In Southeast Asia, generative AI has become an essential part of daily life, actively used by 243 million people (58% of the working population) and scaling four times faster than the rollout of the mobile internet. This has major implications for the region’s economy, according to the 11th edition of the annual e-Conomy SEA report 1 . Building the Intelligent Economy, by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, finds that widespread AI implementation is propelling the region’s digital economy to grow 17% year-on-year (YoY) to reach $368 billion 2 in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) in 2026. This puts it firmly on track to exceed $1 trillion by 2035. Using tokens 3 as the new benchmark for the AI economy, the report projects that growing confidence in agentic commerce will drive a 60-fold surge in regional AI usage over the next five years.
Here are the three key takeaways from this year's e-Conomy SEA 2026 report:
1. AI is sustaining growth in every sector.
Across the digital economy, AI is reshaping how people live, shop, and move. E-commerce ($226B GMV, +18% YoY) anchors this shift, as shoppers use multimodal discovery and in-app assistants to confidently navigate complex purchases. These personalized experiences organically drive 10% higher conversions and order volume uplifts as large as 75%.
In online travel ($59B GMV, +10% YoY), traditional search engines remain the top platform people use to plan travel, while generative AI has overtaken social media to become the second-most used tool for organizing complex itineraries.
Online media ($44B revenue, +22% YoY) is personalizing content feeds and connecting audiences with more relevant ads, yielding a 10 to 20% quality engagement uplift as commerce media becomes a $4 billion market.
Mobility and food delivery ($40B GMV, +15% YoY) saves consumers time via predictive suggestions, smarter routing, and AI-powered offerings like pooled rides, fueling healthy transactional growth.
Finally, digital financial services ($1,650B GTV, +16% YoY) help consumers with real-time fraud detection, broader credit access, and personalized financial recommendations that complement human advice, alongside Singapore’s regional leadership in digital wealth platforms.
2. Consumer trust will help unlock the era of agentic commerce.
Digital automation is already well established across the region, where 72% of users rely on everyday features like price tracking. This familiarity is clearing the runway for agentic commerce, with 75% expressing willingness to let AI agents autonomously compare prices and complete transactions on their behalf.
This momentum is rooted in regional optimism: people in Southeast Asia view AI as a net benefit to society, with 62% reporting greater trust in AI tools today than a year ago. Driven by proven track records (56%), rising familiarity (55%), and output accuracy (53%), this trust signals a clear runway for deeper platform integration. To feel comfortable using new agentic capabilities, users expect clarity and guardrails, including robust privacy safeguards (44%), transparent information on what AI can and cannot do (36%), and the ability to reverse agentic transactions (30%).
3. Four major areas must adapt to enable AI adoption.
To support a projected 60-fold increase in regional AI usage by 2030, the region's broader digital ecosystem must systematically evolve across four critical conditions:
- Accelerated agentic adoption and sustainable economics: Businesses need to move beyond using AI to answer single questions and start using it to help complete multi-step tasks from start to finish, backed by strong privacy safeguards and clear safety rules. At the same time, running AI models must keep getting more affordable and deliver clear, practical value, so businesses of all sizes can adopt the technology sustainably.
- Scaled physical infrastructure: Physical expansion must rapidly keep pace with soaring compute demand. Meeting this trajectory requires a ~3x expansion in data center capacity over the next five years, with AI workloads capturing a dominant share of total infrastructure.
- Strict model and energy efficiency: National frameworks, such as Singapore’s binding Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rules under the Digital Infrastructure Bill, must guide next-generation facilities, paired with expanded clean energy access like Malaysia’s Corporate Renewable Energy Supply Scheme (CRESS) model.
- Unified regional governance: Anchoring this trajectory, the upcoming ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA) in November 2026 will establish the world's first region-wide digital trade pact, providing a framework that can unlock further growth in the Southeast Asia digital economy.