Singapore to put more than US$779 million into public AI research by 2030
Singapore will put more than S$1 billion (about US$779 million) into public-sector artificial intelligence research through 2030, as it steps up efforts to sharpen capabilities and stay competitive globally, the government said on Saturday (January 24).
The Ministry of Digital Development and Information said the funding will target priority research areas such as responsible AI and more resource-efficient systems, while also expanding the talent pipeline from pre-university education through to faculty.
Part of the budget will be used to build national capabilities that help industries adopt and apply AI, the ministry added in a press release.
The announcement extends a broader run of state-backed AI investments.
In 2024, Singapore earmarked S$500 million to secure high-performance computing resources to support AI innovation across the public and private sectors.
It also committed more than S$500 million to AI research and development via AI Singapore, a national programme designed to deepen the country’s AI expertise.
In 2023, researchers at AI Singapore released an open-source large language model, Southeast Asian Languages in One Network (Sea-Lion), backed by S$70 million in funding.
The model has since been adopted by companies, including Indonesia’s GoTo.
An updated version, released in October 2025, was built on top of Qwen, a foundation model from China’s Alibaba, and enhanced for languages including Burmese, Filipino, Indonesian, Malay, Tamil, Thai and Vietnamese.
Reuters
