BLOCK71 partnership and founder community

Partnership model / BLOCK71

Continuous access to the innovation pipeline.

A membership and residency model for corporates who want ongoing access to NUSX's founders, demo days, and venture pipeline — hosted at BLOCK71.

Proof

How our partnerships
actually played out

Microsoft AI Accelerate

Challenge: Microsoft wanted Southeast Asian AI ventures building on Azure and selling at scale. Enterprise Singapore wanted grant money reaching the strongest of them faster.
What NUSX brought: Cohort sourcing, programme operations, mentor and investor network, and B71 physical infrastructure across major Asian hubs.
Structure: 10-week sprint closing at Investor Day. Microsoft runs technical build and go-to-market. A joint panel with Enterprise Singapore, venture capital and industry selects the cohort, and that selection is the grant route.
Outcome: 26 ventures in the 2025 cohort, including Addlly AI. Up to 150 AI startups routed to the Startup SG Tech grant over three years.

Innovation challenge · 2025-Present

Deep SAGE

Challenge: TIS Inc. wanted deep tech deal flow outside Japan and a way to act on it. Their read on the sector: the constraint is execution, not technology.
What NUSX brought: Global cohort sourcing, programme operations, a mentor and fractional executive bench, and B71 Singapore as the incubation site inside an 11-city network.
Structure: Six-month accelerator toward pre-Series A. Fractional executives embedded in founding teams for 12 weeks, executing rather than advising. Joint judging panel with TIS Ventures.
Outcome: First cohort of 10 ventures from Asia, Europe and Latin America. S$1.5M to Logice, Sembuh AI and StratifiCare at the inaugural Demo Day. S$7.6M committed by TIS over three years.

Boeing BUILD Singapore

Challenge: Eight of the ten fastest-growing air travel markets over the next two decades sit in India, China and Southeast Asia. Boeing had no university partner in the region delivering BUILD.
What NUSX brought: Applicant pipeline across students, graduates, alumni and early-stage founders. Programme operations, mentors, judging network, and three months of incubation at B71 Singapore.
Structure: One-week bootcamp at Boeing's Training Campus, Singapore. Teams stress-test users, operational requirements, systems integration and route to scale with Boeing specialists. Demo Day pitch to a panel from Boeing, Singapore Airlines and Panther Capital.
Outcome: Nearly 100 applications, 10 finalists, three funded teams. Maleo, COOLAH and Urbanflow each took US$10,000 and three months at B71 Singapore, with Boeing and NUSX backing the pilots that follow.

Corporate Challenge · 2022-2023

Stellar Lifestyle TAP

Challenge: Stellar Lifestyle manages more retail and advertising space than anyone else in Singapore's rail network. Its 600 transit retailers were mostly small businesses coming out of the pandemic without the technology to compete.
What NUSX brought: Sourcing and curation against Stellar's written brief, mentors drawn from industry and founders, MVP support, and access to the NUSX startup community.
Structure: Inaugural cohort of the Technology Access Programme. Three months to business model, commercialisation strategy and MVP against Stellar's brief. Six months of proof of concept test-bedded inside SMRT stations with the retailers themselves. Demo Day decides what scales.
Outcome: 30 applications, 14 startups onboarded, including Waffle Technologies and Reachbots Automation. Stellar committed $100,000 to MVP builds and a further $200,000 for what it chose to scale.

Joint Platform · 2018-Present

Pier71

Challenge: MPA could fund maritime technology but not get it adopted. The constraint was deployment, not invention.
What NUSX brought: Startup sourcing and screening, B71 as the physical base, mentors, the Landing Pad for overseas entrants, and a corporate partner network to test against.
Structure: Smart Port Challenge, now in its tenth edition. Corporate partners write the problem statements. MPA's MINT Fund backs pilots at S$50,000 each. Accelerate and Ascend carry startups through validation and scaling.
Outcome: Nearly 170 startups since 2018, S$150M raised collectively, 62 corporate partners. 26 solutions deployed by industry. Ship Supplies Direct cut delivery costs up to 30% in its pilot with PSA International.

Joint Platform · 2018-Present

ICE71

Challenge: Singtel Innov8 wanted cybersecurity deal flow and capability close to the Singtel Group. Southeast Asia had no dedicated hub to source it from.
What NUSX brought: B71 as the physical hub, startup sourcing, incubation space and community, and the government relationships that brought CSA and IMDA in behind it.
Structure: 3-month accelerator delivered with CyLon, Europe's cybersecurity accelerator and an active early-stage investor. Inspire for pre-startup founders, Scale for international teams entering Asia. Demo Day pitches to investors, partners and customers.
Outcome: 34 startups through four Accelerate cohorts. 16 raised S$18M collectively, including cheques from Singtel Innov8 and NUSX.

Joint Research Network · 2010-2015

GSK

Challenge: GSK wanted NUS disease research inside its drug pipeline. It had run a Singapore research centre since 2005 and could make the molecules. What it needed were the disease targets and models coming out of NUS labs.
What NUSX brought: Sat on the steering committee that selected and funded projects, alongside the Biomedical Research Council, NMRC and Duke-NUS, and routed NUS investigators into the call.
Structure: Academic Centre of Excellence, a virtual research network launched 2010. Proposals accepted at any time, reviewed quarterly, adopted projects funded against periodic review.
Outcome: Four projects into GSK's discovery units within eight months. Gavin Dawe of NUS paired with the stem cell and neurodegeneration units to develop an animal model for testing experimental medicines.

Joint Research Network · 2010-2015

Bayer

Challenge: Bayer wanted small-molecule leads from outside its own labs, in therapeutic areas where its pipeline was thin.
What NUSX brought: Routed NUS researchers into the call and held the institutional position, since submissions went out non-confidentially before any agreement existed.
Structure: Grants4Leads. Provided grants to assess the lead, evaluation under material transfer or confidential disclosure, then a funded joint lead-exploration project if the biology held.
Outcome: 80 applications from across South-East Asia, leading to deeper funding for 3 applications to improve medication adherence in elderly people with chronic diseases.

FAQ

Common questions

[1] What's the difference between the four partnership tiers?
[2] How long does a typical partnership last?
[3] Who do I contact to get started?
[4] Is there a cost? How is a partnership resourced?

If you're curious, reach out.

We'll tell you more about what the membership involves and where it's headed. Tell us a bit about your company and what kind of engagement you're hoping for.

Reach out

Continuous access to the innovation pipeline.