Temasek Foundation

Temasek Foundation

The foundation was established in 2007 with endowments gifted by Temasek Holdings, the Singapore state investor, to formalise decades of ad-hoc community giving. Chairman Jennie Chua and CEO Ng Boon Heong now steward this capital, which traces its origin to Temasek's consolidated investment returns rather than a single family's operating wealth. Temasek Foundation directs funding toward social resilience, international exchange, and science-and-nature programmes. Asset classes are effectively grant-based, covering education, healthcare services, agritech, and climatetech. It partners with Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory on initiatives such as the Decarbonising Rice project, which applies advanced biology to reduce methane emissions. The foundation operates within the wider Temasek Trust ecosystem, collaborating with the Philanthropy Asia Alliance to syndicate large-scale philanthropic capital with like-minded regional families and institutions. The foundation deploys from a combination of its own endowments and named sub-funds, including the OSCAR Fund and the Richard Magnus Endowment. Physical infrastructure includes Temasek Shophouse, a heritage property at 28 Orchard Road that serves as an events and co-working hub for the social sector. The professional network footprint extends through membership in AVPN, the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network, which connects the foundation to Asia's wider impact-investing and philanthropic deployment community. Temasek Foundation sits inside the Temasek Trust ecosystem — a governance architecture that separates philanthropic long-term capital from the risk-taking balance sheet of Temasek Holdings. This structure makes the foundation a structurally independent allocator for social outcomes, with a board that includes prominent ASEAN business figures such as Arif Rachmat, Executive Chairman of Indonesia's TAP Group.