·S2 E18
Inside CVC: Dr. Tan Sian Wee on Singapore's Innovation Edge, Europe's Capital Gap, and the Global AI Race
Episode Description
Dr. Tan Sian Wee has built companies in Silicon Valley, lived and worked in Germany, and now sits inside Singapore's innovation engine at the National University of Singapore, where he manages a S$150 million venture fund.
In this conversation with Philipp and Steve, Sian lays out why Germany's welfare state now discourages full-time work, why Europe allocates just 0.01% of its $9 trillion in pension assets to venture capital, and why that single number is quietly handing 50% of Europe's best follow-on rounds to the US.
He explains what makes Singapore's innovation "flywheel" turn when Europe's 27 jurisdictions can't, why leadership and not talent is Europe's real constraint, and where a Southeast Asia-Europe corridor in AI and biotech could offset America's compute advantage and China's manufacturing scale.
He also details how Chinese labs are shipping near frontier AI models at a fraction of US cost, and how automation is compressing drug development timelines from six years to three. If you sit on a board or run capital allocation in Europe, this conversation reframes what's actually broken, and what leadership would need to look like to fix it.
Catch up on all episodes of Inside CVC at www.u-path.com/podcast.