Breaking Barriers in Embedded Finance and Emerging Markets with Saison Capital’s Qin En Looi

PLUS: Former White House Executive Building In The Intersection of AI & Energy

Episode of the Week

In Episode #118 of Geeks of the Valley , we sat down with Qin En Looi , Partner at Saison Capital. Backed by Credit Saison (Tokyo-listed, ~US$30B AUM), Saison has 100+ direct investments and 15+ fund investments across Asia and LATAM.

We unpack why operator experience produces better investor how Qin En’s time scaling Glints shaped his emphasis on distribution, sales, and practical due diligence. The conversation dives deep into embedded finance. Saison’s playbook for pairing venture equity with tailored debt to de-risk lending-backed businesses, and the market signals that matter for India, Southeast Asia, Brazil and LATAM from eKYC and payment rails to regulatory openness. We close with a pragmatic look at web3 and digital assets: institutional tailwinds, realistic timelines, and how blockchain could become the new rails for moving money at internet speed.

About Saison Capital: Saison Capital is an early-stage venture fund (pre-seed to Series B) focused on emerging markets, backing founders across fintech, commerce and web3. Backed by Credit Saison (Tokyo-listed, ~US$30B AUM), the team combines operating experience with flexible capital solutions—100+ direct investments and active fund-of-funds activity across Asia and LATAM—to help startups scale faster and more sustainably.

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Venture Radar

The $100M Bet on Mercor: Recruiting as the New AI Bottleneck

Mercor, an AI-driven recruiting startup founded in 2023 by three 21-year-old Thiel Fellows, has raised $100 million in a Series B round at a $2 billion valuation. The financing was led by Felicis, with participation from Benchmark, General Catalyst, DST Global, and Menlo Ventures. Just a year earlier, Mercor closed its Series A at a valuation of roughly $250 million, highlighting the speed of its rise in one of the most competitive segments of the AI economy.

Mercor’s platform uses AI to streamline the recruitment process — sourcing, screening, and matching candidates at scale. Its rapid adoption is driven by a fundamental constraint in the AI era: while compute and infrastructure dominate headlines, enterprises are equally constrained by a shortage of qualified human capital. By positioning itself as the platform that supplies talent for AI and technology companies, Mercor is casting recruiting not as a traditional HR function but as part of the critical infrastructure needed to operationalize artificial intelligence.

The significance of this raise extends beyond the company itself. It signals that the market increasingly views human capital as a structural bottleneck on par with chips or cloud resources, and that solving this bottleneck could command enormous value. At the same time, the challenges are clear. Recruiting technology is a crowded space, with incumbents such as LinkedIn, Workday, and Indeed embedding AI into their offerings. Regulatory scrutiny around AI-driven hiring practices is intensifying as well. Mercor’s $2 billion valuation reflects extraordinary momentum, but its long-term trajectory will hinge on whether it can build durable, defensible economics and prove that its platform is more than a fast-growing niche solution.

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Geeks of the Week

Startup Name: Emerald AI

Geography: US

One-liner: Emerald AI transforms energy-intensive data centers into AI-powered grid allies.

Founder(s) Background: Managing Director (Energy & Innovation) at White House, Chief Strategy Officer at Orsted.

Thoughts:

• Energy-Orchestrated AI Compute

  Emerald AI positions itself as an orchestration layer linking AI compute to the power grid. With electricity emerging as the real bottleneck for model training and inference, its platform turns grid variability into an advantage by dynamically adjusting workloads without sacrificing reliability. If successful, it could become essential infrastructure for hyperscale data centers and AI labs navigating soaring energy costs and sustainability pressures.

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Startup Name: 310

Geography: US

One-liner: Design of novel biomolecules is the single most impactful advancement that will be enabled by AI in the coming decade.

Founder(s) Background: Staff Engineer (ML) at Meta, Senior Scientist at Amgen.

Thoughts:

• Generative Biology at Scale
  310 is positioning its “MP4” model as an engine that can generate novel proteins directly from functional prompts. By wrapping this capability in a Copilot interface that lets non-experts fold, dock, and visualize proteins with simple prompts, the company is reframing protein design as accessible infrastructure. If it can prove accuracy and reproducibility in the lab, 310 could become a standard layer in biotech — the go-to platform for turning biological intent into deployable molecular designs.

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Startup Name: Waxwing

Geography: US

One-liner: Waxwing turns your offerings into AI-generated plans, allowing you to scale more quickly.

Founder(s) Background: Senior Applied Scientist at Microsoft, Senior Research Scientist at LG Electronics.

Thoughts:

• Orchestrating Growth Beyond Automation
  Waxwing positions itself as a hybrid platform that blends AI planning with human execution, aiming to be the “growth engine” for businesses. Rather than simply generating marketing ideas or automating tasks, Waxwing delivers strategy + execution: instant AI-plans, a vetted expert marketplace, and tools to keep everything aligned with brand memory. By bridging ideation and delivery under one roof (strategy, content, project management, expert help), it addresses common friction points: scattered freelancers, inconsistent quality, and slow turnaround time.

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Founder(s) building in stealth

• Principal at Hedosophia

• Principal at LG Technology Ventures

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Deals of the Week

• Groq raises $750M at $6.9B valuation

  Chip startup Groq secured $750 million, pushing its post-money valuation to $6.9 billion. The funding strengthens its position as a major player in AI-focused semiconductors.

• Figure raises $1B+ in Series C

  Robotics and AI company Figure closed a Series C round of over $1 billion, valuing the company at roughly $3.9 billion. The raise highlights continued investor appetite for AI-enabled robotics.

• Hyperbound raises $15M led by Peak XV

  AI sales-tech startup Hyperbound raised $15 million in funding, led by Peak XV Partners with participation from other investors. The company plans to use the capital to scale its platform and expand internationally.

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Notable Mergers and Acquisitions

• CrowdStrike acquires Pangea Cyber
  CrowdStrike bought AI security startup Pangea Cyber for about $260 million to strengthen its offerings in protecting enterprise AI systems.

• IonQ acquires Oxford Ionics and Vector Atomic
  Quantum computing firm IonQ announced the acquisitions of Oxford Ionics and Vector Atomic in deals totaling $1.3 billion, expanding its hardware and applied quantum capabilities.

• Workday acquires Sana
  Workday purchased AI startup Sana in a $1.1 billion deal, gaining access to its AI-native learning and knowledge management platform.

• Atlassian acquires DX
  Atlassian agreed to acquire developer intelligence company DX in a deal valued at approximately $1 billion, aiming to enhance its engineering collaboration and analytics tools.

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This edition is brought to you in partnership with Stella Capital.