Startups in Southeast Asia raised $3.68 billion in October across 13 funding rounds, according to Tracxn data published by TNGlobal on Wednesday. The total was up about 1,665% from September and 933% from October 2025, but three rounds that Tracxn files under Singapore supplied almost all of it.

For investors in the region, the headline overstates how much capital reached local companies. Tracxn assigns each round to a country based on the company location recorded in its database, and the monthly reports do not explain how that location is determined. In October, the database placed $3.66 billion of the $3.68 billion total in Singapore. Late-stage rounds (Series C and later, plus private equity) took $3.63 billion, or 98.6%. Early-stage startups raised $36.1 million and seed-stage companies $16.6 million.

Kling AI, Manus and Supabase rounds filed under Singapore

The largest round in the data set was a $2.98 billion Series E for Kling AI, about 81% of the month's money, according to the TNGlobal report. The report did not name Kling AI's investors. Manus raised $500 million, with Boyu Capital listed as the investor, and Supabase took $150 million, with Tracxn listing Y Combinator as the backer.

Excluding Kling AI, October funding came to about $703 million. Excluding all three of the rounds filed under Singapore, the remaining 10 deals raised roughly $53 million in total. That is less than a fifth of the $356.5 million that startups in the region raised in October 2025, across 23 rounds, according to the same data.

The concentration means the monthly total depends heavily on which country a data platform assigns a handful of large companies to, and a single round can swamp a month of regional activity. For the wider picture, see Capital Times' report on Asia's third-quarter startup funding.

Outside Singapore, the only location given a figure in October was Watthana in Thailand, at $7.6 million, where the tracker places Salary Hero. Finfra appears twice in the report, once in Jakarta and once in Singapore, with an undisclosed amount. Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines had no funding totals in the report.

Small rounds stay thin across the region

Below the top three, deal sizes were modest. Tracxn listed Orochi Network at $8 million, NEU Battery Materials and Salary Hero at $7.6 million each, Ai Lytics at $7.4 million, Parallel Loop at $6.6 million, Aliena at $5.5 million and Blue Whale Energy at $4 million.

The number of rounds also fell. October's 13 deals compared with 17 in September and 23 in October 2025, according to the tracker. Venture firms named as active in October included Cento Ventures, which backed Salary Hero and Finfra; SG Growth Capital, which backed Ai Lytics and Blue Whale Energy; ADB Ventures, which backed Blue Whale Energy and Finfra; and 500 Global, which backed Salary Hero and Aliena.

September figure revised up sharply

The monthly numbers can change a great deal as deals are disclosed late. TNGlobal's September snapshot, published Oct. 7, put that month at $82.7 million across 13 rounds, with no late-stage deals at all. The October report gives a revised September figure of $208.6 million across 17 rounds, about 2.5 times the first count.

In its first reading, September was down 93% from August's $1.17 billion and 86% from $592.7 million in September 2025. Its largest rounds were KMC at $31 million, dtcpay at $25 million and iPiD at $16 million, and Singapore accounted for $51.7 million of the disclosed capital. Early-stage deals made up 96.4% of the money.

Read together, the two snapshots show how thin the regional pipeline has been outside a few large rounds. Even after the revision, September funding was well under a fifth of August's first-reading total, and October's rise came from three deals.

Exits stay steady

Exit activity changed little. Tracxn counted one initial public offering in October, by GCash, the same number of IPOs as in September. Acquisitions held at three, compared with seven in October 2025. The report named two of them: FreshKet, bought by Betagro Group on Oct. 21, and CryptoBilis, bought by an undisclosed acquirer on Oct. 10.

The September snapshot listed Grab's purchase of buy-now-pay-later company Atome and Circle's acquisition of TazaPay among that month's deals.

October's first-reading total is more than three times August's $1.17 billion, the highest monthly figure in the September snapshot. The next TNGlobal snapshot, covering November, would normally be published in early December, and its revised October figure will show whether the late-stage surge holds once more deals are counted.