🗂️ Field Notes

Real ground-level experience shared by Singapore's AI startup community. Clustered by topic, anonymised, here to help you avoid common pitfalls.

💡 These notes come from real conversations in Singapore's AI startup community, structured and anonymised before publication. Each entry tags the company profile and applicable context. Treat them as reference, not prescription. For policy specifics, defer to the latest official documents.

EDB EP application Tax compliance Grant programmes Company incorporation

Meeting Notes: AI Startup Meets EDB

📅 2026-02 📖 Community contribution
EDB EP application Tax compliance Grant programmes Company incorporation
🏢 Company profile: AI platform company, ARR approaching $100M, incorporated in Singapore, team mostly remote, around 10 people.

Company classification: shareholding structure, not founder nationality Structure, not passport

  • · EDB applies a clear test for "Singapore company" vs "Chinese-funded enterprise": where the entity is incorporated, whether the cap table contains Chinese entities, and whether customers and revenue are globally distributed.
  • · If the company is incorporated in Singapore, has no Chinese entity on the cap table, and runs a business primarily oriented to North America, Europe or globally, it counts as a Singapore company.
  • · This classification determines whether you go down the headquarters-track route or require a special-handling pathway.

EP applications: going through the front door beats relying on connections

  • · EP thresholds for core executives such as CEO/CTO are not high, and do not require prior hiring of local staff.
  • · Salary must be paid out of the Singapore entity.
  • · About 90% of rejections are due to errors in the application, not policy issues.
  • · Headcount of 10–20 is the most permissive band; once you scale, diversity requirements apply.
  • · Recommendation: apply yourself online first; only engage an agent if you get rejected.

The actual red line: monocultural teams Diversity is not window-dressing; it is a substantive requirement

  • · Singapore does not require a fixed local-headcount ratio, but it cares a lot about team diversity.
  • · Unacceptable: an all-China team, an all-India team, an all-US team.
  • · Acceptable: China + North America + Europe + Australia.
  • · Monocultural companies rarely become truly international — this is a long-running observation from experience, not political correctness.

Counterexample: Manus is a special case

  • · EDB raised Manus on its own initiative, but made clear that it was a special case.
  • · Manus faced an external-regulatory time window and had to relocate its core team in a very compressed timeframe.
  • · EDB engaged deeply: coordinating in advance with the Ministry of Manpower and breaking the relocation into batches.
  • · The expectation was that part of the original team would have to be left behind.
  • · Bottom line: ordinary companies should follow the ordinary process, where success rates are higher. Special assistance is reserved for situations where there is no alternative.

Real-world sequencing: compliance before tax incentives Compliance first, incentives second

  • · For a company approaching $100M ARR, EDB recommends the following sequence:
  • · Step 1: tax compliance — international tax plus transfer pricing, with a clear story for why revenue sits here and why profits are allocated this way; engage one of the Big Four directly.
  • · Step 2: define the headquarters positioning.
  • · Step 3: only then consider tax-rate incentives.
  • · Tax-rate incentives: 17% → 15% (around 15 staff), 17% → 10% (25 staff, achieved by year 5).
  • · Incentive policy rewards structures that already work; it is not designed to rescue broken structures.

Two high-leverage programmes

  • · R&D grants: a good fit for technical teams of up to 10 people, available for genuine R&D work tied to core technology.
  • · Local fresh-graduate training subsidy: hire five local fresh graduates full-time, mentored by the CTO or core engineering staff, with the government subsidising part of the salary.
  • · Enterprise Compute Initiative: the government subsidises local companies' use of AI infrastructure providers; you need a Singapore-based team to participate, and it can be combined with AWS, Microsoft or Google.

Company incorporation and directors

  • · It is common for the Singapore entity to be incorporated with an agency-supplied nominee director while the founder still has no EP.
  • · Workflow: use the Singapore entity to apply for your own EP, then assume the directorship after the EP is granted.
  • · Directors carry legal liability.
  • · You can run the process yourself or delegate it to a third-party agent.
💬 Takeaway: Singapore's policy stack is built for companies that already work — and don't want to crash on structural issues. If you're still validating PMF, the government doesn't matter much. But once your risk shifts from "can we make this work" to "structure, compliance, long-term sustainability", this kind of conversation starts to pay off.

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All submissions are structured and anonymised before publication.