Generative AI is now used daily by 243 million people across Southeast Asia, a figure representing 58% of the working population. The technology is expanding four times faster than the mobile internet did. The 11th edition of the annual e-Conomy SEA report, produced by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, states this shift will push the region’s digital economy to grow 17% year-on-year in 2026. Gross Merchandise Value reaches $368 billion that year. The total is expected to pass $1 trillion by 2035. The report uses tokens as the new benchmark for the AI economy and predicts a 60-fold rise in regional usage over the next five years, driven by growing confidence in agentic commerce.
AI drives growth across all sectors
E-commerce ($226B GMV, +18% YoY) anchors this change. Shoppers use multimodal discovery and in-app assistants to handle complex purchases. These personalised experiences drive 10% higher conversions and order volume uplifts as large as 75%.
Online travel ($59B GMV, +10% YoY) sees traditional search engines remain the top platform for planning. Generative AI has overtaken social media to become the second-most used tool for organising complex itineraries.
Online media ($44B revenue, +22% YoY) personalises content feeds and connects audiences with more relevant ads. This yields a 10 to 20% quality engagement uplift as commerce media becomes a $4 billion market.
Mobility and food delivery ($40B GMV, +15% YoY) saves consumers time via predictive suggestions, smarter routing, and AI-powered offerings like pooled rides, fueling healthy transactional growth.
Digital financial services ($1,650B GTV, +16% YoY) help consumers with real-time fraud detection, broader credit access, and personalised financial recommendations that complement human advice. This sits alongside Singapore’s regional leadership in digital wealth platforms.
Consumer trust enables agentic commerce
Digital automation is already well established across the region, where 72% of users rely on everyday features like price tracking. This familiarity prepares the ground for agentic commerce, with 75% expressing willingness to let AI agents autonomously compare prices and complete transactions on their behalf.
This momentum is rooted in regional optimism: people in Southeast Asia view AI as a net benefit to society, with 62% reporting greater trust in AI tools today than a year ago. Driven by proven track records (56%), rising familiarity (55%), and output accuracy (53%), this trust signals a clear runway for deeper platform integration. To feel comfortable using new agentic capabilities, users expect clarity and guardrails, including robust privacy safeguards (44%), transparent information on what AI can and cannot do (36%), and the ability to reverse agentic transactions (30%).
Four areas must adapt for adoption
To support a projected 60-fold increase in regional AI usage by 2030, the region’s broader digital ecosystem must systematically evolve across four critical conditions:
- Accelerated agentic adoption and sustainable economics: Businesses need to move beyond using AI to answer single questions and start using it to help complete multi-step tasks from start to finish, backed by strong privacy safeguards and clear safety rules. At the same time, running AI models must keep getting more affordable and deliver clear, practical value, so businesses of all sizes can adopt the technology sustainably.
- Scaled physical infrastructure: Physical expansion must rapidly keep pace with soaring compute demand. Meeting this trajectory requires a ~3x expansion in data center capacity over the next five years, with AI workloads capturing a dominant share of total infrastructure.
- Strict model and energy efficiency: National frameworks, such as Singapore’s binding Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rules under the Digital Infrastructure Bill, must guide next-generation facilities, paired with expanded clean energy access like Malaysia’s Corporate Renewable Energy Supply Scheme (CRESS) model.
- Unified regional governance: Anchoring this trajectory, the upcoming ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) in November 2026 will establish the world’s first region-wide digital trade pact, providing a framework that can unlock further growth in the Southeast Asia digital economy.
What it means
For the people making things, the shift from simple chatbots to autonomous agents changes the daily workflow. Users will increasingly let software handle multi-step tasks like booking travel or managing finances without human intervention. The requirement for trust means platforms must offer clear explanations of actions and the option to undo decisions. Infrastructure costs will rise as data centers expand to meet compute demand, while businesses must balance affordability with the need for sustainable model deployment.
