AI

Singapore businesses expect agentic AI to generate a return on investment of $9.8 million over the next two years, nearly double last year's estimate of $4.9 million, according to "The SAP Value of AI Report 2026" study conducted by Germany's software giant SAP and Oxford Economics.

Only 29 percent of Singapore businesses can produce an audit trail to prove AI-driven decisions to regulators, shareholders, or customers, trailing the Asia-Pacific average of 38 percent who hold a tamper-proof audit trail.

Malaysia is the only market among eight surveyed in Asia where 100 percent of respondents plan to increase AI investment, according to a survey of 1,000 IT decision-makers commissioned by China's Alibaba Cloud and conducted by NielsenIQ.

China's technology giant Huawei has launched four AI data center infrastructure solutions in Malaysia targeting power supply, power protection, energy storage, and cooling.

Half of CEOs in Southeast Asia say innovation is critical to their business strategy, yet 32.5 percent of employees say they do not feel confident in innovation, influence, and cross-functional collaboration, according to a report of AI-powered payroll platform Omni HR.

The United States is investing more than $2.5 billion in Southeast Asia, headlined by a new artificial intelligence (AI) initiative to export American AI technology across the region and a $1.5 billion platform to build out energy infrastructure.

Japan's sogo shosha ITOCHU has established a Global Tech Center (GTC) and formed a partnership with FPT Software, the software contractor under Vietnam's technology giant FPT to drive AI transformation across its overseas group companies.

HSBC is establishing a Global AI Center of Excellence in Singapore in the second half of 2026, hiring more than 100 AI specialists to develop artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for deployment across its global network.

Huawei has joined Thai government agencies, telecom carriers, large language model developers, AI associations, and universities to launch the Thailand AI Ecosystem Initiative, in order to push Thailand as a hub for AI innovation in Southeast Asia.

Huawei Cloud has announced its Agentic Infrastructure for Thailand and launched an open beta of its CodeArts Agent coding platform at the Huawei Cloud Summit Thailand 2026, the Chinese giant said in a statement on Friday.