OneByZero raises $20m Series A led by Jungle Ventures

Singapore-based enterprise AI firm OneByZero has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round led by Jungle Ventures, marking its first injection of external capital.

The company, which has spent the last three years quietly building and deploying AI systems for large businesses, plans to use the new funds to expand its engineering teams, enter the Japanese market, and develop its core software platforms.

OneByZero currently operates in nine markets, including Singapore, India, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and the US. It now plans to establish a local team in Japan and push into new sectors such as healthcare, government, and large conglomerates.

What does OneByZero do?

Unlike many early-stage AI startups that focus on consumer applications or generic chatbots, OneByZero targets heavily regulated industries like financial services, telecommunications, and retail.

The startup’s business model relies on its NEO platform, which acts as a control and governance layer for corporate AI agents, alongside what it calls "AI Coworkers" designed to handle specific business workflows.

OneByZero claims its systems have helped some corporate clients automate more than 90% of their customer-facing interactions, and halved the time needed for complex data projects.

"Every enterprise can now get access to powerful AI," Niket Vaidya, CEO and co-founder of OneByZero, said in a statement. "The value comes when it runs inside the systems that run the business, under the company’s own rules, and gets better every week."

Part of the new capital will go towards building tools that allow businesses to build AI applications using smaller, open-weight language models, which can be cheaper and more customisable than massive proprietary models. The company claims its revenue has more than doubled every year for the past three years, though it did not disclose absolute figures.

Funding environment in Southeast Asia

The funding round arrives at a complicated time for Southeast Asian tech startups. While headline investment figures show a sharp recovery, the broader venture capital market is still recovering from a severe funding drought.

According to a report by Kickstart Ventures and DealStreetAsia, venture capital funding in Southeast Asia jumped to $7.25 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $3.5 billion in the previous six months. However, that recovery was heavily skewed by a single massive deal: a $4.5 billion Series C round for Singapore-based DayOne.

Excluding that outlier, total funding across the region actually dropped by 21% to $2.75 billion, leaving mid-stage startups facing a tight market for follow-on funding.