June 27, 2026 - Singapore
TheFirst
Spark
Full-day symposium for Asia's student founders
Singapore's next generation of AI builders, founders, and operators starts here. Join a full-day symposium for students and young builders exploring how to build, work, and start up in the AI age.
Why attend
Spend a day learning how student founders are building in the AI age.
TheFirst Spark brings together students, founders, operators, investors, and ecosystem partners for a full day of demos, debates, panels, office hours, and networking. It is designed to help students understand what is possible, what to build next, and who can help them move faster.
See What Student Builders Are Shipping
Watch demos from student teams and understand what is possible when young builders move quickly with AI tools.
Understand Asia's AI Opportunity
Hear how founders, operators, and investors are thinking about AI company-building across Singapore and the region.
Learn How To Start And Grow In AI
Get practical paths for moving from idea to prototype, users, pitch, and early founder resources.
Navigate Your Career In The AI Age
Explore how students can join fast-moving teams, build technical depth, and spot meaningful opportunities.
Find The Right People And Resources
Meet collaborators, mentors, investors, and ecosystem partners who can help students move faster after the event.
Speakers
Meet our speakers
Ms Jasmin Lau
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Ms Jasmin Lau is currently the Minister of State in the Ministry of Digital Development and Information and the Ministry of Education. She is also the Minister-in-charge of the Government Technology Agency (GovTech) which builds tech for public good and supports public agencies’ efforts in driving digital transformation. Ms Lau is a Member of Parliament for Ang Mo Kio GRC and oversees the Seletar-Serangoon Division. She is passionate about supporting residents in need and strengthening community health for her residents. She also serves as the Vice-Chairperson of the Ang Mo Kio Town Council. Before entering politics, Ms Lau spent almost 20 years in the public service. She previously served as Deputy Secretary (Policy) at the Ministry of Health from 2022 to 2025, where she oversaw the development of healthcare finance, manpower and regulatory policy. From 2019 to 2021, she served as the founding Executive Director of the Singapore Global Network in the Economic Development Board.
Guan-ru Huang
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Guan-ru is a Cloud Solutions Architect at Nebius, bringing over seven years of experience across cloud infrastructure, DevOps, and backend engineering. Before joining Nebius, he spent nearly three years at Ataya as a Software Engineer working across backend systems built on Golang, and prior to that served as a DevOps Engineer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise specialising in cloud and hybrid cloud consulting.
Thomas Jeng
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Thomas Jeng is part of OpenAI’s go-to-market team, leading startup and venture capital relationships across Asia-Pacific. He has held leadership roles at Aspire and 500 Global, and has experience driving growth at early-stage startups like Gnowbe. Thomas started his career in strategy consulting at BCG and Gartner and is active as an investor and mentor in the region.
Jialu Zhong
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Jialu is one of the cofounders of HeyMax, where she channels her experience from Big Tech and entrepreneurship to create innovative solutions in the travel and loyalty rewards space. She is passionate about designing user-facing products that address real-world problems and make daily life easier for everyone. Whether simplifying complex systems or creating intuitive tools, she thrives on building solutions that connect with users and provide meaningful value, especially in this AI era.
Marcus Cheu
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Marcus is a founding member of Notion's APAC team, having joined the team after being a Notion Ambassador previously. He has a wide range of experience from big tech firms like Salesforce to running his own startup.
June Lee
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June Lee is a senior technology executive with over 30 years of experience driving growth, customer success, and regional expansion across Asia Pacific. As SVP Social Impact and Head of Asia Pacific at Workato, June leads both the company’s APAC business strategy and its philanthropic initiatives, a dual mandate that reflects her belief that commercial leadership and meaningful impact go hand in hand. Known for her ability to navigate complex markets and build high-performing teams, June has spent her career helping enterprise organizations harness technology to unlock new opportunities. At Workato, she works with some of the region’s most ambitious companies as they move from operational complexity to digital agility, powered by AI and automation. June is a recognized leader in the enterprise technology space and a champion for purposeful, people-first growth across APAC.
Sam Waldo
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Sam leads Airwallex's startup segment across Asia, helping founders move money across borders as they build and expand globally. He joined Airwallex after nearly a decade as a founder himself across fintech, non-profit, and e-commerce, and he was named to Forbes 30 Under 30.
See Ee Ling
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During her 11 years at Grab, Ee Ling has traversed multiple roles including launching and scaling the private hire car business in Malaysia and Singapore; serving as Chief of Staff to both founders; leading IPO readiness, PMI and transformation efforts; and most recently, leading Product Strategy, Product Operations, Consumer Experiences and Platforms. She’s currently on sabbatical but enjoys advising and problem solving with founders, execs and next-gen leaders when she’s not tending to her 7 year old boss at home.
Candice Ong
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Candice helped build Zalora and then ShopBack into one of the region’s biggest shopping apps. She then moved into investing as COO and partner at Xora Innovation, a fund that backs startups built on hard science and frontier tech. Today she invests in early-stage companies and sits on a few boards, including Pick Network and ACE.
Joshua Wong
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Joshua Wong is the founder and CEO of Hypotenuse AI, an AI-native platform for enterprise ecommerce companies. Previously an AI researcher at Amazon Alexa/Shopping and a University of Cambridge computer science graduate, he has been recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30, Tatler Gen.T, and Prestige 40 under 40.
Yangshun Tay
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Yangshun Tay is the founder of Cliya AI, an agentic creative platform. Previously Staff Engineer at Meta, he led the development of meta.com and created Docusaurus 2, one of Meta's most popular open source projects. These days, he's exploring the intersection of AI, frontend engineering, and design.
Eugene Cheah
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Eugene is the founder of Featherless.ai — home to the world's largest collection of AI models accessible through a single API — and a core contributor to RWKV, an open-source foundation model under the Linux Foundation. A veteran of Singapore's tech scene, Eugene has shipped across startups, banks, and insurance firms, and is the creator of GPU.JS, one of the most widely used open-source GPU compute libraries in the JavaScript ecosystem.
Mark Pereira
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Mark Pereira is the Head of Partnerships, Strategy & Growth for AI Singapore (AI Products). He spearheads the partnerships and GTM strategy for the SEA-LION initiative, developing open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) that better understand Southeast Asia’s diverse contexts, languages, and cultures. His role drives the adoption and value creation of AI solutions, fostering partnerships and positioning Singapore as a global AI hub in multicultural AI development. He focuses on delivering hyper-local nuance understanding and impact in key sectors across Southeast Asia.
Charles Wong
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Charles Wong is co-founder and CEO of Bifrost AI, where he's building the data engine that teaches AI and robots to understand the physical world. Bifrost generates physically accurate 3D worlds so machines can learn new objects, tasks, and environments in hours instead of months. The company is backed by Airbus Ventures, Peak XV's Surge, Wavemaker, and Techstars, and works with partners like NASA JPL on data for Moon and Mars exploration.
Vincent Teyssier
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Vincent Teyssier is Volunteer CEO at Better.SG Limited. Better.SG is Singapore’s largest Tech for Good community, with over 3300 volunteers. We incubate our own community projects, support other charities with their tech needs, and upskill our community with mentorship and masterclasses.
Ivan Tung
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Ivan is currently building Pragnition Labs, a team of cracked people that works with NCS to make Singapore AI-native. Pragnition Labs sit with the people doing the actual work, learn what wastes their time, and ship products built on frontier AI research to large enterprises and government agencies across Singapore.
Jay Teo
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Jay Teo is a GTM architect scaling AI capabilities and commercialisation in APAC across startups, enterprises, and governments, working with foundational model labs and upcoming frontier startups.
Darren Lee
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Darren is the Founding Agent Strategist at Sierra’s APAC office, where he partners large enterprises to transform customer experience using AI agents. Previously as part of BCG’s TMT practice, he built GENie, the firm’s proprietary AI agent platform and scaled it to dozens of enterprises and millions of customers globally. He focuses on the intersection between AI, strategy and deployment and holds a degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Yale-NUS.
Patrick Lim
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Patrick has served as CEO of ACE.SG since October 2023. With over 20 years of experience in public service, he brings a solid track record in a diverse portfolio from industry and ecosystem development, policy formulation, and venture building. As a member of the pioneer secretariat team, Patrick played a foundational role in driving Singapore’s national entrepreneurship movement. His early leadership was instrumental in key milestones, including the corporatisation of ACE.SG and the strategic development of JTC LaunchPad@one-north.
Imane Jamal Eddine
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Imane Jamal Eddine is a GM and Head of Sales at Microsoft, where she leads the Digital Natives business across Asia, spanning ASEAN, ANZ, Japan, and Korea. She partners with the region’s fastest-growing startups and scale-ups, helping them innovate, build, and scale globally using cloud and AI. With a strong focus on AI-native companies, Imane works closely with founders and leadership teams to unlock growth, enter new markets, and co-create transformative solutions across industries including financial services, healthcare, and retail. Beyond her role at Microsoft, Imane is deeply committed to empowering the next generation of leaders. She is the founder of Lean In Women in Tech Singapore, where she champions diversity and supports women navigating careers in technology—especially in the rapidly evolving AI era. She is also the host of the podcast Coffee with Imane, Leaders of Change, where she highlights inspiring voices shaping the future of business and innovation.
Ee Ling Lim
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Ee Ling Lim is a global ecosystem builder and the former Head of Market Launch at 500 Global, where she led teams to scale over 65 startup accelerator programs across Israel, Canada, Egypt, Asia, and beyond. Recognised as one of Singapore’s Top 100 Women in Tech and a Bett Asia EdTech 10 honouree, Ee Ling also shapes future generations as a council member for Singapore’s National Youth Council and National Youth Fund.
Hongfei Xia
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Hongfei is an Investor at January Capital. Hongfei is a senior member of January Capital’s venture capital investment team, and is responsible for sourcing new opportunities, with a particular focus on software. Prior to joining January Capital, Hongfei began his career in investment banking at Bank of America, later moving to Silver Lake as a Principal focused on late-stage technology. Most recently, he served as the Corporate Development Lead for Google, where he oversaw M&A and growth investments across the Asia-Pacific region.
Sponsors and Partners
Meet our Sponsors and Partners
Symposium details
AGENDA
Build Sprint
Register for TheFirst Spark Challenge
Join the 7-Day Build Sprint before AI Youth Symposium and turn your idea into something real. From 19-25 June, students can build from home, solo or in teams, and submit an AI project for a chance to pitch live on symposium day.
Why Join?
Build something real before symposium day.
Use the week to ship, sharpen, and submit an AI project for live feedback, pitch opportunities, and partner resources.
Get AI builder credits
- All Build Sprint participants get $250 in OpenAI API credits and ChatGPT Pro for 3 months.
- 1 month ElevenLabs Creator tier (normally $22/month).
Get feedback from experienced mentors
Use the sprint to get sharper on users, demos, product direction, and what to improve next.
Pitch on symposium day
Shortlisted teams may present live in front of students, founders, speakers, investors, and partners.
Win exciting prizes
- $25K worth of OpenAI credits.
- 3 months of ElevenLabs Pro tier per team member (worth $297/team member).
- $15K worth of OpenAI credits.
- $10K worth of OpenAI credits.
- 6 months of ElevenLabs Scale tier per team member ($1980 value/team member).
How It Works
- 1Sign up on Luma
Register for TheFirst Spark on Luma and indicate that you want to join the Build Sprint.
- 2Receive your Build Sprint info pack
Once your registration is confirmed, we'll send you the full brief, timeline, submission details, and builder resources.
- 3Build from home
Use the sprint window from 19-25 June to build, test, and polish your project, solo or as a team.
- 4Submit by 25 June, 12:00pm
Submit your project through Devpost with: deck; GitHub repo, if available; 1-minute YouTube demo showing how your product works.
- 5Get selected to pitch
Shortlisted teams will be invited to pitch live on symposium day.
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can attend TheFirst Spark?
TheFirst Spark is open to students and young builders across Singapore, including JC, polytechnic, IHL, university students, and NSmen.
Do I need to be building something to attend?
No. You can attend the symposium even if you are not joining the Build Sprint or demoing a project. Come to learn, meet people, and explore what you might want to build next.
What is the 7-Day Build Sprint?
The 7-Day Build Sprint is an optional pre-event sprint from 19-25 June for students who want to create, test, or sharpen an AI project before symposium day. You can build from home, solo or in a team.
Can I join the Build Sprint and still attend the symposium?
Yes. The Build Sprint leads into the 27 June symposium, where selected teams may get the chance to demo their work live.
Where is the event?
The venue will be announced closer to the event date.
Is the event free?
Yes. Both the Build Sprint and symposium day are free to join.
Contact Us
Need more info or have questions about TheFirst Spark?
Email us at letsbuild@wavesparks.co and we'll get back to you as soon as we can!