In this conversation between Chia Li Yeung, Senior Partner at EDBI and Renen Hallak, VAST Data Founder and CEO, the two leaders mapped out what it takes for a deep tech company to successfully scale across the Asia-Pacific region, and why Singapore is uniquely positioned to lead the charge.
As AI transitions from a futuristic novelty into the backbone of the core global economy, companies face a massive bottleneck: data infrastructure.
Here are three key takeaways from their discussion on how strategic partnerships and a forward-thinking ecosystem are bringing AI into real life.
Singapore: The Strategic Engine of Southeast Asia
For global innovators and multinationals, location is strategy, and Singapore sits at the center of one of the world's fastest-growing digital economies. As Chia Li points out, its appeal goes far beyond geography, citing a highly innovative and practical environment ideal for organizations basing for any teams.
A company establishing a presence in Singapore is really establishing a launchpad to innovate for both regional and global markets.
And while VAST maintains go-to-market teams across India, Australia, and South Korea, Singapore has evolved into the company's regional hub.
Recognizing that advanced tech customers want engineers close by to push boundaries, Hallak says VAST is establishing both its regional go-to-market center and its core engineering center in Singapore.
Ultimately, success for this partnership isn’t just about market share. As Chia Li concluded, true success is about seeing VAST become a regional powerhouse, co-engineering, creating products, and innovating directly from Singapore to the rest of the world.
Moving Beyond Capital: The Power of Long-Term Partnership
When VAST looked to expand its footprint, it chose to partner with EDBI, arm of SG Growth Capital, the investment platform of Singapore’s Economic Development Board and Enterprise Singapore.
As Chia Li emphasizes, "Investment is just a way to start the relationship." The real value lies in building a long-term partnership. For VAST, EDBI’s support extended far beyond a financial injection. Over several years, EDBI acted as a critical facilitator, providing local market introductions, helping with corporate accreditation, and connecting VAST to major government entities like HTX (Homeland Security Technology Innovation Agency), which has since become one of VAST’s largest customers within the Singapore Government.
Solving the AI Data Bottleneck
One of the most compelling parts of the conversation centered around Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0. While many nations are talking about AI, Singapore is actively driving its integration into key sectors like manufacturing, finance, and healthcare.
However, scaling AI across these legacy industries introduces the massive challenge of managing parallel, high-volume workloads. To train AI models and execute real-time inference at scale, organizations need to access and feed data at speeds legacy systems simply cannot handle.
Recognising the critical role of data infrastructure in enabling AI adoption at scale, EDBI invested in VAST. VAST’s unique DASE architecture breaks through traditional limitations by seamlessly orchestrating databases, compute power, and storage at hyperscale. It represents the critical data infrastructure layer required to make generational AI opportunities a reality.
