Funding
Fintech Q1 funding pulse: bigger checks, fewer winners
Q1 fintech rounds are up 38% in dollars but down 22% in deals. The bifurcation tells us where the next cycle is going.
Marcus Chen6 min
Trending
•Sarvesh Kumar Tiwari on Doordripp: "Why can't fashion be delivered as quickly as groceries?"•Ravi Mehta on building reasoning models that actually reason•StellarPay raises $40M to make cross-border payments invisible•The state of AI agents in 2026: the year tools become teammates•Small models are eating the enterprise — and saving fortunes doing it•SaaS margins are back — but only for the top quartile•Europe's $500M+ megarounds are back — three in the last sixty days•The first 100 customers playbook — what actually works in 2026•Sarvesh Kumar Tiwari on Doordripp: "Why can't fashion be delivered as quickly as groceries?"•Ravi Mehta on building reasoning models that actually reason•StellarPay raises $40M to make cross-border payments invisible•The state of AI agents in 2026: the year tools become teammates•Small models are eating the enterprise — and saving fortunes doing it•SaaS margins are back — but only for the top quartile•Europe's $500M+ megarounds are back — three in the last sixty days•The first 100 customers playbook — what actually works in 2026
Author
Marcus Chen
Funding Reporter · APAC
Funding reporter tracking venture capital, growth rounds, and the investors writing the checks across Asia Pacific. Has broken five of the largest Southeast Asian rounds of the past two years. Speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and conversational Bahasa. Based in Singapore.
Published stories
Startup News
The quiet comeback of remote-first companies
Funding for remote-first startups jumped 47% YoY in Q1 — and nobody seems to be writing about it.
Marcus Chen6 min
FundingTrending
Europe's $500M+ megarounds are back — three in the last sixty days
The numbers behind a sudden surge in European megarounds, and what it signals for the next cycle.
Marcus Chen6 min
Funding
Helix Bio raises $60M for inherited-disease gene therapy
An Indian sovereign-linked fund led the round, with two US healthcare VCs participating. The capital plan: three concurrent clinical programs.
Marcus Chen6 min