As many as 78 percent of Singapore IT leaders say a lack of real-time data infrastructure is stalling their efforts to scale AI, even as 75 percent are already deploying or piloting agentic AI solutions.

Silicon Valley-based technology company Confluent released the figure at its 2026 Data Streaming Report, which surveyed 4,625 IT leaders across 14 countries.

Globally, 72 percent of IT leaders have encountered three or more challenges when scaling AI initiatives, with the figure rising to 78 percent in Singapore.

The biggest barrier is insufficient infrastructure for real-time data processing at 72 percent, up from 61 percent in 2025; followed by ambiguity about data lineage, timeliness, and quality at 66 percent; fragmented ownership of data at 65 percent; and limited ability to seamlessly integrate new data sources at 64 percent. A persistent AI skills and expertise gap also grew to 71 percent globally, up from 66 percent in 2025.

In Singapore specifically, the most common challenges are insufficient infrastructure for real-time data processing at 78 percent, fragmented ownership of data at 73 percent, and insufficient skills and expertise in managing AI at 73 percent.

These infrastructure challenges are also slowing agentic AI deployment. Some 95 percent of Singapore leaders experience or anticipate struggles with data infrastructure and quality, 95 percent with legacy system integration, and 93 percent with LLM reliability. Over 73 percent report stalled agentic AI projects, with half completely abandoning the work, comparable to Asia Pacific rates of 74 percent and 53 percent respectively.

As many as 86 percent of Singapore IT leaders rate continuous and up-to-date business visibility as a top priority. Of which, data sovereignty and provenance in sharper focus is the key development as 86 percent say effective management of data sovereignty is important, while 82 percent value data provenance and tracking capabilities.

On investment priorities, 86 percent of Singapore leaders rank data streaming as an investment priority, alongside AI and machine learning solutions at 85 percent and data management and governance at 90 percent. Among organizations already investing, 65 percent report creating richer customer experiences and 61 percent report greater automation of internal processes.

Greg Taylor, Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific at Confluent, said businesses across Singapore are rapidly embracing AI. But as AI systems become more embedded in business processes, trust cannot come from regulation alone, and the onus is on business leaders to assess whether their data infrastructure is ready to support AI at scale, the executive highlighted.

Shaun Clowes, Chief Product Officer at Confluent, said most organizations do not have an AI investment problem but a data problem. As organizations move beyond experimentation and deploy AI across critical business processes, the companies making the most progress are investing not only in AI itself but in the data foundations needed to support it, the executive added.

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