Philippine startups raised roughly $62 million across five equity rounds in the January-to-May stretch of 2026, according to Tracxn tracking data, a sharp climb from the same period a year earlier even as the broader ecosystem keeps expanding at a reported double-digit annual growth rate. On paper, the trend line for Philippine startup funding is finally pointing up after a rough 2025, when equity funding had dropped by more than half year over year.
The policy backdrop helps explain why. The Department of Information and Communications Technology’s proposed 18.9 billion peso budget for 2026 is meant to build on earlier momentum from the Department of Science and Technology, which between 2022 and 2024 directly supported 212 startups and incubated more than 2,233 additional ones through a national network of 158 technology business incubators. Separately, the CREATE MORE Act, passed in late 2024, expanded investment incentives and now offers tax exemptions running as long as 27 years for strategic projects, one of the more aggressive incentive packages in the region.
None of that has solved the deeper structural issue: concentration. Despite government branding efforts around emerging ‘startup cities’ in Iloilo and Davao, the large majority of the country’s active startups, estimated at roughly 1,200 by government-adjacent trackers, remain clustered in Metro Manila. Manila’s own median Series A round has reportedly reached around $14.5 million, above the global average tracked by Startup Genome, which tells a two-sided story: capital is genuinely available for startups already inside Manila’s investor network, but that network functions almost like a gated ecosystem relative to the rest of the country.
Sector-wise, fintech remains the clear leader. Philippine fintech startups raised roughly $72 million across nine deals in 2025, consistent with fintech’s dominance across Southeast Asia more broadly. Outside fintech, agritech and logistics plays like Mayani, which connects farmers directly to hotel, restaurant, and consumer buyers to streamline produce supply chains, are frequently cited as examples of underserved verticals with real demand but comparatively little capital chasing them, precisely because they tend to be based and operated outside Metro Manila.
The legal foundation for fixing this already exists in the Innovative Startup Act, Republic Act No. 11337, which established the Philippine Startup Development Plan and directed DTI, DOST, and DICT to jointly drive investment into the ecosystem. The real test now is the promised Startup Venture Fund under DTI, working with the National Development Company to match private investment into Philippine-based startups. Whether that fund actually reaches founders in Cebu and Davao, or simply reinforces Metro Manila’s existing head start, will determine whether the Philippines’ funding numbers keep climbing for the whole country or just for the capital.
Early-stage investors focused specifically on the Philippines remain thin on the ground, which compounds the concentration problem. Kaya Founders, one of the more active local funds backing pre-seed to Series A companies, typically writes checks in the $100,000 to $500,000 range, useful for getting a company off the ground but far short of what is needed to lead a competitive Series A on its own. That gap is precisely why Manila’s startups so often end up raising from Singapore-based or international funds once they outgrow local seed capital, reinforcing the same regional pattern seen in June’s Southeast Asia funding numbers, where Singapore absorbed nearly all of the late-stage capital in play.
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