Four categories every week: global impact investing, global venture capital, Taiwan VC and family offices, each with a link to the source.
Week of Oct 12, 2026
Ceniarth, an $800m family office, has deployed over $300m of impact-first capital across about 90 funds and 60 direct deals. Its four-year net IRR was 3.2%, roughly zero after costs and inflation; breaking even needs about 4.5% gross. Rare, candid data for families sizing impact allocations.
Read source ↗The MacArthur Foundation is raising its impact investment allocation by 50% to $750m, starting in 2027, with repaid capital redeployed into new deals. It also extended its pledge to pay out at least 6% through 2028. A major foundation scaling up signals impact investing is now a core philanthropic tool.
Candide Group's Afterglow Climate Justice Fund raised $71.5m against a $100m ceiling to lend flexibly to small, first-time clean-energy developers banks avoid. Foundations including MacArthur provide subordinated debt; $35m is already lent. A blended structure showing how catalytic money can pave the way for commercial capital.
Read source ↗Seoul's K-GX strategy aims to mobilise 1,000tn won (about $747bn) over ten years: 200tn from budgets, 570tn in state-backed climate finance and 230tn from private projects. It targets steel, petrochemicals and chips, plus 100GW of renewables. A close benchmark for Taiwan's similar industrial mix.
Hong Kong priced about HK$20bn ($2.6bn) of digital green bonds, the largest digital bond yet, in HKD, RMB, USD and euro tranches, 1.3 to 11.3 times subscribed. Tokenised deposits were used to settle the HKD tranche, merging green finance and tokenisation in Asia's sustainable capital hub.
NBIM, manager of Norway's roughly $2tn oil fund, committed €1.2bn (about $1.34bn) to Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners' CI VI, which reportedly seeks €16bn for renewables and storage across North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific. Sovereign money keeps backing transition infrastructure.
The SEC will not pursue enforcement against BlackRock, State Street and others over Climate Action 100+, but warned that coordinated engagement could make large passive investors a 'group' holding over 5%, costing them simpler Schedule 13G filing status. A likely chill on collective climate stewardship.
Robeco's survey of 300 investors managing over $35tn across Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific and South Africa found 82% expect physical climate risks to affect asset prices within ten years and 63% see strategic asset allocation affected within five. 42% plan to add climate-solution exposure within a year.
Aviva Investors and ABN AMRO's Sustainable Impact Fund put €100m (about $112m) into Dutch firm SL Materials, which recovers sand, gravel and cement from demolished concrete, to add capacity and sites. With cement about 8% of global CO2, circular building materials are drawing impact capital.
Global venture funding reached $159B in Q3, down 25% from Q2 but up 53% year on year. A record 27 companies raised $1B+ rounds and AI took $102B, or 64%. The $679B nine-month total is the highest on record, showing capital piling into AI leaders.
US and Canadian startups raised $92B in Q3, down 35% from Q2 but up 50% year on year, largely because OpenAI and Anthropic had no new mega-raises. AI took $61B. Nvidia's $12.93B Hugging Face deal led M&A, while 17 venture-backed IPOs raised under $4B.
European startups raised $25B in Q3, up 77% year on year. AI took a record 75% ($18.8B), and physical tech such as defense, data centers and energy made up about half. The UK led with $7.5B, ahead of Germany and France; Mistral's $3.5B was Europe's largest venture round ever.
AI agent startup Manus raised over $500M led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with Tencent and HSG joining. Meta's $2B acquisition was unwound after Chinese authorities intervened in April. The round shows domestic capital stepping in; Manus is reportedly weighing a Hong Kong IPO.
Endeavor Catalyst, the VC arm of Endeavor, closed Fund V at $320M, lifting AUM above $850M and widening its focus on Asia and other emerging startup markets. It has put $46.8M into 44 Asian companies but has had no liquidity events in Asia since 2025.
US healthcare investor TCGX secured $600M in commitments for TCGX Asia Life Sciences Fund I, backing Asian biotechs at all stages that develop drugs for global markets. It is opening offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong, signaling global capital's bet on Asia's early-stage drug discovery.
In the Oct. 3–9 top-10 list, Flex spinout Axiom, a cloud and power infrastructure firm, drew a $2B strategic investment from General Catalyst and Koch Equity at a $37.5B initial enterprise value. TypeSafe AI raised $870M and quantum firm Oratomic $475M, as compute and energy keep attracting capital.
Fintech Ramp raised about $1.85B at a roughly $60B valuation before the new money, Bloomberg reported, led by Dragoneer and Thrive Capital with Founders Fund investing heavily. It was valued at $44B in June, a ~$16B jump in four months; annualised revenue topped $1.5B by June.
Meet counted just four major Taiwanese startup rounds in Q3 2026, down from 14 in Q1 and 10 in Q2, totaling about NT$670 million. VCSEL maker iReach raised NT$340 million led by 達盈 with the National Development Fund, and FUNNOW took about NT$318 million from Hotai, showing capital concentrating in a few deals.
Read source ↗Founded in 2025, AilumiQ uses AI-driven automated synthesis to make short-wave infrared quantum-dot ink that coats directly onto CMOS wafers, claiming 10–100x lower camera-module costs. It targets a US$5 million seed round; US$2.5 million has investment intent from a top-tier Taiwanese semiconductor firm and is nearing signing, with the rest sought overseas.
Read source ↗Taipei-headquartered KONST closed a US$30 million Series B led by ADATA, joined by corporate investors including M Mobility and Pegatron Venture Capital. It will expand AI data center buildout across Asia and push its Token Factory strategy, a sign that memory and electronics makers are using strategic stakes to secure a place in the AI compute supply chain.
Deloitte Taiwan's Chen Chung-cheng said Taiwan's biotech revenue reached NT$830.1 billion in 2025, up 7.05%, yet health startups closed 126 deals worth US$660 million, down 11% in count and 16% in value. The median age of funded firms rose to 5–6 years as AI and chips draw capital away, so startups must plan commercialization earlier.
Read source ↗On October 8 the Executive Yuan approved a draft act on transforming and upgrading small, medium and micro enterprises, with NT$100 billion from the economics ministry over eight years and a new chapter on startup incubation. The R&D tax credit rate rises to 20% and the equipment credit threshold drops to NT$250,000. The bill now goes to the legislature.
Read source ↗TWSE announced warrant rule changes on Sept. 30 that let Taiwan Innovation Board stocks serve as underlyings. Four Innovation Board stocks qualified, and 14 warrants listed on Oct. 6. Changes to issuance caps get a three-month grace period and take effect Jan. 1, 2027, a step expected to improve liquidity on the startup-oriented board.
Read source ↗The 15th Meet Neo Star list picked 30 startups from more than 200 interviewed between September 2024 and July 2026. It highlights four trends: AI automating traditional industries, born-global teams backed by investors such as a16z and Y Combinator, deep tech as AI moves into hardware, and faster lab-to-market commercialization.
Read source ↗On her first US trip since leaving office, former president Tsai Ing-wen met young tech founders and venture capital figures at TECO San Francisco on Oct. 9. She called for two-way ties between Taiwan and Silicon Valley and urged Taiwanese abroad to bring home insights on technology, talent and investment, underscoring the role of the Bay Area founder community.
Taiwan's FSC issued rules allowing banks that have run family office advisory in the Kaohsiung zone for at least a year to offer it at branches island-wide; 11 banks qualify. The zone's 17 banks served 239 clients with NT$107.4bn in assets by end-August. The pilot is becoming a nationwide business line.
Read source ↗Cumulative CPI growth hit 11.61% through August, past the 10% trigger, so Taiwan's estate tax exemption is expected to rise from NT$13.33m to at least NT$14.88m and the annual gift exemption from NT$2.44m to NT$2.72m for 2027 cases. The Finance Ministry will confirm figures at year-end, reshaping family gifting plans.
Read source ↗Singapore Deputy PM and MAS chairman Gan Kim Yong told a Wealth Management Institute summit that MAS is reviewing industry calls to add insurance policies and digital payment tokens to the Designated Investment list used for fund tax incentives, including those for single family offices. Timing will come later; private banking assets grew about 50% in five years.
Citing Nikkei Asia, the report says China's July overhaul taxing offshore trusts at 20% per stage, plus Singapore's tighter source-of-funds checks and year-long approvals after a S$3bn laundering case, is pushing Chinese wealth back to Hong Kong. Singapore has over 2,000 SFOs versus 3,384 in Hong Kong, which targets 220 more by 2028.
JP Morgan Private Bank's pulse survey of 125 international family offices found 74% rank AI a top priority and 66% see geopolitics as the biggest portfolio risk. Over six months, 25% added to public equities and 43% made new allocations to alternatives, which the bank called a strategic shift; infrastructure (36%) ranked next.
At Deutsche Bank's third Asia Emerging Markets Family Office Forum in Singapore, attended by about 200 families and wealthy individuals, 37% named rates and yields the top growth risk and AI's share jumped to 17% from 5% last year. 73% picked Asia as the most geopolitically stable region versus 14% for the US.
The RBC and Campden Wealth survey of 155 family offices in the Americas (average net worth about US$2.25bn) found 23% had a generational transfer in the past five years, yet half have an incomplete or no succession plan. 86% invest in private markets, with direct deals 45% of that allocation.
Read source ↗The philanthropic arm of Raffles Family Office, a multi-family office headquartered in Hong Kong and Singapore, set up an S$250,000 (about US$195,000) five-year award at Singapore Management University, funding 10 undergraduates a year for overseas internships to build entrepreneurial skills. It shows family office giving aimed at talent.
Updated every Monday. Summaries capture the key points; please refer to the original sources for full details and figures.