Asia’s AI economy reached $102 billion in 2025 and is on track to clear $735 billion by 2030. Every major economy in the region has launched a sovereign LLM programme, China and the US are racing in parallel rather than in catch-up, and the chip supply chain runs through three companies in three countries.
This hub aggregates all Digital in Asia coverage of the AI ecosystem across the region — markets, models, chips, policy, and the country-level dynamics shaping how AI gets deployed.
Asia AI overview
- AI in Asia 2026: Why Asia Isn’t Catching Up to the US — It’s Building a Parallel System
The Asia-Pacific AI market hit USD 102 billion in 2025 and is on course for USD 735 billion by 2030. East Asian institutions hold 82.4% of all global AI patents. Here are the 10 key findings from t… - Asia’s AI Market in 2026: Country-by-Country Breakdown
How Big Is Asia’s AI Market in 2026? Asia-Pacific’s artificial intelligence market reached an estimated USD 102 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow to between USD 735 billion … <a title=&… - AI in Southeast Asia: The Trillion Dollar AI Opportunity
Artificial intelligence could contribute USD 1 trillion in additional GDP output to Southeast Asia by 2030 — a 13–18% boost to the region’s economy, according to projections from Google, Temasek, …. - Every National AI Strategy in Asia: A Policy Tracker
At least ten major Asian economies now have dedicated AI legislation or comprehensive national AI strategies in place, with several more in active development. The approaches vary enormously — from… - Sovereign AI in Asia: Why Every Country Is Building Its Own LLM
Why Is Every Asian Country Building Its Own AI Model? Sovereign AI — the development of domestically controlled artificial intelligence infrastructure, models, and data pipelines — has become the d…
China AI
- Inside China’s AI Machine: Models, Chips, Strategy, and What Comes Next
China's daily AI token usage surpassed 140 trillion in March 2026 — a 1,000-fold increase in two years. Chinese models now account for four of the top five most-used globally. This is a compre… - China vs US: Who’s Winning the AI Race?
The US spent 23 times more than China on private AI investment in 2025 — $285.9 billion versus $12.4 billion — and yet the performance gap between the best American … <a title="" cla… - China’s Smart Factories: Leading the World in Industrial AI
How Many Smart Factories Does China Operate and What Does That Mean for Global Manufacturing? China operates over 30,000 smart factories as of early 2026, making it the world’s dominant … <a t… - How DeepSeek Disrupted Global AI Economics From China
What Is DeepSeek and Why Did It Disrupt Global AI Economics? DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company founded in May 2023 with approximately 200 employees, triggered a global repricing of AI … <a title=… - How Chinese AI Models Are Expanding Across Southeast Asia
An estimated 80% of US startups now use Chinese AI base models to develop derivative products for their businesses, according to Andreessen Horowitz cited in a recent US-China Economic and … <…
India AI
- India’s Race to Become the World’s AI Inferencing Capital
Can India Become the World’s AI Inferencing Capital? India’s AI market reached USD 22.85 billion in 2025, making it the second-largest in Asia-Pacific behind China, and is projected to grow … <…
Japan AI
- Japan’s AI Paradox: A Leading Market Struggling with Talent
Japan’s AI market was valued at between USD 7.6 billion and USD 11.8 billion in 2024, with projections ranging from USD 26 billion to USD 126 billion by 2030 — … <a title="" class=&q…
Southeast Asia AI
- AI in Malaysia: Southeast Asia’s Compute Hub?
Malaysia has more than 500 operational data centres. Roughly 300 are under construction. And approximately 1,140 are planned (Ember, 2026). In February 2026, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim confirmed … - Southeast Asia’s AI Data Centre Boom: Who’s Building What, and Where
Southeast Asia now hosts more than 2,000 data centres across Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines (Ember, 2026), with hundreds more under construction and over a th… - Vietnam’s AI Law Explained: What It Means for Foreign Companies
Vietnam enacted its Law on Artificial Intelligence on 10 December 2025. It took effect on 1 March 2026. In just over three months, the country went from having no dedicated … <a title="&q… - AI in Asian Banking: How DBS, Ping An, and SeaMoney Are Transforming Financial Services
Asian financial institutions are leading global enterprise AI adoption, with the sector representing the most mature deployment of artificial intelligence across the region. DBS Bank in Singapore c… - The Rise of AI-Native Ad Buying
Digital advertising has become one of the most complex operational systems in modern business. Most people in the industry know this. Fewer have thought through what it actually demands. Ten … &l…
AI infrastructure
- The Asian AI Chip Race: China, TSMC, Samsung and Semiconductor Supply
Why Does Asia Control the World’s AI Chip Supply Chain? Asia dominates the physical infrastructure layer of global artificial intelligence. Taiwan’s TSMC manufactures 72% of global foundry output a…
AI accessibility & benchmarks
- LLM Access in Asia: Where ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and the Chinese Models Stand in 15 Markets
A working tracker of where ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and the major Chinese LLMs are accessible across fifteen Asian markets. Last updated April 2026. - The Asia LLM Benchmarks Map: Frontier vs Domestic, Language by Language
A tour through the benchmarks that actually measure LLM performance in Asian languages — Nejumi, KMMLU, BnMMLU, SEA-HELM — and what they tell us about the frontier vs domestic gap.
Country-level AI context
- China’s Digital Market in 2026: The Complete Overview
China’s digital economy reached 54 trillion yuan (~$7.5 trillion) in 2023, accounting for 43% of GDP and growing at 10.3% year-on-year — making it the world’s largest digital economy by … <a t… - India’s Digital Market in 2026: The Complete Overview
India’s digital economy reached an estimated $402 billion in 2025, accounting for 11.74% of GDP and growing faster than virtually any comparable market on earth (MEITY, 2025). With 1.03 billion …… - Japan’s Digital Market in 2026: The Complete Overview
Japan is the world’s third-largest economy with 107 million internet users and a digital advertising market that crossed $45.6 billion in 2025 — yet it remains one of the most … <a title="… - South Korea’s Digital Market in 2026: The Complete Overview
South Korea is the most intensely connected country on earth. With 50.4 million internet users representing 97.4% of the population, 5G download speeds averaging 1,064 Mbps on SK Telecom’s network,… - Singapore’s Digital Market in 2026: The Complete Overview
Singapore’s digital economy reached S$128.1B in 2024—18.6% of the country’s GDP and climbing at 12% annually since 2019. With 5.61 million internet users (95.8% penetration) and 97% smartphone adop… - Vietnam’s Digital Market in 2026: The Complete Overview
Vietnam’s digital economy reached an estimated $39 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025, growing at roughly 19% year-on-year and cementing the country’s position as Southeast Asia’s fastest-g…
Strategic and applied AI
- Most Businesses Are Using AI Wrong
Most companies treat AI as a content generation novelty rather than operational infrastructure. The real impact of AI has almost everything to do with removing friction from core business workflows. - The Future of Ecommerce: Agentic Commerce and AI Demand
The Future of Ecommerce When AI Controls Demand: $5 Trillion in Spending Up for Grabs AI shopping agents are already redirecting how consumers find, evaluate, and buy products online — … <a ti… - How Ads, Commerce and AI are Converging in Asia
Asia’s $311 Billion Ad Market, $2.3 Trillion Commerce Engine, and $102 Billion AI Layer Are Fusing Into a Single Stack There’s a simple model for understanding Asia’s digital economy, and … <a…