Anext Bank eyes GPU financing as SG digibank competition heats up

Anext Bank, a Singapore-incorporated digital wholesale bank, plans to focus on financing for graphics processing units (GPUs) in a bid to scale its unsecured lending business, according to its CEO Kai Qiu.

Launched in 2022, Anext mainly serves MSMEs. Its parent company is Ant International, an overseas arm of Ant Group, the fintech giant linked to China’s Alibaba Group.

Photo credit: Anext Bank

The bank is “doing quite well” in AI infrastructure financing after spending 2025 studying the sector and identifying sustainable growth opportunities, says Qiu.

“I think we are one of the first movers in the market, and we’ve also established quite well-connected networks with players in the region,” Qiu tells The Business Times.

GPU financing refers to companies obtaining loans by offering up their AI hardware as collateral. Anext’s role in such a deal is to finance the hardware needed for AI models.

The trend is relatively recent. For instance, Coreweave, a US-based cloud infrastructure company, raised a debt facility worth US$2.3 billion using Nvidia chips as collateral. Its total debt has surpassed US$21 billion, almost triple its under US$8 billion figure in 2024.

Banks such as Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group have also undertaken GPU financing for a number of players in this space.

Plans beyond GPUs

Alongside secured lending, GPU financing will form the foundation for Anext’s plans to scale its unsecured lending business. Qiu notes that a strong loan portfolio is essential for a digital wholesale bank, and these products will help it expand lending in its MSME segment.

Meanwhile, the bank is seeking to grow CreditNow, its embedded unsecured lending product.

CreditNow uses alternative data to extend unsecured credit to SMEs that may otherwise struggle to get financing. For eligible SMEs, application time has been reduced from about 30 minutes to about a minute with no manual document uploads required.

See also: Ant Group pumps $148m into SG digibank unit Anext Bank

Anext also partners with other ecosystems to offer unsecured lending, such as parent company Ant International’s Antom, which acquired Singapore point-of-sale (POS) solutions company Epos. With Antom, live POS data is used to assess business performance and get a credit offering.

CreditNow is available to over 100,000 merchants across more than 15 POS providers, while more platforms will be added this year.

Eyes on Singapore