Gurpreet Singh and the company a laboratory could not hold

The photograph has four people in it. Gurpreet Singh stands at the left, alongside Renzhe Bi, Malini Olivo and Augustine Tee. Together they received Singapore’s President’s Technology Award in 2024. It is a useful photograph to keep in mind when reading a story about a founder. A chief executive’s title takes one line. The history of the work takes rather more room.

Singh is the founder and CEO of Respiree, a company that grew out of A*STAR research in Singapore. His path runs through electrical engineering, a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT and an MBA at Singapore Management University. By September 2026, the business was adding international investors to its Series A syndicate and planning further expansion of its commercial team.

There is a familiar way to tell that sequence: begin with the doctorate, proceed to the company, finish with the financing. It would make a tidy paragraph. It would also leave out much of the work. Singh’s story becomes more interesting when the people around those milestones enter the picture.

The engineer before the executive

One of those people is Chee Wei Lee, a former research colleague. Lee recalls working with Singh at the Data Storage Institute from 2012 for roughly three years, on a team studying plasmonic lasers. His public recommendation remembers a researcher comfortable with theory, experimental equipment and measurement. It also describes someone easy to work with.

That combination is worth lingering over. Theory asks whether an idea makes sense. An experiment asks whether it survives contact with equipment. Working in a team introduces a third test: whether the people involved can actually get something done together. Lee’s recollection puts Singh in all three settings, long before the later financing announcements.

Singh’s MIT education entry lists lasers on silicon chip and computational opto-electronics, with an affiliation dated 2013 to 2015. His doctorate is in electrical engineering, completed under an A*STAR scholarship. These are fairly specific roots for someone whose public role now involves running a company. Before the expansion plans came the work of understanding what light and electronics could do.

He also earned an MBA at Singapore Management University. The two qualifications sit comfortably together on a biography, although they point toward different kinds of responsibility. Engineering provides ways to investigate a problem. Business education introduces the organisation that must take responsibility for the answer. In Singh’s later career, those two subjects would have plenty to discuss.

A discovery acquires a company name

At A*STAR, Singh became part of a research team with Olivo and Bi. Their backgrounds brought different kinds of technical expertise to optical sensing. A*STAR’s retrospective places the development of a miniaturised wearable device in 2017. The team then sought collaborators who could help identify where their technology would be useful, eventually connecting with Tee.

That sequence gives the origin story some texture. Research produced an instrument. Finding its application required more conversations. The people who could develop the technology and the people who could help put it to work had to find one another. A small device can have a surprisingly extensive social life.

Respiree was founded in 2019 as an A*STAR spin-off. An investor’s account names Singh, Chris Ho, Patrick Cozzone and Olivo among its founders. The business therefore entered the world with a collective history already attached. Singh’s role in creating and leading it belongs inside that history, alongside the research and commercial expertise of others.

The transition brought practical support from A*ccelerate, A*STAR’s commercialisation arm. That support included technology development, licensing, introductions to investors and mentorship. Each sounds modest when reduced to a noun. Together they describe much of what has to happen before a laboratory result can support a functioning company.

The people a young company needs

On 9 March 2022, Respiree announced a S$4.7 million seed round, led by Oriza Greenwillow Technology Fund, with SEEDS Capital and other investors participating. The announcement described Singh as the incoming chief executive. Its expansion plans included the US, Australia and Singapore. A company with laboratory roots was acquiring a wider commercial itinerary.

The release also acknowledged advisory support from PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub. This is the less glamorous furniture of a founder’s life: the people who help make a financing process possible, alongside the people whose names appear in the announcement. The visible milestone is the round. The surrounding work involves getting an organisation ready to use it.

Technical capacity required attention too. Through A*STAR’s T-Up initiative, scientists were seconded to Respiree between 2020 and 2023, completing three projects. The arrangement gave the young company access to expertise from more than one research institute. It offers a concrete example of what collaboration means once the company has its own name and responsibilities.

A secondment brings a person into the work. It can help turn an institutional relationship into day-to-day technical capacity. For Singh, the continuing connection with A*STAR extended beyond the original invention. The same ecosystem that helped produce the research could also help the company develop the skills needed for its next stage.

“Talent is extremely scarce, but extremely important and pivotal.”

Gurpreet Singh

Singh’s remark about talent gives the business story a useful centre of gravity. Money can appear in a single number. Expertise is distributed among people, with different experience and different jobs. A founder has to bring enough of them together, at the right time, for the organisation to do more than its founding team could manage alone.

His 2024 welcome for two leadership recruits made that division of labour explicit. Jonathan Anderson joined to lead US sales and business development. Daniel Yap joined to oversee operations in Asia-Pacific, including supply chain, manufacturing quality and customer operations. The appointments concerned different parts of the business. International ambition was gaining people with defined responsibilities.

The address book travels

In April 2024, Respiree announced its US incorporation and a residency at JLABS in South San Francisco, beginning that February. It had already participated in JLABS in Shanghai and Singapore. The sequence traces an international business through places where companies can work within a broader network of expertise and potential partners.

Singh’s own announcement of US operations put proximity at the centre: the company wanted to be closer to customers, partners, investors and collaborators. It is a practical description of expansion. A new address matters because of the conversations it makes easier to have. Distance has a way of turning every ordinary meeting into a small expedition.

For a founder based in Singapore, this widening network adds another dimension to the job. Research colleagues remain part of the story, while commercial colleagues enter it. The organisation needs people who can develop its technology and people who can carry its business into another market. Singh’s responsibilities follow the company into those different rooms.

Four names on the award

The President’s Technology Award was presented on 27 September 2024. Singh received it jointly with Olivo, Bi and Tee for the work behind Respiree. The recognition returned attention to the collaboration from which the company had developed. By then, Singh’s public identity included the executive role. The award kept the research team in view.

There is something instructive about a shared award arriving while a business is expanding abroad. The company is looking ahead; the recognition asks it to remember how it began. Both perspectives belong in a founder’s portrait. The photograph records a group whose different contributions preceded the later corporate milestones.

Olivo’s role also runs through Singh’s development as a scientist. The award citation identifies him and Bi among the researchers she trained. That relationship connects mentorship with later collaboration. A scientist can be someone’s trainee, become a colleague and help take shared work into a new organisation. A title captures only one point in that longer relationship.

A larger table, still being set

On 23 July 2025, Respiree announced a US$11.6 million Series A led by We Venture Capital and ClavystBio. Singh’s public response credited the company’s team for its consistent work and discipline. The announcement also described expansion of Respiree’s US footprint, including a headquarters presence in Houston.

Another update arrived in September 2026, when ARKRAY & PARTNERS and Bizedge Capital joined the Series A syndicate. Respiree said the expanded round would support growth of its global commercial team and its US presence. Singh spoke about the company’s ability to grow and invest internationally. The work of assembling people and resources was continuing.

Seen across these years, his career has a particular rhythm. First come the technical collaborators, then the commercialisation advisers, the seconded scientists, the recruits and the investors. Each group adds another kind of capacity. The founder’s job widens as the organisation acquires more things it must know how to do.

That is what makes the photograph of four award recipients a good place to return. It gives the story faces beyond the CEO’s. Singh took on the responsibility of building Respiree, and the company’s subsequent milestones show how that responsibility grew. The laboratory supplied a beginning. The organisation needed people willing to keep carrying the work forward.