Philippine startup funding drops 32%: Gobi Partners

Gobi Partners has released its Philippine Startup Ecosystem Report 2025, benchmarking the country against other ASEAN-6 markets and highlighting trends in AI, fintech, and digital transformation.

Gobi Partners is a venture capital firm focused on startups in Asia, including the Philippines.

The report notes that startup funding in the Philippines dropped 32% in 2025, with deal volume down 54% year-on-year.

It cites the slowdown to tighter global liquidity, governance issues, and corruption scandals affecting investor confidence.

Despite these challenges, startups have contributed about 3% to the country’s nominal GDP and created nearly 200,000 jobs.

The report identifies fintech, logistics, healthtech, creative industries, and BPO as sectors primed for growth, particularly with increased AI adoption.

🔗 Source: Gobi Partners

🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

Philippine funding slide needs ASEAN-6 context

Philippine startup funding fell 32% and deals dropped 54% in 2025 amid tight global liquidity plus governance issues. ASEAN-6 refers to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ six largest startup markets. These are Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Also Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Gobi Partners, a venture capital firm focused on Asia, publishes ASEAN benchmarks and reports 1. Readers need country data on funding share and deal counts. Stage mix and exits help show if the Philippines lags peers or tracks the region.
If Indonesia, Vietnam, or Thailand also fell by 30% or more, this looks like a regional reset 1. Investors and founders would read the slowdown differently with that view.

AI vendors have an opening in Information Technology and Business Process Management (IT-BPM) with IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) upskilling

Information Technology and Business Process Management (IT-BPM) firms use intelligent virtual agents, chatbots 2. Teams also run agent assist, speech analytics, and sentiment analysis in major contact center hubs 2.
The sector has gaps in AI literacy and domain skills 2. The National AI Strategy Roadmap (NAISR) 2.0 focuses on education, data access, and infrastructure 2. This opens demand for training platforms and Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) tools. Data governance and compliance offers also fit.
Work with IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) on upskilling plus human in the loop models to help defend global share 2.