Spending on AI tools by founders rose 20% last year, according to an in-house study of over 37,000 regional SMEs by Aspire, a Singapore-based fintech firm. 

“This signals a reallocation of capital towards efficiency,” Andrea Baronchelli, Aspire’s co-founder and CEO, tells Fortune. Usage of Anthropic’s Claude model grew by three times; usage of Cursor, an AI-coding tool, rose by 4.2 times. “This suggests that startups are now using AI to code and build their core products, not just for administrative tasks.”

Aspire’s study also reports a surge in AI startups. Thirty percent of new startups in Singapore were involved in AI, according to Aspire’s data. The figure is even higher in the Chinese city of Hong Kong: Two-thirds of new businesses onboarded in late 2025 came from the AI sector. 

“There’s a high level of institutional readiness in both economies, as well as a new breed of founder who is leaning into a climate of intense global competition and disruption,” he says. “It’s great to see so many APAC businesses embrace disruption rather than resist it.”

Andrea Baronchelli started his career as an investment banker in London. But he quickly grew restless of working in systems “where the rules were fixed, legacy-driven, and largely unquestioned”.

In 2012, Baronchelli took his first leap into entrepreneurship, moving to Hong Kong in 2012 to join the founding team of Asian e-commerce unicorn Lazada. He served as the platform’s Vietnam CEO from 2014 to 2015, before taking on the role of chief marketing officer till 2018, when Lazada was acquired by China’s Alibaba Group.

In 2018, alongside fellow entrepreneur Giovanni Casinelli, Baronchelli founded Aspire, an “all-in-one” B2B fintech app helping small business owners automate various financial processes such as expense tracking, and doling out cross-border payments to both employees and vendors. Today, from its base in Singapore, Aspire serves over 50,000 SMEs across 16 countries, including eSIM provider Airalo, e-commerce firm Carousell, and news website Tech in Asia. 

The platform is also backed by top-tier investors globally, including U.S.-based Y Combinator and PayPal, Chinese tech firm Tencent, and the Southeast Asian outfit of VC firm Sequoia Capital.

“Fintech is quite compelling. A new industry is being created under our eyes, and it’s very exciting to be able to capture that growth,” quips Baronchelli. 

Though he declined to reveal exact numbers, Baronchelli says the platform has averaged 50% growth year-on-year—a figure that he hopes to maintain.

Growing trust in fintech apps, including personal finance and investment apps like Syfe, StashAway and Endowus, have also fueled the growth of enterprise-focused apps like Aspire. “We definitely see trust being built in the industry,” says Baronchelli.

While its key markets are “tier one” cities in the Asia-Pacific region, Aspire announced its intention to head west last December, having obtained licenses to operate in the U.S., Australia and Europe.

“We want to be exactly where new businesses are created,” quips Baronchelli. “This represents the biggest opportunity for us—businesses that want to try new things, that are early adopters of technology—we want to be close to them.”