South-east Asia uniquely positioned to capitalise on AI boom: China-Asean panel 

[SINGAPORE] South-east Asia is uniquely positioned, geopolitically and demographically, to benefit from the growth of artificial intelligence, said panellists at the China-Asean Business Leaders Summit 2026 on Monday (Sep 21).

A large young population and massive growth potential are other factors too.

Speaking at a roundtable titled “The AI Opportunity in Asean – From Infrastructure to Intelligence Applications,” panellists identified AI as the region’s next growth frontier.

“Over the past one year, South-east Asia has attracted over US$55 billion in committed investment in AI infrastructure… and data-centre capacity has doubled within twelve months in Johor,” said Serena Yang, deputy chief executive officer of financial firm, CGI, the summit organiser.

Yang added that the region has a population of nearly 700 million, with an average age of under 30.

Jeff Shi, Asia-Pacific president of SenseTime, said Asean is uniquely positioned to choose between the AI technologies of the US and China, the two main AI superpowers.

“Not many countries or places have the freedom to choose from both of them… and being able to choose is one key opportunity for the local markets,” said Shi, adding that a youth demographic further amplifies this opportunity.

The five-layer AI Ecosystem

On financing, Terence Koh, head of telecom, media and technology in UOB’s sector solutions group, sees the ecosystem as comprising five layers: energy, chips, infrastructure, models and applications.

Energy is the fundamental building block, Koh said, while chips and data centres are seeing large demand and growth in the region, where the bank is “playing deeply” in the financing.

“Many manufacturers, because of the China +1 strategy, are coming into Asean,” said Koh. They are often looking for structured trade financing to buy chips from Nvidia and Broadcom to meet server demand, he added.

Meanwhile, models and applications are a growing space, where the bank is looking to attract funding into Asean, he said.

Industrial AI and sector deployment

Maple Xu, chief executive officer and executive director, UniDT (Shanghai), noted that growth opportunities for Asean come from computing power.

“Nowadays, investors in computing power centres pay a lot of attention to the consumption of the computing power, they will consider the usage and solution as a whole,” said Xu.

Industrial AI, Xu noted, would also be a huge potential market especially in Asean, which is a global manufacturing hub.

“China can focus on the foundation of the industrial AI foundation model under development, while Asean can focus on the application and solution scenario,” she said.

In the autonomous vehicle and robotics space, Chris Li, co-founder and chief financial officer of Neolix, one of the key players in the space, noted the importance of supportive regulatory environments for AI adoption.

“The more supportive the regulation… the faster… startups and applications may emerge,” said Li, citing an example that Singapore has recently granted permission to Neolix to deploy its autonomous vehicles for mail delivery and logistics.

Meanwhile, for investing, Frank Ip, GTM & Strategy, Asean/Hong Kong of LinqAlpha, an AI institutional investment research platform, noted that investors in Asean are under-tooled compared with New York or London, where a portfolio manager or analyst usually covers more companies but with a smaller team than their Western peers.

He added that Asean is not one market – it comprises many markets, with different languages and different rules.

“Our core belief is that the edge is no longer sitting in the model, but the system. Whoever can cover those local companies, in the local language, owns the regional intelligence layer,” said Ip.

Riding the AI wave in Asean

To sustain the momentum, panellists urged regional leaders to open data borders, welcome international talent and deepen collaboration among stakeholders.

Shi said Asean could adopt an approach to international talent similar to that of the US.

Meanwhile, Li said that Asia countries could form a multilateral framework for cross-border data exchange to accelerate the use of applications and models within it.

Koh stressed the need for long-term commitment in time, resources and mindset from all stakeholders

“Invest in people, not just infrastructure. If you combine the capital with data, talent and AI, you win the decade,” said Ip.