The Index · 2026 Edition

The City 100 Index.

The City Index ranks the top 100 cities by where the next wave of venture growth is heading. It is the deliberate inverse of the benchmarks that rank where ecosystems already stand, and it exists to answer one question: where does the opportunity remain uncaptured.

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The Framework

Two scores. One ranking.

Every city earns two scores. Maturity for today's readiness. Frontier for where it's heading. Together they form the blended ranking that drives the index.

The Maturity Index

Today's readiness.

Capital depth, regulatory clarity, talent density. The structural conditions that make a city deployable for institutional capital right now.

Capital depthTalent densityRegulatory clarity

The Frontier Signals

What's coming next.

Sovereign mandate, founder momentum, ecosystem velocity. The forward-looking indicators that price in tomorrow's value before today's market does.

MandateMomentumVelocity

The Blended Index

0.0

RANK #40

One ranking.

Maturity and Frontier combine into a single Blended score. The Blended score determines the city's rank within the 100, and powers the regional and tier breakdowns inside the paper.

Maturity weightedFrontier weightedFinal rank

Worked example: Baku, 2026 edition.

Six Dimensions

How a city earns its place.

Abu Dhabi

Capital depth

Sovereign capital, private equity, venture funding, and credit availability per capita.

Singapore

Talent density

Engineering, finance and policy talent, plus the depth of repeat-founder networks.

Riyadh

Sovereign mandate

National vision plans, fund-of-funds programmes and government capital allocation.

Sydney

Regulatory clarity

Fund regimes, foreign direct investment treatment and ease of cross-border structuring.

Bangalore

Ecosystem activity

Founder formation, exit volume, capital recycling and second-generation entrepreneurship.

Stockholm

Infrastructure

Digital connectivity, energy reliability, transport and the foundations of scale.

City Case Studies

Three cities. Different tiers. One thesis.

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Manila

Philippines · S.E. Asia · POP 14.7M

ACCELERATOR

Maturity

Frontier

Blended

64.6

Rank

Manila is one of Southeast Asia's standout markets, and almost unique in the region for sitting evenly balanced across readiness and opportunity. Fintech super-apps anchor the ecosystem, with two unicorns in GCash, through Mynt at roughly $5 billion, and Maya, both of which have built genuine financial-services reach across a large, young, mobile-first population. At around 21 startups per million people, the market is strikingly under-built relative to its size and digital adoption, which is exactly the white space early capital is paid to find.

The Horizon

Manila is capital-efficient, with low startup density that the Index reads as white space. GCash and Maya have built real distribution, and a GCash listing would mark the ecosystem's first major exit and reprice the market around it. National funding rose 67% in 2024, signalling an ecosystem still inflecting upward rather than plateauing. The watch points are infrastructure and the depth of growth-stage capital, both improving but not yet at regional-leader level. For an investor, Manila offers scale and momentum together, a rarer combination than its mid-table maturity score suggests.

Ecosystem Snapshot

Unicorns

GCash and Maya have built real financial-services distribution nationwide.

+67%

Funding growth 2024

A Southeast Asian standout, an ecosystem still inflecting upward.

26.6

Median age

Squarely in the productive sweet spot for founders and consumers.

#14

Sao Paulo

KEYSTONE

#52

Kigali

PIONEER

Read the Full Index

The Capital57
City Index.

Access the full report. Full 100-city ranked list.