The artificial intelligence boom may be the first technology platform shift in which building from Asia carries clear advantages over building from the United States, according to Magnus Grimeland, the founder and chief executive of venture capital firm Antler. Speaking at the Fortune Southeast Asia 500 Summit in Vietnam on November 3, Grimeland argued that the region’s growing electricity supply, access to advanced chips, and deep pool of AI engineering talent are drawing more founders and investors to Asia than ever before.
Why the balance may be shifting
Going to the United States to start companies remains popular and happens at scale, Grimeland noted, but Asia now offers concrete benefits that previous platform shifts did not. If current buildout trends continue, he said, a large share of the leading AI companies could be built from the region. That would represent a meaningful break from the pattern of earlier technology waves, when U.S. headquartered companies typically dominated the most valuable startups.
Power, chips, and talent
Grimeland pointed to three structural factors behind his optimism. First, Asia is adding power generation capacity far faster than the United States and Europe combined. Roughly four times more power is being generated and built in Asia each year than in Europe and the United States put together, with much of that growth in China but with significant expansion across the rest of the region as well. The result is that power costs in Asia have fallen sharply relative to what companies can access in the United States, a critical advantage for AI infrastructure that consumes enormous amounts of electricity.
Second, Asia has become central to the production and availability of advanced semiconductors, the hardware that underpins large scale AI training and inference. Third, the region has a large and growing supply of AI engineering talent, supported by universities and tech ecosystems that have spent years investing in computer science and machine learning education.
Physical AI is already on Asian streets
Asia is also pulling ahead in what Grimeland called the physical AI realm, the application of artificial intelligence to robots, autonomous vehicles, drones, and other systems that operate in the real world. Autonomous vehicle testing and deployment in the United States remain limited, he observed, while one Chinese company alone has more autonomous vehicles operating on public roads than the rest of the world combined. That gap matters because physical AI systems require real world data, regulatory permission, and manufacturing scale to improve quickly, all of which are more readily available in parts of Asia.
Funding is flowing, but not evenly
Investors are responding. Crunchbase data shows that startup funding rounds across Asia reached 42.8 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2026, the highest quarterly total in more than three years. Yet the distribution is heavily skewed toward China. Dealroom data indicates that 68.1 percent of the 141 billion dollars in venture capital that entered Asia during the first nine months of 2026, or 96.1 billion dollars, flowed to Chinese companies, mostly AI startups such as DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and StepFun.
Southeast Asia, by contrast, attracted just 10.7 billion dollars in venture funding during the same period. That gap reflects both the earlier stage of local ecosystems and a shortage of the infrastructure needed to support large language model developers and AI application companies in some markets.
A different kind of opportunity in emerging markets
Franco Varona, managing partner at Philippines based early growth fund Foxmont Capital Partners, said the infrastructure gap in markets like his own creates a different investment case. In developed markets, investors can back innovators because the surrounding infrastructure is already in place. In emerging markets such as the Philippines, Varona argued, the opportunity is often in building the infrastructure itself, whether digital, logistics, or financial, rather than in applications that sit on top of it. Foxmont has structured several themed funds around that idea, including one focused on digitization in the Philippines and another on consumer accessibility and affordability.
New capital models for Asia's corporate landscape
The region's distinctive corporate ownership patterns are also pushing venture firms to experiment with new financing structures. Ming Eng, managing partner at Singapore headquartered Granite Asia, said many Asian businesses are family owned or part of conglomerates. Those owners may want growth capital without dilution or the pressure to pursue an initial public offering. Granite Asia's Libra Hybrid fund responds to that demand by combining characteristics of debt and equity into a single instrument, offering founders an alternative to traditional venture equity.
Geopolitical headwinds, long term optimism
Despite recent geopolitical tensions, all three panelists remained bullish on Asia's venture capital outlook. Grimeland closed by saying the balance of innovation is clearly shifting. He predicted that more than half of the most exciting AI companies could end up being built from Asia, a statement he framed as unprecedented for any major technology platform shift.
