Just as investors were beginning to question whether the revenues generated by global tech giants could justify their trillion-dollar build-outs in Artificial Intelligence, a—distinctly human—debacle rattled Silicon Valley this week. (You’ve probably seen the memes on human stupidity versus artificial intelligence already.)
Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday following allegations of two intimate relationships, including with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based cloud computing firm Megaspeed. Alice Huang is suspected by US intelligence officials of having ties to Chinese intelligence.
The spotlight has consequently swung back to Megaspeed, which is under investigation in the US, Singapore, and Malaysia over suspected breaches of chip export controls.
Digging into the company’s financial statements, DealStreetAsia found a business that underwent an extraordinary transformation in a little more than a year. Its balance sheet ballooned from $33 million to nearly $3 billion, and revenue surged from zero to $294 million between 2023 and 2024. Intriguingly, an ownership change preceded this dramatic expansion involving the transfer of a single ordinary share.
The findings add a new layer of mystery to a story that spans the AI boom, corporate intrigue, and Sino-US geopolitical tensions.
The ripples from the scandal will be felt in Asia’s tech industry as well. Nvidia’s partners and suppliers across Asia, from memory chip powerhouse South Korea to advanced chipmaking hub Taiwan, are redrawing their plans.
Analyses and deep dives
We, at DealStreetAsia, are bringing our Summits to Kuala Lumpur early next year as announced earlier.
In the latest edition of Vantage Malaysia, our newly-launched weekly newsletter, my colleague Katrina Bianca Cuaresma examined the spillover effect of mega tech investments on Malaysia’s business ecosystem. Just this week, SoftBank Group and Grab Holdings along with PETROS announced plans to invest an initial combined $1.85 billion to develop AI infrastructure across Malaysia. As more tech giants enter the country, the beneficiaries include their local partners— entities across construction, engineering, network infrastructure, power and cooling components.
This week we also published an analysis on how infrastructure is developing into an asset class of its own in Asia. The AI-driven data centre boom is accelerating demand for power, connectivity and other enabling infrastructure, while renewable energy, transport and climate-linked assets are broadening the investment universe.
LP-GP news
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is considering a commitment of up to $90 million to Malaysia-based PE firm Navis Capital Partners’ ninth buyout fund, which has a target corpus of $1 billion. The fund will pursue control investments across Southeast Asia, focusing on healthcare, education, technology-enabled business services, and value-added food and consumer businesses.
Separate filings also show that the IFC is considering investing up to $75 million in Creador’s latest $1-billion growth equity fund. The likely commitment to Creador VII is capped at 20% of the fund’s total commitments and includes a co-investment envelope of $50 million.
The IFC is also considering a debt investment of up to $150 million in State Bank of India. Proceeds will be primarily used to expand SBI’s lending to women micro-borrowers through the self-help group (SHG) lending model.
Singapore has launched a programme to mobilise up to $500 million in investments to strengthen climate resilience across Southeast Asia’s agri-food sector. Jointly developed by the National Climate Change Secretariat, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Enterprise Singapore, the programme aims to address a shortage of investment in climate adaptation.
Octopus Energy has launched the Octopus Asia Electrification Fund to drive investments into local green energy developers in Asia. Potential projects could include solar, onshore wind and storage, as well as microgrids and electric vehicle charging.
Norwest, a global multi-stage investment firm with a substantial presence in India, has raised $4 billion for its latest fund to support venture and growth equity investments across the technology, healthcare and consumer sectors. The fund is the largest in Norwest’s 65-year history.
Data-led stories
We published our quarterly and monthly trackers of private capital investments in Greater China and India this week.
Startup fundraising in Greater China sustained its strong momentum through the third quarter (Q3) of 2026, with deal volume reaching a record high and total deal value holding above $26 billion levels. The market has entered an era of megadeals, the report notes, with most capital pooling at a few frontier tech champions across AI, including large language models (LLMs), Embodied Intelligence, SpaceTech, Semiconductor, and HealthTech.
Following the record set In Q3, investments in Greater China took a breather in October amid the week-long National Day holiday that ran from Oct.1-7. The funding total was down 9.4% month-on-month, while deal volume fell 19.9%. The divergence between the pace of deal volume growth and deal count growth underscores the ongoing trend of fund concentration in high-conviction, capital-intensive bets that has resulted in rising average cheque sizes.
At the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) 2026 Global Financial Leaders’ Investment Summit, delegates called for the need to diversify capital beyond mega-cap tech and AI, warning that today’s heavy concentration is “a good momentum built on fragile foundations”.
Meanwhile, India’s startup funding activity witnessed a sharp moderation in October 2026, with investments declining 40.6% month-on-month to $1.11 billion. October saw just two megadeals, compared with seven in September.
Starup funding and corporate news
We continued to deliver scoops from the startup world this week.
A German strategic player has emerged as the frontrunner to acquire private equity firm CVC Capital Partners’ stake in Indonesian industrial gas producer Samator Indo Gas. CVC had acquired a roughly 30% stake in Samator in 2023 for around $155 million.
Several private equity firms are among investors in talks to acquire stake in Singapore-based tuition provider from Advent International, adding to private equity activity in Southeast Asia’s education sector. The potential sale follows two previous attempts by Advent to find a buyer for the business.
Premji Invest, the investment arm of Indian IT czar Azim Premji, is in talks to invest in Anderson Diagnostics & Labs as the healthcare services provider looks to expand its operations. India’s diagnostics sector has been drawing greater interest from PE investors, as more people become conscious of the need for regular health check-ups and preventive care.
Earnings and results
Shopee delivered its most profitable quarter on record in Q3 amid intensifying e-commerce competition in Southeast Asia, helping lift parent Sea Ltd’s net profit by 34% to $502.5 million. The Singapore-headquartered technology group’s revenue climbed 43.4% to $8.6 billion in the quarter, supported by growth across its e-commerce, digital financial services, and gaming businesses.
Sea Ltd’s financial services business, which began as a payments platform to support the gaming and e-commerce divisions, is now making a case for a stock market listing of its own. A separate listing would give Monee its own capital base, while its ties to Shopee would remain an important commercial advantage. The firm’s Q3 results show both the scale it has reached and the spending required to expand further.
Mynt, the parent of Philippine fintech giant GCash, reported higher revenue and net income in the first nine months of this year, buoyed by stronger growth in payments and lending.
Indonesian beauty retailer Sociolla, reported a wider net loss in 2025 owing to a large accounting charge on conversion of convertible notes. The one-time expense offset gains from stronger sales and higher gross profit during the year. Sociolla, in which US growth investor General Atlantic acquired a majority stake in December 2025, posted a net loss of $15.9 million for the year ended December 31, 2025, widening 13x from $1.2 million in the previous year.
That’s a wrap for the week. I’ll let you get back to the Nvidia memes.
