Singapore, 25 March 2026 – The Hub brings together the strength of academia and industry collaboration in supporting Singapore’s deep-tech entrepreneur pipeline.
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and UOB have unveiled the UOB Innovation Hub, which aims to incubate more than 90 venture teams and start-ups over the next five years and strengthen Singapore’s entrepreneurial pipeline.
Located on the NTU Singapore campus, the Hub houses incubation rooms and collaborative workspaces for venture teams and deep-tech start-ups in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), sustainability and advanced technologies, aligned with Singapore’s key priorities for innovation. The facilities provide shared infrastructure and dedicated spaces, allowing founders to develop their ventures without incurring high upfront costs.
The unveiling was witnessed by Guest of Honour, Chairman of the National Research Foundation, Singapore, Mr Heng Swee Keat.
The UOB Innovation Hub is supported by a landmark S$110 million gift pledged by UOB and the Wee Foundation to NTU in April last year. With government matching, the gift will create an endowment of up to S$275 million.
One of the largest philanthropic gifts to the University, the donation supports NTU’s strategic priorities in innovation, entrepreneurship and education through programmes and facilities that nurture future-ready leaders and founders.
Professor Ho Teck Hua, NTU President, said, “Today, we launched the UOB Innovation Hub. This is a key milestone in NTU's efforts to deepen our culture of innovation across the university.”
“The Innovation Hub is a space where members of the NTU community can push the frontiers of innovation by taking risks, testing bold ideas, and turning them into solutions that could change the world. It will help incubate the next generation of startups and develop them into SMEs of the future. In time, the Innovation Hub will become a cornerstone of Singapore’s start-up ecosystem.”
“We are grateful to UOB and the Wee Foundation for making this happen.”
Mr Wee Ee Cheong, Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, UOB, said, “We believe that every young person deserves the opportunity to learn, grow and thrive, and that innovation should be harnessed to uplift people and communities. Achieving this vision requires strong collaboration between academia, industry and the public sector to bring ideas, expertise and opportunities together.”
“The spirit behind the UOB Innovation Hub is to translate ideas into solutions with tangible value. We will continue to deepen our partnership with NTU to support innovation, enterprise and talent development for the long term.”
Among the first start-ups to occupy space at the UOB Innovation Hub are PQStation, a quantum cybersecurity start-up that is helping organisations transition to quantum-safe systems; and Synvo AI, which has developed a platform that helps artificial intelligence (AI) systems understand context and retain information across different types of data while maintaining data privacy.
Supporting Singapore’s deep-tech entrepreneur pipeline
While continuing to be a key learning space with its smart classrooms, the UOB Innovation Hub will also host up to 90 start-ups, offering incubation facilities, mentorship, and programmes such as the NTU Venture Creation Programme.
The new incubation spaces will serve as a high-activity node in NTU’s venture creation pipeline, supporting teams ranging from students to scientists as they move from ideation to scale-up.
The Hub builds on NTU’s strong track record in innovation and entrepreneurship. Over the past ten years, NTU has incubated and launched more than 430 start-ups, including Amperesand, Eureka Robotics and VFlowTech.
Collectively, over the last decade, the NTU start-ups have raised more than S$600 million in investments.
NTU’s innovation spaces are also supporting start-up teams incubated under the S$50 million National Graduate Research Innovation Programme (National GRIP). One such start-up is Entropy Lab, which has developed a cooling paint known as PASTECOOL. Designed for buildings and infrastructure, the innovative paint helps to lower surrounding temperatures and improve indoor cooling efficiency by up to 50 per cent.
Growing early-stage student ventures
Among the teams to be incubated at the UOB Innovation Hub are student venture teams under the new NTU Venture Creation Programme, which provides entrepreneurial students with a platform to develop innovative, high-impact solutions with real commercial potential.
The Programme immerses students in early-stage venture building, where participants receive structured mentorship, hands-on training and opportunities to pitch their ideas to evaluators and investors.
Supported by UOB and the Wee Foundation, the programme aims to support up to 50 teams annually with seed funding of up to S$5,000 to develop prototypes.
The most promising ventures may receive scale-up grants of up to S$100,000 to test their ideas in real-world settings.
Industry mentors, such as those from UOB, will be working with NTU to support shortlisted teams to scale up their innovation and strengthen their commercial viability through networking opportunities and partnerships.
The programme’s potential was demonstrated in a pilot run last year, with 13 students forming six venture teams to tackle a range of challenges.
Among the student projects are:
- MiniClue, an AI tool that enables users to read and interact with documents directly on their own devices without uploading sensitive data to the cloud, reducing the risk of data breaches; and
- Peat Guard, a data-driven environmental restoration platform that uses satellite imagery and ground sensors to guide communities in the restoration of degraded peatlands. Verified restoration efforts can be translated into tradable carbon credits, creating both environmental and economic value.
By combining incubation infrastructure with programmes that nurture student- and research-driven ventures, NTU continues to play a key national role in translating ideas into commercially viable technologies and companies that support Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) goals.
Supporting children and youths across ASEAN to build a better future
To deepen and scale its CSR initiatives, UOB announced that it is establishing the UOB Foundation – a dedicated philanthropic platform to drive focused, purposeful impact across education, children and the arts.
Guided by its purpose of Building a Better Future for Generations, the UOB Foundation formalises the Bank’s long-term commitment to doing right by its communities, by providing a sustained platform to steward UOB’s giving more effectively across markets, deepening partnerships and scaling programmes across the region.
Through strategic philanthropy, employee volunteerism and partnerships with community stakeholders, the UOB Foundation will spearhead initiatives in the areas of education, children and the arts. These include initiatives that provide access to education through scholarships; build future-ready skills with digital and financial literacy programmes; empower children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds to reach their potential; and foster creativity and connection through the arts.
The Foundation will be operational from the second half of 2026 and will build on UOB’s CSR commitments, including a S$90 million donation pledge from the Bank to uplift the lives of 250,000 children and youths over the next five years.
