Agnes AI bets a Singapore-built AI app can win the long tail; 3M users, $10M Series A

Agnes AI is an all-in-one AI assistant developed and trained in Singapore — search, deep research, slide generation, design, sheets and group chat — running on proprietary models built from scratch.

That a Singapore-trained all-in-one AI workspace on proprietary small models can win the 'other 99.5%' of internet users that ChatGPT and premium tools ignore.

$10M Series A closed February 13, 2026, led by LOOK FORWARD VCC.

Bruce Yang — a Raffles Institution alumnus who studied at UC Berkeley, worked at Microsoft and LinkedIn, and built a Silicon Valley product with millions of downloads — came back to Singapore for an AI PhD at NUS. ChatGPT's arrival convinced him most AI companies would fight over paying users in rich markets and ignore the rest of the world, so he assembled a team from NUS, NTU, MIT, Stanford and Berkeley under parent company SAPIENS to build an AI platform for that long tail.

Agnes launched on Product Hunt on July 4, 2025 and crossed 2 million registered users with about 150,000 daily actives within four months, roughly half from Southeast Asia (TNGlobal). By December 2025 it reported 3 million users and 200,000 DAU, top-10 Google Play productivity rankings in the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, and a proprietary 7B model (Agnes-R1) claimed SOTA on reasoning benchmarks; it also partnered with Agora to add real-time multi-agent group chat.

Still scaling: in February 2026 it closed a $10M Series A led by LOOK FORWARD VCC, and by April 2026 the company said its broader ecosystem served nearly 10 million users and was approaching $20M ARR, with developer API services planned.

Yang targeted the 'other 99.5%' of internet users — Android-first, low-income, non-English speakers that OpenAI and Perplexity don't serve — instead of competing head-on for pro users.

A fully proprietary stack trained and hosted in Singapore let Agnes sell neutrality and local-language capability in markets wary of US and Chinese AI.

Product simplicity — search, research, slides and design in one app — lowered the barrier for first-time AI users and drove word-of-mouth growth.

Cost efficiency (about 90% of top-tier capability at roughly 10% of the cost, per Yang) made free and cheap tiers sustainable in low-ARPU markets.

The wedge isn't just a cheaper model — it's choosing customers the incumbents ignore (Android-first, non-English, low ability to pay), then building product and model around them.

As of September 2026 Agnes AI continues to scale from Singapore: after the February 2026 $10M Series A, the company reported in April 2026 that the broader ecosystem was approaching 10 million users and $20M ARR, with developer API services planned. It is expanding into Latin America and the Middle East, training larger regional models with NUS and NTU, and previewed a 'Vibepod' AI headset with Agora. User, valuation and ARR figures are company-reported.