Southeast Asia’s biotech and healthtech sectors are gaining momentum, driven by government-led initiatives like Singapore’s National Precision Medicine Strategy and Thailand’s “Thailand 4.0” plan. These efforts aim to drive R&D and deliver more personalized, data-driven healthcare solutions.
Artificial intelligence sits at the heart of this transformation, promising faster drug discovery, improved diagnostics, and more targeted treatments. Yet despite its potential, the region faces a widening infrastructure gap. Without accessible, high-performance computing, many researchers and startups lack the tools needed to turn scientific promise into real-world breakthroughs. Bridging this gap is essential if Southeast Asia is to fully realise its biotech ambitions.
Bottlenecks in healthcare innovation
Despite AI’s growing role in life sciences, adoption across Southeast Asia remains limited. According to IDC in 2024, just 23 percent of companies in the region are considered transformative in their AI use. Biotech and healthtech startups are particularly constrained, often lacking affordable access to high-performance computing resources such as GPUs and AI-optimised cloud infrastructure.
These tools are essential for running advanced applications, from single-cell analytics to protein folding and predictive diagnostics, all of which are crucial for next-generation healthcare solutions. And yet, these tools remain out of reach for many innovators. The disconnect between ambition and investment is stark: while Southeast Asia’s AI opportunity is estimated at $60 billion, actual investment stands at just $1.7 billion.
This slow progress, compounded by this funding gap across the regional startup ecosystem means that biotech innovators, like their peers in other sectors, face challenges in accessing high-performance computing resources such as cloud infrastructure and GPUs.
Without scalable and affordable infrastructure, groundbreaking technologies risk being confined to well-funded labs, excluding emerging startups that could otherwise play a pivotal role in regional innovation.
The promise of scalable AI infrastructure
Scalable AI infrastructure enables rapid data processing and model training, which is essential for turning research into real-world solutions. In areas such as genomics and drug development, scalable infrastructure enables rapid hypothesis testing, compressing what once took months into days.
By enabling state-of-the-art compute infrastructure, companies like Nebius are leveling the playing field. To illustrate an example, research biotech startup Simulacra is combining quantum chemistry with deep learning to build scalable wave function foundational models for molecular systems that can generate high-accuracy dataset for drug and material discovery pipelines.
As for precision medicine, Generative AI is already transforming the way we identify genetic markers for diseases, and generate synthetic datasets for rare diseases. AI-powered diagnostics are also reducing the time to detect diseases, and improving diagnostic accuracy to help researchers design more targeted therapies and predict individual drug responses.
Beyond diagnostics, AI’s potential in drug discovery is massive. AI can reduce development timelines and cut costs by billions by optimising trial processes and simulating drug interactions before clinical trials begin. In fact, AI-driven models are expected to be involved in the discovery of up to 30 percent of new drugs by the end of 2025.
AI also has the potential to transform healthcare by speeding up the development of personalised treatments. It can help improve the creation of customised vaccines, cell therapies, and enable the design of proteins that could lead to medical breakthroughs such as targeted cancer treatments, genetic disorder cures, and more effective vaccines. Through tools like Nebius AI Studio, researchers can fine-tune open-source models for domain-specific applications, ensuring both performance and cost-efficiency.
Creating an ecosystem of equitable access
The healthtech and biotech sectors cannot thrive in isolation. Public-private collaboration is essential to build the infrastructure backbone Southeast Asia needs. This, coupled with the region’s need for US$60 billion (S$78 billion) in digital infrastructure investment over the next five years, to meet the demand of its growing AI ecosystem.
A compelling example of what’s possible with the right infrastructure is our collaboration with Converge Bio. By leveraging Nebius’ cloud-native AI platform, Converge Bio analysed 36 million single cells in just days instead of months; A game-changing timeline that significantly sped up their research, bringing them closer to their goals.
This significantly accelerated their research into disease mechanisms and helped advance the development of novel therapeutics. More importantly, the cloud-based AI infrastructure enabled them to bypass the financial and operational burdens they needed without the capital expenditure of building their own infrastructure.
Southeast Asian startups and research institutions can tap into GPU-optimised cloud services to accelerate innovation in genomics, immunotherapies, and precision oncology, all critical areas for advancing personalised healthcare in the region.
Existing programs such as Nebius for Startups program, which provides up to $150,000 in cloud credits for eligible startups, and Nebius AI Lift, a collaboration with the NVIDIA Inception startup program, are examples of how private entities can empower local innovators. Such efforts, combined with supportive national policies, are essential to ensure that AI’s benefits are widely shared and not concentrated among the few.
Bridging policy, capital, and cloud to power biotech innovation
AI infrastructure is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity for healthcare innovation. If Southeast Asia is to achieve its vision of a digital health economy, it must invest now in the tools that enable researchers, startups, and clinicians to deliver real-world impact.
With partnerships across both government and private sectors, Southeast Asia can create an ecosystem that supports sustainable, long-term growth in AI-powered healthcare, enabling breakthroughs that improve patient outcomes and save lives.
At Nebius, we are committed to supporting this transformation. By providing scalable, secure, and affordable AI infrastructure, we aim to empower Southeast Asia’s innovators to accelerate research and drive meaningful change. Together, with the right investments and collaborative efforts, Southeast Asia can emerge as a leader in global healthcare innovation.
Dr. Ilya Burkov, PhD, MSc, BEng, is the Global Head of Life Science and Healthcare Growth at Nebius, where he leverages a rich blend of clinical and technical expertise to drive innovation and cloud adoption. With hands-on experience from Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and a solid background in cloud technologies from AWS, Ilya has built a reputation for delivering complex projects that transform the healthcare and life sciences landscape.
At Nebius, he leads initiatives that integrate AI and cloud solutions to tackle industry challenges, boost operational efficiency, and enhance patient outcomes. Passionate about transforming life sciences through AI, Ilya blends practical healthcare insights with strategic project leadership to address the sector’s toughest challenges.
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