Asian enterprises are accelerating their adoption of artificial intelligence, but are calling for more secure, end-to-end solutions, according to new research commissioned by Alibaba Cloud.

The survey, titled “The AI Business Application Readiness and Accessibility Survey”, found that 99% of respondents said AI is a business priority, with 90% describing their organisation as optimistic about AI adoption. The sentiment is translating into concrete spending: 95% of surveyed companies intend to raise investment in AI products, with more than half planning budget increases of over 20% across infrastructure, platform tools and model services.

Singapore among the most ambitious adopters

Singapore respondents were among the most ambitious in their AI rollout plans, with 96% saying their organisations were already very positive or cautiously optimistic about adoption. Data analysis was the dominant use case, cited by 80% of Singapore respondents — the second-highest proportion across the eight markets surveyed — consistent with the city-state’s position as a financial and professional services hub. Customer service followed at 75%, and marketing and content creation at 54%.

Planned investment was highest in foundational infrastructure, with 69% of respondents indicating more than 20% growth in IaaS spending, followed by 61% for platform tools (PaaS) and 58% for model services (MaaS).

“The research findings reinforce Alibaba Cloud’s belief that AI, delivered on top of scalable, secure cloud infrastructure and models, will be the defining technology platform for the next decade. As we enter the agentic AI era, our focus is shifting from producing efficient tokens to enabling actionable outcomes,” said Dr Feifei Li, Chief Technology Officer and President of International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group.

About the report

Alibaba Cloud commissioned independent research firm NielsenIQ to survey 1,000 IT decision makers across eight markets — Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand — in mid-2025, spanning industries from technology and manufacturing to financial services and the public sector.