SINGAPORE – NUS Enterprise has launched a new artificial intelligence platform that it says can cut weeks of work in assessing and commercialising university research to minutes, as it seeks to get more intellectual property out of the laboratory and into the market.
The platform, Nova, can analyse patents, assess licensing potential against market evidence, and flag potential licensees based on fit, said NUS Enterprise on Sept 24. It was developed together with Zima Labs, an AI infrastructure company.
“The real challenge is translation – finding the right opportunities, validating them early, building strong teams and connecting founders with the capital, industry and markets they need to scale,” said Tan Sian Wee, NUS senior vice-president (innovation and enterprise).
An estimated 70 to 80 per cent of university patents worldwide are never licensed due to the challenge of finding the right commercial partner as well as researchers not having visibility into the industry problems their work can solve.
Nova seeks to tackle this issue at NUS, with the platform also able to tailor proposals for the potential commercial partners and flag limitations on the patent.
In analysing a patent, Nova can recommend co-development and partnership routes, as well as potential investors and teammates. The recommendations made by the platform are supported by underlying evidence, doing in minutes what commercialisation managers take weeks to do.
“Every single step here is done automatically – we’ve just compressed a few man-weeks of work into minutes,” said Tan.
NUS Enterprise is also rebranding itself as NUSX as part of its evolution into an integrated venture-building and intellectual property commercialisation platform. It has also inked a partnership with UnternehmerTUM, a start-up hub in Munich, to connect Singapore’s deep tech ecosystem with the German city’s.
NUSX will establish its second global outpost in Munich as part of the partnership, while TUM Venture Labs, an initiative between UnternehmerTUM and the Technical University of Munich, is exploring setting up a representative office in Singapore. This follows the first outpost set up in Silicon Valley in June 2026. A third in Shanghai is slated for the fourth quarter of 2026.
A Munich-based venture capital (VC) firm affiliated with UnternehmerTUM is in discussions to join NUS Venture Capital Programme as its fifth VC partner.
“Through reciprocal outposts, deeper investment links, and new opportunities for our students and start-ups, we are bringing talent, research and capital closer together,” said Dr Tan. BUSINESS TIMES
