Singapore is stepping up its push to become a leading artificial intelligence (AI)-driven economy, with a comprehensive suite of initiatives designed to help businesses harness AI to transform operations, improve productivity and unlock new growth opportunities.
Announced by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Energy, Trade and Industry (Trade) Gan Kim Yong at the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology (SWITCH) 2026 in late October, the initiatives target companies across different industries and stages of AI readiness, ranging from established industry leaders to small businesses and companies developing advanced materials.
The initiatives take into account that businesses need different forms of support to turn AI’s potential into practical results.
Aimed at ambitious Singapore-based companies, the new Champions of AI programme aims to make AI a core driver of business growth and enterprise-wide transformation. It begins with 24 Local Champions comprising companies from various industries spanning banking, manufacturing, transport, hospitality and professional services. The first cohort features leading companies like DBS, OCBC, UOB; Advanced MedTech, Seatrium; Singapore Airlines, ComfortDelGro; CapitaLand Investment, Pan Pacific Hotels Group; Rajah & Tann, DP Architects and Certis.
Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG), together with relevant government agencies, will work closely with these companies to identify problem statements and develop tailored, long-term AI transformation roadmaps. The companies will also gain access to AI expertise and solution providers to support them in AI deployment, change management, workforce redesign and upskilling.
Participation comes with clear commitments. Companies must identify ambitious business challenges that AI can address, develop enterprise-wide AI transformation plans, build internal capabilities, and support AI adoption across their supply chains and business ecosystems.
The intention is for these industry leaders to demonstrate tangible results and encourage wider AI adoption within their respective sectors.
For smaller companies, the challenge often lies in not knowing how to apply AI effectively, particularly as micro enterprises and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) tend to have limited resources and technical expertise.
EnterpriseSG will introduce a series of agentic AI workshops – Driving Entrepreneurship with AI – to provide practical, hands-on guidance, and Catalytic AI Solutions to advance sector-wide adoption. These efforts create multiple entry points for enterprises to adopt AI, ranging from simpler productivity improvements to deeper business model and sector-wide transformation.
Through Driving Entrepreneurship with AI, business owners will learn to identify relevant business applications and build working prototypes tailored to their operations. The pilot programme has already supported more than 280 small businesses to apply agentic AI tools in areas such as marketing, sales, and customer service. More workshops are being rolled out, and the programme will be scaled up further in 2027.
Catalytic AI Solutions advance sector-wide AI adoption by improving productivity, strengthening operations and addressing common industry challenges. SMEs from the three sectors of advanced manufacturing, trade, and logistics, are among the first to receive support to implement AI solutions, with more coming onboard later.
MARVEL-AI, led by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), aims to accelerate advanced materials innovation through AI and automation. The initiative, supported by a government investment of approximately S$150 million under Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2030, will connect materials discovery and experimentation with validation, manufacturing development and industrial applications.
MARVEL-AI will combine advanced AI models to identify candidates and design experiments with automated laboratory capabilities to synthesise and test them.
Feedback data will lead to further improvements and refinements. The initiative is already showing results. For example, one polymer workflow can now produce 75 samples in 24 hours, or around 25 times the daily output of conventional processes. For metal alloys, researchers can screen up to 470 unique samples a day, or more than 400 times the throughput of conventional methods.
Together, these initiatives reflect Singapore’s ambition to build an ecosystem where businesses of all sizes can move beyond experimenting with AI towards meaningful transformation. As EnterpriseSG Chairman Lee Chuan Teck observes, “AI is reshaping the way businesses compete, innovate and grow.” These initiatives, and others that are being developed, “will support all enterprises on their AI journey, no matter where they are starting from and where they want to grow to,” he adds.
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