Vietnam’s AI market is worth roughly US$1 billion in 2026 — Statista valued it at US$932 million in 2025 and forecasts US$6.91 billion by 2031, a 39% compound annual growth rate — and it has attracted one of the biggest single-country bets Nvidia has made anywhere in Southeast Asia. Nvidia has committed US$4–4.5 billion to Vietnam over four years, after acquiring Vingroup’s healthcare AI unit VinBrain and agreeing an AI R&D centre and data hub with the government in December 2024 (The Investor, September 2025). Jensen Huang calls Vietnam Nvidia’s “second home”.
The domestic side is moving just as fast. FPT Corporation, which booked US$2.66 billion in 2025 revenue, runs Nvidia-powered AI Factories in Vietnam and Japan serving over 18,000 engineers and business users (CRN Asia, March 2026). Viettel is building a 120-billion-parameter Vietnamese-language model. And the state has put a number on its ambition: the Ministry of Science and Technology’s draft national AI strategy, published for comment in June 2026, targets AI contributing roughly 6% of GDP by 2030 (Vietnam News, June 2026).
This piece sizes the market, maps the players and follows the money. It sits alongside our Asia AI market country breakdown — Vietnam is the one to watch in the second tier.
How big is Vietnam’s AI market in 2026?
Depends whose ruler you use, but every estimate points the same direction. IMARC Group put the market at US$752.5 million in 2024; Statista’s US$932 million for 2025 implies it crosses the US$1 billion mark during 2026 on its ~39% CAGR path to US$6.91 billion by 2031. The more conservative B&Company sizing has Vietnam at US$0.75 billion in 2024 reaching US$2 billion by 2030 at roughly 15% CAGR (B&Company, 2025). Generative AI is the fastest-growing slice: valued at US$100.1 million in 2024 and projected to reach US$988.2 million by 2030, a 46% CAGR (Invest Vietnam statistics roundup, 2026).
The macro numbers are what make policymakers salivate. Google told Vietnam’s National Innovation Centre forum that AI could deliver up to US$79.3 billion in economic benefits by 2030 — nearly 12% of GDP — while a BCG/NIC/JICA report projects AI could add US$120–130 billion to the economy by 2040. Small market today, enormous option value.
What does Hanoi actually want AI to become?
Vietnam’s AI policy is unusually specific. The Ministry of Science and Technology’s draft national AI strategy (June 2026) sets hard 2030 targets: 250,000 GPUs (H100/H200/B200-class) deployed nationally, five Vietnamese-language AI models, 500,000 trained AI workers, 50,000 advanced AI specialists, and AI adoption by 70% of large enterprises and 40% of small businesses (Vietnam News, June 2026). That sits on top of Resolution 57, signed by General Secretary To Lam in late 2024, which targets a top-three position in Southeast Asia and top 50 globally for AI R&D by 2030.
The regulatory foundation is already in force. Vietnam passed a standalone Law on Artificial Intelligence on 10 December 2025 — 35 articles, risk-based, effective 1 March 2026 — making it one of the first countries in Asia with a dedicated AI statute (Baker McKenzie, February 2026). We’ve unpacked the compliance detail separately in Vietnam’s AI law explained; the market-relevant point is that the law is built to attract AI investment, not throttle it, and it landed alongside a Digital Technology Industry Law offering a 5% corporate tax rate for 37 years on large digital tech projects.
Who are the key players in Vietnam’s AI market?
FPT: the AI Factory operator
FPT Corporation is Vietnam’s clearest AI infrastructure play. Its US$200 million AI Factory partnership with Nvidia, announced in 2024, now runs HGX H100 and H200 clusters in Vietnam and Japan, offers 43 AI cloud services, and has registered early access for Nvidia’s HGX B300 systems (CRN Asia, March 2026). FPT posted US$2.66 billion in revenue in 2025 and has said it wants 6,000 AI engineers by 2028. It is also part of the consortium behind a proposed US$2.1 billion hyperscale AI data centre in Ho Chi Minh City with UAE-based G42, VinaCapital and Viet Thai (Vietcetera, 2025).
Viettel: sovereign AI at telco scale
Military-owned Viettel is the state’s AI muscle. Its Hoa Lac facility — 30MW, 60,000 servers, 2,400-plus racks — launched in April 2024 as Vietnam’s largest data centre, and Viettel’s roadmap runs to 34,000 racks nationally by 2030 (Vietcetera, 2024). It has a sovereign AI partnership with Nvidia, a co-development deal with Korea’s KT signed in May 2025, and has developed a 120-billion-parameter Vietnamese-language model it claims benchmarks among the leaders for Vietnamese tasks (Viettel, 2026).
Vingroup, Nvidia and Qualcomm: the acquisition magnet
Vingroup built two of Vietnam’s most credible AI labs — and sold both to American chip giants. Nvidia acquired healthcare-AI unit VinBrain, whose diagnostic models were deployed in over 100 Vietnamese hospitals, in December 2024; Qualcomm bought VinAI’s generative AI division MovianAI in April 2025 and opened a large-scale AI R&D centre in Vietnam that June (B&Company, 2025). Read it either way: a brain-drain of domestic champions, or proof that Vietnamese AI teams are good enough for Silicon Valley to buy rather than build.
Zalo, VNPT and the startup layer
VNG’s Zalo AI and state telco VNPT round out the domestic model builders, both developing Vietnamese-language models for the local market’s 100 million speakers. Below them sits a startup layer of roughly 765 AI and machine-learning startups — second in Southeast Asia behind Singapore’s ~1,100 (Invest Vietnam, 2026). Standouts include ELSA Speak (50 million-plus users of its AI English tutor, US$60 million raised) and AI Hay, which hit 15 million downloads and was the only Southeast Asian app in the global top five AI apps by real users in October 2025 (Invest Vietnam, 2026).
Where is the money going?
Follow three streams. First, venture capital: Vietnam’s private capital market hit US$4.5 billion across 149 deals in 2025, with AI-specific funding at US$130 million across 23 deals — a 13-fold increase on 2023 (NIC/VPCA/Do Ventures Vietnam Innovation and Private Capital Report, May 2026). “Vietnam’s venture capital market has moved beyond its downturn and is now on a clear recovery path,” said VPCA chairwoman Le Hoang Uyen Vy at the report’s launch.
Second, Big Tech FDI: Nvidia’s US$4–4.5 billion four-year commitment is projected to create around 4,000 direct jobs (The Investor, September 2025), SAP is putting over €150 million into SAP Labs Vietnam over five years (B&Company, Q3 2025), and Qualcomm’s R&D centre adds a third US anchor tenant.
Third, concrete and megawatts. CMC Corp won approval for a US$250 million hyperscale data centre in Ho Chi Minh City in July 2025, and the G42–FPT consortium’s US$2.1 billion facility would be Vietnam’s largest AI campus if it proceeds (Vietcetera, 2025). Vietnam is a late but aggressive entrant in the regional buildout we track in our Southeast Asia data centre boom analysis — the draft strategy’s 250,000-GPU target implies multi-billion-dollar capex this decade.
Are Vietnamese businesses and consumers actually using AI?
Usage is broad but shallow. ITviec’s 2025 survey found 73% of Vietnamese companies had adopted AI in some form — yet only 13.8% had deployed it at scale, and just 36.5% had a documented AI strategy. AWS counted roughly 170,000 Vietnamese businesses using AI as of September 2025, about 18% of the total, up from 13% a year earlier. Consumers are further ahead: 76% of Vietnamese under 35 use generative AI, and 71% are optimistic about the technology (Google/Public First survey, 2025).
Budget-tier pricing is a genuine adoption accelerant. OpenAI launched ChatGPT Go in Vietnam in October 2025 at 132,000 VND (~US$5) a month — roughly a quarter of the 522,500 VND Plus tier — in direct competition with Google’s similarly priced AI Plus (Tuoi Tre / Vietnam.vn, October 2025). OpenAI says its user growth in lower-income markets is running at four times the rate of high-income ones. For the full picture of which models and tiers are available locally, see our guide to AI access in Vietnam. And Western labs aren’t the only bidders for Vietnamese users — the price war includes the players covered in our look at Chinese AI models in Southeast Asia.
Talent is the binding constraint
Vietnam has the raw material — over 650,000 IT engineers in 2025 and 50,000-plus new IT graduates a year (Invest Vietnam, 2026) — but not yet the AI-specific depth. Some 46.4% of companies say they lack sufficient internal AI skills (ITviec, 2025), 80% of businesses struggle to find qualified candidates (Robert Walters, 2026), and AI engineer salaries are rising 15–25% annually. The gap between the government’s 500,000-trained-workers target and today’s supply is the single biggest execution risk in the whole strategy. That, plus the pattern of best-in-class teams being acquired out of the ecosystem, is what could keep Vietnam a talented supplier to other people’s AI economies rather than an owner of its own.
Our read: Vietnam in 2026 looks like Vietnam’s gaming market a decade ago — small revenue base, outsized talent, and global players moving in early. The difference is that this time the state is spending, legislating and counting GPUs. The US$1 billion market is not the story; the 6%-of-GDP ambition is.
Vietnam AI market FAQ
How big is Vietnam’s AI market in 2026?
Roughly US$1 billion. Statista valued it at US$932 million in 2025, growing at around 39% a year towards a forecast US$6.91 billion by 2031. Generative AI is the fastest-growing segment at ~46% CAGR.
Who is the biggest AI company in Vietnam?
FPT Corporation, with US$2.66 billion in 2025 revenue and Nvidia-powered AI Factories in Vietnam and Japan. Viettel leads on sovereign AI infrastructure, while Nvidia (via VinBrain) and Qualcomm (via MovianAI) own former Vingroup AI units.
What is Vietnam’s AI target for 2030?
The draft national AI strategy (June 2026) targets AI contributing about 6% of GDP by 2030, with 250,000 GPUs deployed, five Vietnamese-language AI models, 500,000 trained AI workers and top-three status in Southeast Asia for AI R&D.
How much has Nvidia invested in Vietnam?
Nvidia has committed US$4–4.5 billion over four years, including the December 2024 acquisition of VinBrain and an AI R&D centre and data hub agreed with the Vietnamese government (The Investor, September 2025).
How many Vietnamese businesses use AI?
About 170,000 businesses — 18% of the total — as of September 2025 (AWS), though ITviec found 73% of companies use AI in some form while only 13.8% deploy it at scale.
Does Vietnam regulate AI?
Yes. A standalone, risk-based AI Law was passed on 10 December 2025 and took effect on 1 March 2026 — see our full breakdown in Vietnam’s AI law explained.
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