Singapore’s IDA opens $200M fund to US startups, brings General Assembly to the island

With the launch of Block 71 San Francisco today, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore – one of three masterminds behind this project – made two big announcements that Steve Leonard, executive deputy chairman of IDA, believes will “engage the global tech community in our Smart Nation vision and encourage collaboration with leading tech ecosystems across the world.”

Firstly, IDA revealed that its investment arm Infocomm Investments (IIPL) will be extending its US$200 million fund to US tech startups. Previously, it was open to Singaporean startups, as well as European ventures via the Startupbootcamp initiative. According to a statement, it has already invested in a number of US-based startups such as Twilio, DataXu, and Quid.

The purpose of this is to attract tech startups that have an interest in expanding into Asia through Singapore and can add value to the Smart Nation initiative by developing solutions for public needs.

Leonard also announced that IDA will be bringing one of America’s leading tech-based schools, General Assembly, to Singapore’s shores. The tech school will be bringing its own brand of learning-by-doing classes, workshops, full-time immersive programs, and online courses in web development, user experience design, digital marketing, and data science.

“Some of Southeast Asia’s and the world’s most innovative businesses and tech leaders spring from Singapore, so it is natural to expand there to help enable new innovation,” says Jake Schwartz, co-founder and CEO of General Assembly. “We are committed to empowering people to create new possibilities, and to helping employers create the workforce they need to build the future.”

In line with its plans to expand Singapore’s technology community and foster new tech talents, IDA will also be reaching out to the Bay Area tech community – which has a strong concentration of young Singaporean students, professionals, and entrepreneurs – to participate in a Global Data Challenge.

This competition will make Singapore’s open government data sets readily available to innovators in the hope that they can leverage them for the development of new sustainable, scalable, and viable solutions relevant to the Singapore Smart Nation initiative. The data includes “public transportation commuter patterns, bed occupancy rates in public hospitals, common health problems, air quality, household electricity consumption, and other societal and cultural trends in Singapore.”

See: Can big data fix Singapore’s public transportation woes? IBM and LTA say yes