cybersecurity agents.
Singla says, “Our ambition is for Singapore to be our regional R&D centre, not a satellite sales office. A team that owns foundational problems in two areas: our real-time knowledge graph, our agentic software, and threat research. Over the next three to five years, we plan to grow the team in R&D, with the endgame being security operations where AI handles the volume and humans handle the judgement.”
Noah Pepper, a former Stripe senior executive, founded Multiplier Holdings in Singapore, which acquires tax, accounting and other professional services firms and transforms their operations with AI.
At Stripe, Pepper led the company’s regional expansion across Asia and experienced firsthand the ease of building and scaling a global product from Singapore.
This led him to double down on Singapore as “a major node in the global network” that Multiplier Holdings is building – a base to access talent, capital and customers across Asia and beyond.
As part of Singapore’s Economic Strategy Review – the long-term blueprint for the country to stay globally competitive – a Committee on Entrepreneurship engaged founders, venture capitalists and ecosystem players to identify gaps in capital, regulation, talent and infrastructure, and develop recommendations to address them.
“EDB is now turning that work into action,” says Choo. It has brought in partners who can support high-potential founders and fast-growing startups, such as Sante Accel Singapore, which works with research institutions here to help build and scale deep-tech ventures.
More recently, EDB and Enterprise Singapore supported the launch of Endeavor’s Global Hub here, connecting Singapore-based entrepreneurs to its global network of founders, investors and talent to help them scale and expand. Endeavor has supported Singapore-based companies including Carousell, Carro and ShopBack.
Says Choo: “Singapore has deliberately built a foundation that attracts global business activity. We continue to partner companies to capture growth that also benefits our local companies and workforce. We look forward to creating the future with founders and firms who want to build from Singapore, for the world.”
