SG Growth Capital: Empowering Singapore’s Innovation Hub with Trusted Intelligence
SG Growth Capital (SGGC), the investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board, invests in high-growth global technology companies and deep-tech startups to generate commercial returns and foster national development — anchoring it within Singapore’s vibrant ecosystem. As the organization navigates fast-moving industries like biotech, semiconductors, and clean energy technology, it requires rigorous processes to validate hypotheses and scale portfolio success.
To support this mission, SG Growth Capital utilizes AlphaSense as its enterprise-grade intelligence system, leveraging Generative Search, the TegusExpert Transcript Library, and AI-driven workflows for its strategic decision-making processes.
The Opportunity: The “Too Much Data” Problem
As a lean team managing a diverse and complex investment landscape, SG Growth Capital faced the challenge of "too much data" without enough verifiable context. In industries like deep tech and AI, the speed of evolution often outpaces traditional research methods. Before AlphaSense, conducting customer due diligence or sector-specific deep dives required a "hard-working manual way" involving extensive networking and cold outreach.
“We will never have enough boots on the ground to cover every sector in depth because every single silo is evolving and changing so quickly,” explains Serene Keng, Director, Portfolio Growth & Communications, SG Growth Capital. “In the past, reaching the right customers for validation could cost us a week of networking and scheduling just to get organized.” Without immediate access to on-the-ground information, the team risked missing critical blind spots in high-stakes environments. This manual, network-dependent approach created several friction points that hindered the team’s ability to move at the speed of the market:
- Data Overload: Navigating a "smorgasbord" of data without a centralized "truth layer" to verify credibility
- Manual Inefficiency: Relying on personal networks and cold calls for due diligence, which typically required a week of lead time
- Rapid Sector Evolution: Keeping pace with highly dynamic sectors like AI and the digital economy where "boots on the ground" are insufficient
- Information Silos: Lacking a systematic way to bridge the gap between initial market scanning and deep validation
The Turning Point: Identifying the Layer of Truth
The search for a solution was triggered by the need for a "truth layer" — an intelligence partner that provided not just AI-generated noise, but cited, verifiable evidence. AlphaSense stood out for its ability to bridge the gap between initial market scanning and deep due diligence. The breakthrough came when the platform demonstrated its capacity to augment human thinking rather than just automate tasks.
“AlphaSense helps us stitch our thoughts in a more coherent way,” says Serene Keng. “We use our brains for thinking, but AlphaSense validates that thinking and surfaces what we don’t know. It’s the difference between talking to a friend who might be right and having cited information you can actually trust for an investment committee.”
The Solution: AlphaSense Becomes the Trusted Source of Truth
SG Growth Capital leverages AlphaSense as a "smorgasbord" of research tools tailored to specific stages of the investment lifecycle.
- Upstream Scanning: The team uses Generative Search to determine "where to fish" in the vast ocean of emerging industries, identifying investable areas across global markets.
- Customer Due Diligence: By accessing the Tegus Expert Transcript Library, SGGC gains immediate access to verbatim customer perspectives, bypassing weeks of manual outreach.
- Strategic Reviews: AlphaSense is embedded into twice-yearly strategic review processes, where it is used to set half-year priorities and evaluate competitor architectures.
- Workflow Integration: Rather than acting as a standalone chatbot, AlphaSense "joins the family" by integrating into existing enterprise workflows, helping analysts prompt their way through deep queries and complex reports.
The Impact: SGGC Scales Intelligence Production 4x with AlphaSense
The implementation of AlphaSense has transformed productivity into high-quality output. SGGC has scaled from producing approximately five reports in a given period to nearly 20 reports in just one to two days. Beyond speed, the primary impact is executive confidence.
“Productivity certainly has changed, but more importantly, the quality of our insights has improved,” notes Serene Keng. “With Tegus, we click a button and hear the words of the customer directly. There’s no need to doubt the information because it’s all cited and verifiable. It gives us the right to be a trusted advisor to our portfolio companies and stakeholders.” By surfacing blind spots, AlphaSense ensures that SGGC’s investment hypotheses are rigorously interrogated before capital is deployed. This has had a resulting impact of:
- 4x Productivity Increase: Scaling from five reports to 20 reports in a 48-hour window.
- Compressed Due Diligence: Replacing a week of manual networking with instant access to the Tegus Expert Transcript Library.
- Enhanced Decision Quality: Moving from "talking to a friend" to utilizing cited, verifiable data for Investment Committee standards.
- Strategic Blind-Spot Surfacing: Identifying critical metrics and competitor architectures that were previously overlooked.
- Trusted Advisor Status: Using high-quality, verbatim insights to lead meaningful C-suite conversations with portfolio companies.
The Future: What’s Next
Looking ahead, SG Growth Capital envisions AlphaSense evolving from an insights engine into a true "super analyst." As the organization focuses on anchoring the next generation of global champions in Singapore, the role of AI-driven systems will be central to managing the dual mandate of commercial success and national innovation.
“I like to think about AlphaSense as a teammate — an augmented part of my research brain,” says Serene Keng. “I’m excited to see the platform move toward a ‘super analyst’ model where it not only crunches information but continues to shock, surprise, and delight us with things we didn't even know we were looking for.
The Final Word
If you’re smart, you need tools that make us smarter. AlphaSense provides that unfair competitive advantage by turning data into trusted information, and information into actionable insights.
Our journey with AlphaSense over the last year and a half has been a transformation in how we conduct rigorous research. By utilizing Generative Search and the Tegus Expert Transcript Library, we have effectively eliminated weeks of manual legwork, allowing us to focus our time on high-level strategy and investment committee standards. AlphaSense isn’t just an AI tool; it’s a systematic part of our process that ensures we are standing on solid ground with every decision we make.
At SG Growth Capital, our mission is to anchor the world’s most innovative companies in Singapore, a task that requires absolute confidence in our market intelligence. AlphaSense has become an essential part of our 'super analyst' toolkit, using its Tegus Expert Transcript Library and Generative Search to compress a week’s worth of research into a single day. The platform helps us eliminate blind spots and provides the cited, verifiable evidence we need to lead high-stakes executive conversations and drive Singapore’s innovation hub forward.
