Vietnam’s stock market surpasses 12 million domestic investor accounts
Vietnam’s stock market has crossed a significant threshold, surpassing 12 million domestic investor accounts as of January 31, 2026. Nearly 245,000 new accounts were opened in January alone.
Retail investors account for the overwhelming majority of these registrations. The dominance of domestic individual investors highlights the central role of retail participation in driving market activity and liquidity. The figures point to an increasingly broad base of individual engagement with equity investment across the country.
Foreign participation, while comparatively smaller in scale, has also shown gradual growth. More than 50,500 foreign investor accounts have been registered to date, with most belonging to individual investors.
The milestone also places the market ahead of official policy benchmarks. The current total has already exceeded the government’s target of 11 million investor accounts by 2030 under its securities market development strategy.
Overall, surpassing the 12-million-account mark indicates expanding financial participation and rising public confidence in Vietnam’s capital markets. The surge in new registrations suggests growing financial literacy and a strengthening culture of equity investment among retail participants. While retail flows continue to serve as the main driver of growth, the gradual increase in foreign accounts points to ongoing international engagement. Looking ahead, maintaining market stability, enhancing transparency, and deepening institutional investor participation will be essential to supporting sustainable, long-term development.
Why do many Vietnamese startups choose Singapore as their legal activity?
An increasing number of Vietnamese-founded startups are choosing to register their legal entities in Singapore while keeping their technical, product, and operational teams based in Vietnam. This structure has emerged as a clear trend within the regional startup ecosystem.
The shift is not driven by a lack of domestic talent or innovation capacity. Vietnam’s technology landscape continues to expand, with an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 active tech startups demonstrating strong product development and engineering capabilities. Instead, the decision to incorporate offshore is largely influenced by institutional and market considerations.
One of the primary factors is institutional friction and transaction costs. Startups operating in Vietnam often face higher procedural burdens, including delays and inconsistencies in regulatory enforcement, when registering or scaling their businesses locally. These frictions can slow growth and complicate fundraising efforts, particularly when engaging with international investors. By contrast, Singapore offers a lower-friction regulatory environment.
Singapore’s role as a gateway to global capital further reinforces its appeal. Approximately 39 percent of venture investment deals involving Vietnamese startups include Singapore-based investors, underscoring the city-state’s function as a regional capital hub.
The institutional strengths of Singapore’s system are also a key consideration. The country enables fast online company registration, maintains clear regulatory roles, offers controlled sandbox mechanisms, and provides post-setup support tools. Exit processes are comparatively straightforward, making the jurisdiction particularly attractive for startups targeting global funding and scalable growth.
Vietnam, for its part, is undertaking reforms to improve its business environment, including e-registration systems, regulatory sandboxes, digital payment initiatives, and capital market development. However, practical inconsistencies in enforcement and ongoing procedural friction remain challenges compared to Singapore.
The trend of Vietnamese startups choosing Singapore as their legal jurisdiction reflects more than a corporate address change. It points to broader structural differences in institutional quality and transaction costs between Vietnam and Singapore. Singapore’s predictable, digitized, and investor-friendly legal framework helps reduce time and risk, which is crucial for startups in fast-moving markets and for attracting international capital. Meanwhile, Vietnam’s ecosystem continues to improve, but procedural inconsistencies and enforcement gaps still create “institutional friction” that can slow growth for high-velocity tech ventures. This pattern underscores that ecosystem competitiveness is not just about talent or ideas, but about how quickly and seamlessly startups can be formalized, scale, and access global markets.
Insignia Ventures Partners backs Diaflow’s agentic AI automation platform in seed round
At the core of Diaflow’s offering is its agentic AI automation model. The platform allows users to describe their goals in natural language, after which autonomous AI agents execute complex workflows end-to-end without requiring step-by-step configuration.
The company was founded by a team of global operators: Jonathan Viet Pham serves as Chief Executive Officer, Lai Pham as Chief Technology Officer, and Anh Doan as Chief Information Security Officer.
Diaflow operates under a global model, with headquarters in Singapore and engineering teams based in Vietnam and Silicon Valley. This structure combines international market access with strong technical execution.
Since its launch in February 2025, Diaflow has gained early traction, surpassing 10,000 users and organizations worldwide, with over 60 percent of adoption from the U.S. market.
Diaflow is positioned at the forefront of the shift from AI assistance to AI execution. Its focus on secure, autonomous, goal-driven agents aligns with enterprise demand for productivity and workflow automation. Strong U.S. traction and a security-first position are key advantages. The company’s long-term success will depend on scalability, reliability, and differentiation in an increasingly competitive agentic AI landscape.
Korean investment firm TheVentures launches $8 Million Vietnam-focused movie fund
Named TheVentures Movie Fund, the vehicle will invest in Vietnamese film projects on a project-by-project, equity basis.
While South Korea’s film market is experiencing a slowdown, Vietnam is seeing rapid box office growth and continued expansion of its cinema infrastructure. Despite having nearly double South Korea’s population, Vietnam operates only about one-fourth the number of cinema screens.
TheVentures also points to compelling unit economics as a core part of its investment thesis. Production costs in Vietnam are estimated at roughly one-tenth of those in Korea. Capital cycles are also shorter, averaging approximately 10 months compared to 18 months in Korea. According to Chris Kim, Partner at TheVentures, projected returns on investment range between 700 and 800 percent.
The launch of the movie fund builds on TheVentures’ deepening commitment to Vietnam. The firm has established a legal entity in Singapore with a venture capital license and previously launched an $11.4 million Vietnam-focused fund in 2023. To date, it has built a portfolio of more than 20 Vietnam-linked companies. In parallel, TheVentures has diversified beyond technology startups, expanding into offline retail and education, including the buyout of Chicken Plus Vietnam.
The broader policy environment also provides supportive tailwinds. Vietnam’s government has set a target for cultural industries, including film, to contribute 7 percent of GDP by 2030, reinforcing the long-term growth.
This signals rising institutional confidence in Vietnam’s entertainment economy as a scalable investment class, not just a creative industry. TheVentures’s thesis is driven by infrastructure expansion, lower production costs, faster capital turnover, and high scalability. This move also reflects a broader shift in strategy - from pure tech VC to blended models combining media, culture, consumption, and offline assets. If executed well, the fund could become a platform for Korea–Vietnam creative collaboration and cross-border IP monetization.
Hanoi establishes state–private innovation centre to accelerate urban tech development
Hanoi has officially established the Hanoi Innovation Centre JSC under a state-private partnership model, aiming at accelerating the city’s innovation ecosystem.
The centre operates as a joint-stock company with 70% state ownership, adopting modern corporate governance standards to improve transparency, efficiency, and market responsiveness.
At its core, the Hanoi Innovation Centre is designed to tackle pressing urban challenges. Priority areas include traffic congestion, pollution, and data governance. Through technology pilots and international collaboration, the centre aims to introduce practical, scalable solutions that can be tested and refined within the city’s dynamic urban environment.
In parallel, the centre will develop a comprehensive startup pipeline structured across four stages: connection, incubation, platform development, and scaling. This end-to-end framework is intended to guide startups from early engagement through commercialization and growth.
Looking ahead to the 2026-2030 period, Hanoi has set clear targets for the initiative. The city aims to incubate more than 200 innovative startups and mobilize over VND 500 billion, equivalent to approximately $20 million, in funding.
Technology-enabled public services also form a key component of the strategy. Planned initiatives include AI-driven urban safety solutions and the development of a citizen-focused super-app designed to integrate public services into a unified digital platform. Such efforts signal an ambition to enhance governance efficiency while improving user experience for residents.
Genesia Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm operating in Japan and Southeast Asia, with a strong belief in the long-term potential of Vietnam’s digital economy. Beyond providing capital, the fund actively supports startups through strategic guidance and connections to a broader regional network.
