Annual Report April 2025 – March 2026

A*STAR continues to focus our efforts on building and growing capabilities that strengthen Singapore’s competitiveness, resilience and future growth.

A particular area of emphasis this year was the advancement of AI-assisted discovery across multiple areas from advanced manufacturing to biomedical research, supported by A*STAR’s investments in Data-AI-Compute capabilities and collaborations with our partners.

Advancing Singapore’s Innovation Agenda

In FY2025, A*STAR delivered 1,252 industry projects, with companies investing over S$830 million in R&D. A*STAR spin-offs also raised more than S$440 million in follow-on funding.

We doubled down on a portfolio of high-potential research areas where A*STAR has built deep capabilities and strong partnerships. Our early investments in semiconductor research have enabled Singapore to build strategic capabilities in silicon photonics, a leading technology for optical interconnects that allow more rapid and efficient data transfer between chips.

These capabilities have translated into commercial impact, including the acquisition of A*STAR spin-off Advanced Micro Foundry (AMF) by GlobalFoundries in 2025. GlobalFoundries, a leading semiconductor manufacturing company, has also expanded its research collaboration with A*STAR in advanced packaging and silicon photonics.

The National Semiconductor Translation and Innovation Centre (NSTIC) hosted by A*STAR continued to advance key semiconductor domains. NSTIC (GaN) opened in 2025 and is Singapore’s first national facility dedicated to gallium nitride semiconductors. The new material is better suited than traditional silicon-based chips to power electronics and high-frequency radio applications like 5G and 6G communications, radar and satellite communications.

These developments reflect the importance of the long-term sustained investment in R&D which has translated into globally competitive technologies that strengthen Singapore’s role in the semiconductor value chain.

In advanced manufacturing, AI is supporting Singapore’s next phase of industrial transformation. AIMfg, the AI Centre of Excellence for Manufacturing developed jointly with the Ministry of Trade and Industry, is accelerating the adoption of AI capabilities across product innovation, operations optimisation and sustainable manufacturing.

At Mencast Marine, an SME that produces engineering solutions for the offshore and marine industries, A*STAR’s advanced manufacturing and AI capabilities supported improvements in design and additive manufacturing. The collaboration led to a 30% increase in propeller manufacturing productivity, opening new opportunities in global supply chains.

We are excited about our partnership with CuspAI which will bring together frontier AI with A*STAR’s materials science capabilities to accelerate the design, synthesis and validation of new materials, enabling discoveries to reach industry more quickly.

We continue to push frontiers in biomedical discovery and human health. The national flagship cohort study on maternal and child health, Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO), continues to produce valuable data from over 800 active participants. In the last decade, research based on GUSTO data has generated over 400 publications on how early-life factors such as maternal well-being and childhood screen exposure affect children’s mental and physical health.

The National Precision Medicine (NPM) programme has entered Phase III with the establishment of the PRECISE Genomic Environment, a data infrastructure that enables clinical-grade genomic data processing and secure integration across research and healthcare systems.

AI is also strengthening healthcare-related research. Fragle, a new AI-based method, analyses the size of tumour DNA fragments in blood to enable faster and more efficient cancer monitoring. In collaboration with NCCS and Lucence, a precision health company, A*STAR is developing UNITED 2.0, an AI-powered cancer profiling platform.

Curiosity-driven science remains central to A*STAR’s mission, generating discoveries and capabilities that can be translated into wider benefit for Singapore. One example is a nano-scale biopsy needle developed with collaborators from the National University of Singapore, that enables researchers to track gene activity in living cells over time, opening new possibilities for pharmaceutical R&D.

Nurturing Singapore’s STEM Pipeline

At the heart of A*STAR’s work and impact are our people. A*STAR’s scholarship programmes continue to nurture talent across scientific disciplines, advancing the careers of more than 1,500 scholars, 80% of whom are working on Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise priorities. To further strengthen this pipeline, we launched A*STAR Graduate Scholarship tracks in semiconductors and quantum, as two strategic priorities for the agency.

As we conclude RIE2025 and look towards the next phase of Singapore’s innovation journey, we thank our colleagues, scholars, partners, and the wider A*STAR community for their dedication, collaboration and belief in the power of science to make a difference. We look forward to continuing our collective work to pursue breakthrough science, and to turn discoveries into consequential impact.