There’s a version of this week that looks like two unrelated news stories from two different countries.
The Philippines hosted a US Undersecretary of State for a site unveiling. Malaysia’s securities regulator released a public consultation paper on its small-cap exchange. Two countries. Two moves. No obvious connection.
Here’s the version where you actually connect the dots.
The Philippines just told the United States it isn’t running the place. Manila publicly rejected the US request for diplomatic immunity and US legal jurisdiction over a 4,000-acre industrial zone that’s about to anchor billions in foreign capital. That changes the read on the entire Pax Silica deal.
Malaysia just did the most aggressive thing any SEA regulator has done in years for venture-backed companies. VC firms can now sponsor IPOs directly. Retail money is allowed in for the first time. A real funding escalator from crowdfunding to LEAP Market to ACE.
And here’s what almost nobody is saying out loud. These two moves are not separate stories. They’re symptoms of the same shift. Southeast Asia is running two parallel races at once, and the countries that figure out both are going to compound differently than the countries that don’t.
Two stories. Let’s take them properly.
What the Philippines Did on Monday
Pax Silica is the US-led alliance launched in December 2025 to build an allied semiconductor and critical minerals supply chain that doesn’t depend on China. Fourteen countries plus the Philippines have signed on. The Philippines joined as the 13th member in mid-April.
The country’s contribution is a 4,000-acre Economic Security Zone in New Clark City, two hours north of Manila. Roughly 1,620 hectares. Designated as the first AI-native industrial acceleration hub under the framework. The State Department is calling it a “Golden Node.”
On Monday, US Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg flew in for the site unveiling. The numbers he shared: more than 20 companies have expressed interest. A dozen are billion-dollar US firms. At least five US and East Asian companies have specifically indicated they want to locate inside the zone. The interest spans robotics, electronics manufacturing, AI training infrastructure, power, renewable energy, water management. Technical surveys begin in June. Groundbreaking targeted before the end of 2028.
That’s the headline. Now here’s the part that didn’t make most of the international press.
The Sovereignty Moment
When the Wall Street Journal reported a month ago that the hub would operate under US laws and that US personnel would enjoy diplomatic immunity, there were a lot of raised eyebrows in Manila. Including mine. It sounded like a value-chain rental. The Philippines provides the land, the minerals, the workforce. The Americans bring capital and write the rules.
On Monday, standing next to Helberg at the site unveiling, BCDA president Joshua Bingcang publicly killed that framing.
The Philippines, he said, had rejected the US request for diplomatic immunity and US legal jurisdiction. The hub will operate under Philippine law. Specifically the Investors’ Lease Act, recently amended to allow foreign investors to lease land for up to 99 years, and the BCDA Law, which governs the conversion of former US military bases. Treated as a regular business development contract.
That changes the read. This is not a US-governed enclave with a Philippine flag on it. This is a Philippine economic zone with a US-led anchor tenant.
Trade Undersecretary Ceferino Rodolfo reinforced the legal framing and then added one sentence that I think summarizes the entire industrial policy. He said the Philippines wants to move beyond exporting raw green minerals like nickel and copper, and instead process them into higher-value green tech metals used in batteries, data centers, semiconductors, and electronic components.
Get out of the raw materials lane. Move into processed inputs for the AI economy. That’s the climb, articulated openly.
What the Country Actually Brings
The Philippines is the 9th largest semiconductor exporter in the world. Electronics products were nearly $40 billion in exports last year, about 60% of all Philippine exports. The country has 40 years of OSAT experience. Amkor, onsemi, Analog Devices, Texas Instruments. Massive nickel reserves. An English-language technical workforce. The 2026 ASEAN chairmanship.
Eleven days ago, the Luzon Economic Corridor expanded to include Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, and the UK. Nine more allied countries are now part of the surrounding framework. The Philippines also published its first Semiconductor Roadmap last year, targeting $110 billion in combined semiconductor and electronics exports by 2030, with a five-year plan to train 128,000 semiconductor professionals.
This is a country making coordinated moves. Pax Silica on Philippine legal terms. The LEC expansion. The Semiconductor Roadmap. The ASEAN chair. That’s the most ambitious industrial push the Philippines has made in my time watching this region.
The Regional Comparison
Every country in Southeast Asia is running a version of this play. The comparison is worth knowing because it tells you what kind of opportunity is forming in each market.
Singapore is in a category of one. They produce 10% of the world’s semiconductors. Full value chain. In January, Micron broke ground on a $24 billion NAND wafer fab, on top of a $7 billion HBM advanced packaging facility started last year. UMC opened a 22nm fab in 2025, with volume production starting this year. And the Singapore government is putting S$500 million into a shared national fab that startups will be able to use by 2027. A government-funded fab that early-stage companies can access. There is no equivalent of that anywhere else in Southeast Asia.
Malaysia is the 6th-largest semiconductor exporter, with about 13% of the global assembly, testing, and packaging market. Last November, five Malaysian companies formed the Malaysia Advanced Packaging Consortium, formally launched at SEMICON SEA earlier this month. Target: 7% of the global advanced packaging market by 2035, worth $5 billion a year. The Malaysian government put up RM92 million in R&D grants, with another RM93 million in industry matching contributions. FusionAP, the startup at the center, was founded by senior Intel and TSMC veterans who came back to Malaysia. Intel’s Project Pelican advanced packaging facility in Penang is 99% finished.
Vietnam started construction on its first homegrown semiconductor fab in January, led by state-owned Viettel Group, on 27 hectares near Hanoi. Initial process node is 32nm. Last month, Samsung Electro-Mechanics committed $1.2 billion to a flip-chip substrate facility for Groq’s latest LPU chip, which gets integrated into Nvidia’s Vera Rubin AI platform. Vietnam has roughly 7,000 IC design engineers across 50+ companies, with a national plan to grow that to 50,000 by 2030.
Singapore is betting on its ecosystem. Malaysia is betting on its operators. Vietnam is betting on talent and anchor multinationals. The Philippines is betting on geopolitical leverage with sovereignty intact. None of these is wrong. They’re shaped by what each country can actually offer.
But here’s where the second story comes in. And here’s the part of the regional comparison that almost nobody is connecting.
The Other Race Nobody Is Tracking as One Story
While the industrial race has been getting all the attention, there’s a parallel race happening in capital markets. Every country in Southeast Asia is trying to fix the same problem at the same time.
The public market for venture-backed companies in this region has been broken for a decade. The IPO window collapsed. SGX listings thinned. The PSE became a hard listing. Indonesia got small-company-unfriendly. Founders have nowhere to go.
And now, finally, the regulators are responding. Each one is doing it differently. And almost nobody is connecting these dots into one regional story.
Singapore’s Quiet Aggression
Singapore is moving the most aggressively. The Monetary Authority of Singapore set up an Equities Market Review Group in August 2024. The package they’ve rolled out is huge.
A 20% tax rebate for primary listings. A 10% rebate for secondary listings. A S$5 billion Equity Market Development Programme, since expanded to S$6.5 billion, placing capital with asset managers to invest in Singapore-listed equities. Nine asset managers have already been allocated nearly S$4 billion to deploy. A S$30 million “Value Unlock” package to help listed companies improve investor engagement.
And then in November, the biggest move. SGX signed a partnership with Nasdaq to launch a Global Listing Board for dual listings. Companies with at least S$2 billion in market cap can list simultaneously on SGX and Nasdaq using a single set of offering documents. The framework goes live mid-2026. The regulatory groundwork is essentially complete.
This is the first formal dual-listing partnership Nasdaq has ever done with another exchange. Ever.
Singapore is not trying to fix the small-company problem. They are explicitly going after large Asian growth companies that would otherwise go straight to Nasdaq, and offering them a way to anchor in Singapore on the way to the US. A different segment of the market from what Malaysia is doing.
Indonesia, Vietnam, and the ASEAN-6
Thailand has been quietly building. The Stock Exchange of Thailand launched LiVE Exchange for SMEs and startups years ago, although only a handful of companies actually trade on it. Thailand also signed a depository receipt linkage with SGX back in 2023.
Indonesia is moving in the opposite direction. In March, the Indonesian Stock Exchange tightened its listing rules. Companies now need positive retained earnings to list on the Main Board. Stricter free float requirements. Quality over quantity. But Indonesia also joined the SGX depository receipt linkage in October last year, which gives Indonesian investors access to Singapore-listed companies. Tightening at home, opening cross-border.
Vietnam is exploring depository receipts for blue chips. Yuanta Securities has already issued DRs for FPT, Vinamilk, Mobile World, and Vietcombank into international markets.
And here’s the part of the story that gets almost no coverage. In December 2024, the six major ASEAN exchanges, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, signed an MOU to develop a cross-border depository receipts framework. Any company listed on one ASEAN exchange could have DRs trading on the other five. Larger pools of liquidity. More retail access. ASEAN as one capital market.
It’s early. Implementation is slow. But the direction is unmistakable.
And Then Malaysia, This Week
On Sunday, the Securities Commission Malaysia and Bursa Malaysia released a public consultation paper proposing the biggest changes to the LEAP Market since it was created.
Quick context. The LEAP Market is Malaysia’s stock exchange for early-stage and emerging companies. It’s been around for years. It has not worked. In its entire history, exactly one company has transitioned in from regulated equity crowdfunding. One. Ten LEAP-listed companies have graduated to the ACE Market.
The regulator knows it. So they’re rewriting the rules.
Here’s what they’re proposing.
First. VC and PE firms can act as listing agents. If you raised at least RM5 million on a regulated crowdfunding platform, or you have a VC or PE firm on your cap table, you can list on LEAP without appointing a traditional approved adviser. Your VC sponsors you to the public market. That collapses traditional banker-led IPO economics. The regulator is saying, we trust the people who already did diligence on this company.
Second. Retail investors are allowed in for the first time. Sensible caps. RM100,000 per company, RM250,000 total exposure. This is the first SEA exchange that’s letting retail directly access early-stage public listings with this kind of framework.
Third. Simplified disclosure documents. Lower legal cost.
Fourth. Advisers can take up to half their fees in shares. Lower cash burden on the startup.
Fifth. The transfer from LEAP to ACE Market gets streamlined.
Stop and think about what they just built.
A funding escalator specifically designed for the segment nobody else in the region is solving for. Too small for Singapore’s Global Listing Board. Too early for Indonesia’s Main Board. Malaysia just took it.
The consultation closes June 15. The rules will likely take effect later this year.
Two Races, One Pattern
When you zoom out, what’s happening in Southeast Asia right now is two simultaneous races.
The first race is industrial. Pax Silica, MAPC, Viettel’s fab, Singapore’s NSTIC. Each country is trying to climb the value chain for the AI economy. Different bets. Different segments. Singapore on full-stack. Malaysia on advanced packaging. Vietnam on talent and anchors. Philippines on geopolitical leverage.
The second race is capital markets. The SGX-Nasdaq dual listing bridge, Malaysia’s LEAP Market 2.0, Indonesia’s tightening, the ASEAN-6 depository receipts framework. Each country is trying to give its own companies a real exit path. Different segments here too. Singapore on the $2 billion-plus growth company headed to Nasdaq. Malaysia on the VC-backed mid-market. Indonesia on quality over quantity. Vietnam through DRs.
You can’t have a real AI or semiconductor economy without a functioning public market to recycle capital back into the next generation of founders. Singapore figured that out twenty years ago. Malaysia is figuring it out right now. The MAPC industrial consortium and the LEAP Market reform are not unrelated. They’re the same strategy expressed in two domains.
Where the Philippines Sits
The Philippines is running hard on the industrial race. The country has put together the most ambitious geopolitical-industrial move of any SEA country in decades, on its own legal terms. That is genuinely impressive, and I want to say that clearly because the rest of this analysis is going to be a little harder.
On the capital markets side, the Philippines has been quiet. The PSE has not announced anything comparable to what Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, or even Vietnam are doing. There’s no LEAP equivalent. No SGX-Nasdaq style bridge. No coordinated push to make the Philippine public market work for venture-backed companies. The country joined the ASEAN-6 depository receipts MOU, but that’s a regional initiative, not a domestic one.
That’s the gap. And it’s a gap that’s worth saying out loud because the Philippines has positioned itself extraordinarily well on the industrial side, and the capital markets side is what makes the rest compound.
Where the Founder Opportunity Actually Sits
For Filipino founders. The industrial opportunity from Pax Silica is real, and it’s not where most people are looking. It’s not in chips. It’s in everything that has to feed the zone. Industrial automation software. Predictive maintenance for factory equipment. Workforce training platforms to upskill thousands of engineers and technicians on advanced packaging processes. Mineral traceability software, because critical minerals coming out of Philippine mines need chain-of-custody verification. Energy management software. Logistics platforms, customs platforms, ESG reporting tools, supply chain visibility software.
None of that requires a $20 billion fab. None of it requires fabless chip design expertise. All of it can be built by Filipino SaaS founders with the capital that’s available in this market right now.
The Philippines doesn’t need to spawn TSMC. It needs to spawn the regional Applied Materials.
For Malaysian founders. You have a policy environment that’s never been better. Equity crowdfunding into LEAP into ACE into the Main Market, with VCs as your sponsors, retail money coming in, and ASEAN cross-border listings on the horizon. The funding escalator is real. Use it.
For founders anywhere else in the region. The capital markets are being rebuilt. Each country is solving for a different segment. Pay attention to which segment your company fits into. Because where you build matters now in a way it didn’t five years ago.
What These Two Stories Say Together
Put them next to each other and they’re telling one thing.
Southeast Asia is doing something it has never done before. The region is simultaneously rebuilding its industrial base for the AI economy and its capital markets for venture-backed companies. Each country is making different bets. Each country is solving for a different segment. Some bets will work. Some won’t.
I’m bullish on the Philippines. The fundamentals are real. The trajectory is good. Pax Silica is the right bet for this moment, and the way Manila handled the sovereignty question this week shows the country isn’t going to be a passive host in this deal.
The next move that matters is the capital markets one. Foreign industrial capital is coming in under Philippine law. Domestic founders are going to build the picks-and-shovels companies that feed it. But they need a real path to liquidity that lets them compound wealth and recycle it into the next generation. That gap exists. Closing it is the work of the next two years.
The founders who understand both races and position themselves on both sides are the ones worth watching.
This post accompanies the SEA of Startups episode for the week of May 20, 2026. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Real. Raw. Relatable.
SEA of Startups | Kevin Brockland
