Spain’s triumph over Argentina in the FIFA World Cup final early this week was the victory of method and precision over spectacle.
For much of the tournament, the spotlight was on the big stars—Kylian Mbappe, Lionel Messi, Erling Haaland. Yet the World Cup winner was decided not by the star players, but by two substitutes. A team game like football often has a way of rewarding not individual brilliance but collective effort and tactical play.
The triumph of the Spaniards’ methodical approach is an apt metaphor for the world of private capital, too. Investors must bear in mind that value does not always come from the loudest headlines or the flashiest assets. The biggest returns often lie beneath the spectacle—patient capital allocation, disciplined execution, and businesses with durable fundamentals.
This philosophy of ignoring the star narrative and trusting fundamentals came to mind when reading my colleagues Michelle Teo and Pimfha Chan’s interview with Nikhil Srivastava, partner and co-head of private equity at PAG.
Years before AI upended the landscape, the pan-Asian asset manager resisted the urge to rush into the fashionable IT & IT services sector. “We made zero investments [in IT], not because we were smart enough to predict AI, but simply because valuations didn’t make sense,” said Srivastava.
That same discipline is becoming increasingly important in AI investing, too, as the novelty premium appears to fade. In an analysis, our Manila correspondent Katrina Bianca Cuaresma wrote that the more ubiquitous AI becomes, its presence alone becomes less valuable. While AI still dominates startup fundraising pitches, investors are increasingly reluctant to pay simply for the label. Read the analysis to find out what investors asked AI startup founders who recently raised capital during their due diligence.
Also this week, in a dramatic example of the dangers posed by advanced AI models, OpenAI revealed that one of its models broke out of its digitally enclosed laboratory (the sandbox), accessed the open web, and hacked, by itself, the AI dataset platform Hugging Face. Fully AI-enabled rogue attacks such as this are expected to be more commonplace as models become more capable, OpenAI said. Hugging Face said it had turned to Zhipu AI’s open-source GLM-5.2 model to analyse data from the hack.
Meanwhile, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC is extending its AI-related investment focus beyond semiconductor firms and AI developers toward companies that can leverage the technology to maximise corporate value.
While the headlines celebrate the star players, the real insights come from understanding how the game was won. Come September, we will host our flagship Asia PE-VC Summit in Singapore for engaging conversations that matter. Register now.
Analyses
Our analyses this week included two pieces on Southeast Asia’s IPO market, which has slowed down amid weak valuations and a turbulent macroeconomic backdrop.
In H1, Bursa Malaysia hosted 36 of Southeast Asia’s 47 IPOs and accounted for almost half of the capital raised—about $1.34 billion of the total $3.07 billion. But the larger achievement was Bursa Malaysia’s ability to keep bringing much smaller businesses to market while neighbouring exchanges struggled to replenish their pipelines.
The Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) witnessed only one IPO in H1. Yet, the IDX’s partnership with Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) is gaining traction as a growing number of listed companies seek to tap the city’s resurgent capital market.
In another analysis, we looked at how Indonesia’s buy now, pay later market is entering a new phase, with the regulators introducing a new framework that formally separates BNPL from P2P lending to ensure credit discipline.
This week’s edition of our private equity newsletter Beyond the Buyout examined the Hong Kong Investment Corporation’s (HKIC) latest performance numbers. The true test over the next 18-24 months is not whether it can mark up growth- and mature-stage deals, which account for a combined 91% of its invested capital, but whether the public markets can absorb 200-plus policy-aligned deep tech bets at a premium over their current valuations.
A report
After two consecutive years of decline, the number of Tech M&A transactions in Southeast Asia rose in 2025, according to our latest report SE Asia Tech M&A Review: 2026. The region recorded 129 transactions, up 7.5% from 2024, as foreign acquirers, or those based outside the target company’s home market, completed 87 transactions, representing 67.4% of total deal volume. Foreign acquisitions rose 26.1%, while domestic activity fell 17.6% to its lowest annual total—reflecting not only stronger foreign interest, but also weaker buying capacity among local companies.
LP-GP news
Ritesh Chandra, managing partner of Avendus Future Leaders Fund spoke to us this week about the fund’s plans to ramp up investments from its $188m third PE fund—expected to reach its final close by the end of this month—as a reset in valuations creates fresh opportunities. Chandra said the PE firm stayed on the sidelines for much of the first half as valuations remained elevated amid heightened market volatility.
Shanghai-headquartered venture capital firm BA Capital has achieved the final close of its second flagship US dollar fund at $225 million, well above the initial target of $150 million. BA Capital is best known for its early-stage bets on companies like the Hong Kong-listed toy maker Pop Mart and luxury jewellery brand Laopu Gold.
Hong Kong-based private equity firm ZQ Capital has closed its first blind-pool flagship fund at $300 million to invest in the Asian growth of Western companies. The new fund targets control buyouts of late-stage, small- to mid-cap companies in developed markets with strong underlying fundamentals but limited Asian presence.
Startup funding and corporate news
Singapore’s GIC is actively seeking opportunities in climate adaptation and resilience businesses, even as it continues to invest in the energy transition. The wealth fund also reported this week that it has recorded an annualised real return of 3.4% for the 20-year period that ended on March 31, 2026. The inflation-adjusted return is the lowest since 2020.
Singapore-based venture capital fund Monk’s Hill Ventures is restructuring its leadership and operations as it shifts its investment focus towards growth-stage companies. It has shut its Indonesia office as part of the exercise.
Indonesia-listed Bukalapak has fully deployed the $1.2 billion net proceeds from its landmark 2021 IPO, marking the end of a nearly five-year capital deployment cycle and shifting investor attention to whether the investments can deliver sustainable returns. The proceeds were primarily allocated to working capital for Bukalapak and its subsidiaries, as well as business growth and expansion initiatives.
An Indonesian appeals court has reduced the prison sentences handed to former eFishery executives. The Bandung High Court sentenced eFishery co-founder and former CEO Gibran Huzaifah to six years’ imprisonment, reducing an earlier nine-year prison sentence handed down by the Bandung District Court in April. Meanwhile, Malaysia’s public pension fund KWAP said it is seeking to recover its roughly $40 million investment in eFishery, where KWAP held a 2.51% minority stake.
KKR-backed Taylor’s Education Group has invested in Vietnam’s Sentia School, betting that rising incomes, strong economic growth and growing private equity interest in the sector will create opportunities for more acquisitions.
Indonesia-based logistics startup Kargo Technologies has raised up to $7 million in bridge financing to expand its EV-as-a-service business. The company has previously been backed by AC Ventures, Silicon Valley-based Tenaya Capital, Cyprus-based SiteGround Capital, Peak XV Partners, Intudo Ventures, AppWorks, and Dubai-based Mawja Group.
Southeast Asian tech giant Grab has made a strategic investment in Vietnam-based EV charging platform EBOOST, deepening an existing partnership as it seeks to accelerate EV adoption among its driver-partners.
India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) invested in NU Hospitals as the Bengaluru-based specialty healthcare chain looks to expand its nephrology and urology care platform.
IFC has invested about $15.8 million in KIMS, the operator of a network of tertiary and quaternary care hospitals across India, to increase access to affordable, high-quality healthcare services in India by supporting the expansion of one of the country’s leading private multispecialty hospital networks.
Earnings & results
Indian food and grocery delivery firm Eternal reported a nearly four-fold rise in first-quarter profit, but continued investment in quick-commerce business Blinkit and competition weighed on its profitability. Eternal‘s results come as investors assess whether India’s quick-commerce boom can continue delivering rapid growth while becoming more profitable.
Indonesia-listed coffee chain Fore Coffee crossed the 1 trillion rupiah ($56 million) revenue mark in the first half of 2026 as it benefited from an expanding store network and sustained consumer demand, helping lift profit by more than a third.
GoTo-backed, Indonesia-listed digital bank Bank Jago posted a 54% year-on-year increase in net profit in the second quarter of 2026, driven by stronger lending and growth in deposits, according to its financial statements.
Grab’s GPay Network (S), the operator of GrabPay in Singapore, posted a higher net profit in 2025 as transaction-based revenue grew, operating costs fell, and the company benefited from a deferred income tax credit.
Blackstone‘s second-quarter income rose to beat market expectations on Thursday, as the world’s largest alternative asset manager benefited from growing assets under management and reaping profits from a mammoth bet on artificial intelligence.
The hunt for sports assets
Circling back to the topic of sport, Asia’s wealthy families and fund managers are increasingly looking to invest directly in sports assets, betting that growing audiences and rising media-rights fees will drive longer-term returns in a sector that is increasingly seen as ‘AI proof’.
Vishesh Shrivastav, managing director at Temasek India, told Reuters in a separate interview that the Singaporean state investor is also exploring investment opportunities in the Indian Premier League (IPL).
The final whistle may have blown in New York, but the markets keep playing. Until next week, keep your eyes on the fundamentals, not the spectacle.
