Singapore Bets Big on AI: Kampong AI and the Push to Be the Region’s Hub

Singapore is making its biggest bet on artificial intelligence yet, and Budget 2026 spells out what that looks like in practice.

The centrepiece is Kampong AI, a dedicated AI park at One-North, Singapore’s existing innovation district. The name — a nod to the Malay word for village — suggests the intent: a community, not just a campus. Developed by JTC Corporation, a pilot phase launched in March 2026 across 14,500 square metres of repurposed workspace, accommodating up to 70 companies. Full completion is expected by 2028, with 200 residential units integrated into the development.

The logic is to replicate what One-North already does for biomedical sciences and media: create the kind of density that generates collaboration, talent, and deal flow that would not otherwise happen. Singapore already hosts more than 60 AI Centres of Excellence from leading global companies. Kampong AI is designed to deepen that.

Budget 2026 pairs the infrastructure with programmes aimed at scale. The National AI Impact Programme targets 10,000 enterprises and 100,000 workers over three years, with an explicit goal of making Singaporeans “AI-bilingual” — able to use AI tools effectively without technical backgrounds. The government has put more than S$400 million into an Enterprise Workforce Transformation Package for companies redesigning jobs around AI.

On the funding side, the Startup SG Equity scheme gets a S$1 billion top-up, with scope expanded to include growth-stage deep tech companies — not just early-stage startups. The aim is to close a funding gap for companies that have moved past initial validation but are not yet large enough to attract major global venture capital.

What makes Singapore’s approach distinctive is how it differs from what the rest of the region is doing. Vietnam is legislating AI; Indonesia is building policy frameworks; China is building AI capability at scale. Singapore is trying to be the place where those threads converge — regulation, talent, capital, and research infrastructure in a jurisdiction that international businesses trust.

The vulnerability is obvious. Singapore is a city-state with a small domestic labour pool. Kampong AI only works if international talent comes and stays, at a moment when the US, UK, and UAE are all competing for the same people.

Singapore’s Budget 2026 commits S$1 billion to deep tech startups, S$400 million to workforce transformation, and a new AI park at One-North. The strategy is to be Southeast Asia’s AI hub through institutional credibility and talent density rather than market size. The risk is that the competition for AI talent is global, and Singapore is small.