Asian startup founders head to the U.S. as venture funding weakens

More Asian startup founders are relocating to the United States as funding in parts of the region remains weak and U.S. investors keep backing AI companies at a faster pace. Fortune reported that founders are being pulled by the size of the U.S. customer base and venture market, while Asia’s varied regulations and fragmented markets add pressure to move.

Yoevan Khemlani, founder of Interfaze, told Fortune he began building the AI startup in Singapore in 2025 with a four-person team. Interfaze develops a specialized AI model for backend work such as web scraping, but Khemlani said many prospective customers were already in the U.S., moving there or selling into that market. He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in May, according to Fortune.

Antler, a global venture capital firm, has helped more than 30 Asian founding teams move to the U.S. since 2025, Fortune reported. Jussi Salovaara, Antler’s co-founder and managing partner for Asia, told Fortune that many founders in Asia are trying to build global companies and see the U.S. as a place with more customers, talent and capital.

Capital has tilted toward the U.S.

KPMG data cited by Fortune showed the U.S. received about 68% of global startup funding last year, compared with 12% for Asia. In the first quarter of 2026, the U.S. share rose to 80%, helped by large rounds for companies including OpenAI and Anthropic, while Asia’s share fell to 9.6%, even though funding in absolute terms was stable.

Southeast Asia’s venture market has been under particular strain. Fortune reported that venture funding to tech companies in the region dropped nearly 80% from 2022 to 2024, falling from about $10.1 billion to $2.2 billion. The region accounts for roughly 0.5% to 2% of global venture investment, with most Asia-Pacific funding concentrated in China and India, according to Fortune.

Exit prospects have also weighed on investor confidence, Salovaara told Fortune. Deloitte data cited by Fortune showed Southeast Asian IPOs raised $6.5 billion last year, up 76%, but far below Hong Kong’s $37 billion in IPO proceeds. Fortune also noted that some newly listed Southeast Asian companies have traded below their offer prices, including Singapore flexible-work company JustCo and Foundation Healthcare, which closed 7.9% under its IPO price on its first trading day on July 8.

Market access is a major reason

Founders told Fortune that selling across Southeast Asia can require separate strategies for different countries. Khemlani said investing or selling in the U.S. gives startups access to one large national market, while Southeast Asia requires decisions country by country.

China-based founders face another set of issues. Justin Li, founder of IndustrialMind.AI and a former Tesla engineer, told Fortune that business-to-business startups in China have limited market access because they mainly serve domestic customers. His company builds AI tools to monitor production lines, find anomalies and suggest fixes, and most of its customers are U.S. and European automakers, according to Fortune.

Fortune reported that geopolitics may also affect Chinese startups, especially those whose products require customers to share data. The report said Western companies may be cautious about working with China-based firms as AI becomes more closely tied to strategic and regulatory concerns.

Other founders cited Silicon Valley’s concentration of talent and informal networks. Sanjil Jain, an Indian founder who moved to the U.S. in April to build Drift, an AI platform for robotics engineering, told Fortune he had hired three Americans for his five-person team since relocating.

Asia still fits some companies

Salovaara told Fortune that moving to the U.S. is difficult for many founders. Visa rules have been one obstacle: Fortune reported that President Donald Trump raised H-1B visa fees from $5,000 to $100,000 last September, though a U.S. federal court blocked the increase last month after finding it was an unauthorized tax.

Antler also sees opportunities for founders who stay in Asia. Salovaara pointed to infrastructure and energy as stronger areas for Southeast Asian markets, including Alternō, a Singapore-incorporated Vietnamese startup backed by Antler that uses sand-based thermal batteries for renewable energy storage, according to Fortune.

For now, founders interviewed by Fortune said San Francisco remains hard to match for access to global buyers and venture capital. Khemlani said it is still difficult to raise money in San Francisco while operating from Singapore, even if startups can technically build products from many places.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.