AI adoption reaches 243 million people in Southeast Asia as digital economy report projects growth

Google, Temasek and Bain & Company released their eleventh e-Conomy SEA report on October 21, estimating that generative AI has reached 243 million people in Southeast Asia, equivalent to 58% of the working population. The report projects that the region’s digital economy will grow 17% this year to $368 billion in gross merchandise value. It presents expanding AI adoption as an increasingly important part of that commercial landscape.

The report says adoption has spread four times faster than mobile internet did, but its longer-term outlook depends on people and businesses moving beyond occasional questions to more demanding tasks. Its projection of as much as a sixty-fold increase in AI usage by 2030 is a scenario for future demand. It depends on cheaper inference, useful applications and more infrastructure; it is not a measurement of growth already achieved.

Commerce remains central to the forecasts. E-commerce is projected to reach $226 billion in gross merchandise value, up 18%, while online travel is estimated at $59 billion, up 10%. The authors describe multimodal searches and shopping assistants becoming part of product discovery. In travel planning, they say standalone generative AI services have overtaken social media as the second most-used tool, behind conventional search engines.

Consumer attitudes suggest room for agents that do more than offer advice. A July survey of 9,006 AI users across Southeast Asia’s six main markets asked respondents to assume that an assistant was generally reliable. Under that condition, 75% expressed willingness to let AI compare prices and complete purchases autonomously. The report also found greater trust than a year earlier, alongside demands for privacy protection and reversible actions. These responses describe stated intentions under a hypothetical condition, rather than completed purchases.

The financing picture spans applications and infrastructure. Private funding for digital applications has stabilized at about $8 billion annually, according to the release, with businesses whose core products involve AI taking a larger share of deal value. Separately, AI compute and digital infrastructure deals reached $20 billion over twelve months, including the $11 billion acquisition of ST Telemedia Global Data Centres. Acquisition values and financing flows describe different activity from new computing capacity delivered.

The study covers ten markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. It excludes Timor-Leste because of data constraints. The headline figure is expressed in gross merchandise value, a measure of transaction value, and should not be read as company revenue or a contribution to national GDP. The report also uses other measures for some sectors, including financial transactions, which are not interchangeable with that headline.

The new outlook follows a decade of regional digital-economy reporting. The 2025 edition projected that gross merchandise value would exceed $300 billion and described an expanding base of online shoppers, digital payments and AI startups. That edition also noted changes in country coverage between historical series and newer estimates. The earlier forecasts provide background to the current study, while differences in coverage and measurement remain relevant when comparing the figures across years.

Investment in skills and engineering has also been developing alongside adoption. In February, Google announced a Singapore Engineering Center intended to connect engineers and support teams with local enterprises, together with training initiatives grouped under Majulah AI. Those earlier programs addressed business implementation and workforce capability.