Singapore’s next AI wave: From the incredible to everyday 

SPECTACULAR breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI), led most recently by DeepSeek R1, have rocked global markets.

Outperforming incumbent technologies in major benchmarks, DeepSeek has prompted investors to reassess valuations, causing volatile stock swings for established tech firms. Crucially, it delivers top-tier performance at a lower computational cost, raising hopes that AI – once dominated by big-budget titans – may soon be within reach for a far broader range of businesses. “By making AI more accessible,” says Florian Douetteau, CEO and co-founder of enterprise AI company Dataiku, “the gains can be shared by companies that adopt it widely”.

This wave of widespread adoption comes at a pivotal moment for Asia-Pacific, where the AI market is projected to surge from US$50.41 billion in 2023 to US$734.76 billion by 2030, potentially unlocking S$4.1 trillion in economic value – S$1.1 trillion in South-east Asia alone. Singapore, in particular, stands to gain S$198.3 billion in economic benefits by 2030 as AI adoption scales, reinforcing its top ranking on Salesforce’s 2023 AI Readiness Index. This enviable position is the result of over a decade of sustained policy efforts, from the foundational Smart Nation 1.0 initiative to the more recent Smart Nation 2.0 and National AI Strategy (NAIS) 2.0 frameworks. Notably, 46 per cent of organisations in Singapore already consider themselves AI-mature, underscoring AI’s vast potential to enhance day-to-day operations – what we call everyday AI.