Speeches
Keynote Address by Minister Josephine Teo at Nomura Investment Forum Asia
4 June 2026
Mr Yutaka Nakajima, Deputy President, Nomura
Mr Nags Sankaranarayanan, CEO, Nomura Asia Pacific
Mr Rig Karkhanis, Head of Global Markets, Nomura
Distinguished colleagues and friends,
Good afternoon. I am delighted to join you at this 23rd Nomura Investment Forum Asia.
A friend told me they sold a stock just one hour before we had dinner, and in that time, the stock price had gone up by 6%. In fact, that stock had appreciated by more than 50% the month before. At the same time, another stock had increased 45 times in price. And of course, in the not-too-distant future, we could be looking at trillion-dollar IPOs.
Thankfully, I’m not in the business of predicting stock prices or designing portfolio strategies. I am however in the business of making sure Singapore invests in the right opportunities for our people and businesses in the digital era, and in particular the age of AI.
Where are we today? For a more comprehensive view, I recommend this document.
In a nutshell, our AI ecosystem is shaping up reasonably well.
It is giving us reasons to aim higher and move faster.
Last month, at the Asia Tech X Summit, we announced an update to our National AI Strategy. We are fleshing out in greater detail where we see the biggest opportunities.
Our plans are also designed to better support the National AI Council chaired by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. Among other things, the Council will focus on National AI missions to move AI beyond experimentation in small-scale AI-enabled projects into sector-wide transformation.
We are prioritising four sectors - Connectivity, Advanced Manufacturing, Healthcare, and Finance. You know better than I that Singapore has global standing in each of these areas. Together, they contribute over 40% of our GDP.
The work has already begun.
For example, in aviation, the upcoming Terminal 5, which is supposed to open its doors in the mid-2030s, will add 50 million passengers in annual handling capacity – we need to rethink how our air hub operates to ensure that passengers continue to have a smooth experience at our airports.
We are therefore looking at how AI can be used to manage passenger flow, optimise baggage delivery across multiple terminals, and sequence aircraft landings and take-offs on our runways – all of which are genuinely complex problems that need both hardware and software innovations.
Likewise in advanced manufacturing, the scope and scale for impact is significant. For instance, physical AI – robots that can think – can help with process redesign, allowing for better simulations, digital twins, and predictive maintenance, which will reduce downtime.
In the financial services sector, AI has the potential to expand the breadth and depth of our finance hub, strengthen financial resilience, and tackle increasingly sophisticated financial crime. In fact, AI agents are already beginning to automate complex compliance workflows or transact on behalf of users.
To support these missions, we are also systematically developing the core enablers that AI requires to scale.
On compute, Singapore is a regional data centre hub with one of the highest concentrations of data centres in the region. Beyond the existing 1.4GW of capacity, we will expand further to ensure reliable access to the high-performance compute needed to run cloud and AI workloads, and to support our AI ambitions.
On connectivity, Singapore is already one of the world's leading submarine cable hubs. We continue to welcome new cable projects and investments — which will potentially catalyse at least S$10 billion in overall subsea cable investment.
Second, alongside hardware, we are also prioritising practical AI governance. This helps us understand the risks involved, and will allow us to uphold the fundamentals such as human or organisational accountability, oversight, and a duty of care to the people that we serve.
Third, we are preparing and investing in our workforce.
The interests and concerns of our people are front and centre of all we do. They are not and cannot be an afterthought.
Advanced tools and industry-specific models should not operate in a vacuum; they require a workforce that has the skills to guide, supervise, and integrate them safely into existing workflows.
But I want to be clear – this is not just about getting humans to make AI work. It is about getting AI to work in support of humans. This emphasis is absolutely critical when we think about AI implementation.
The tripartite partners in Singapore share the commitment that AI does not lead to jobless growth. Job re-design and workforce re-skilling will need to happen at scale.
To add to the many SkillsFuture programmes, we launched the National AI Impact Programme.
For a start, we aim to nurture 100,000 "AI Bilingual" professionals. These are people who combine their domain expertise, in fields like finance, law, and medicine, with a practical understanding of how to use and apply AI in their roles.
The idea is simple enough. For example, a portfolio manager who uses AI to sharpen her investment thesis and stress-test her positions is not just more productive, she has a sharper edge and critically, she remains the one making the call.
We are also supporting 10,000 firms for a start to integrate AI meaningfully into their existing business processes. The target audience is not just large multinationals, but the SMEs that make up 99% of our enterprises and employ 70% of our workforce. However, they are major contributors to our economy, and either they move ahead together with companies at the frontier or they become laggards.
Through these targeted national initiatives, we are preparing our local workforce to operate these next-generation tools, ensuring that businesses scaling here have access to a workforce that is equipped, confident, and able to grow alongside technologies.
By providing the infrastructure, the trusted guardrails, and a skilled workforce, we ensure that businesses have a stable foundation to build and scale their AI solutions.
So let me wrap up my comments by sharing with you, as a digital minister in ASEAN, one question I am consistently asked is whether geopolitical tensions will fracture the digital world into separate blocs.
Well, honestly, it can happen and we can't wish these tensions away, but neither must we be frozen into inaction.
My fellow digital ministers and I want to make the most of AI to uplift our economies. Here you see me with Henry Aguda, who is my digital minister counterpart from the Philippines, who is chairing the Philippines’ ASEAN Chairship this year.
But this is not just about building up our infrastructure and workforce capabilities. It is also how we can actively maintaining ties with our partners in the US, Europe and China, and finding openings for meaningful collaborations, however hard these collaborations may be, such as facilitating cross-border data flows, without which digital infrastructure will be sub-optimised.
These engagements are broad ranging, including with policy makers as well as business leaders. We see them all as having the interest and capacity to be part of the AI growth story in ASEAN.
We hope you do too.
We invite more of you to join us and invest in the companies here that are growing in Singapore and elsewhere.
In doing so, you will also gain new access to the wider ASEAN market.
With a population of over 650 million and a digital economy that is on track to reach US$1 trillion by 2030, ASEAN is a significant engine of growth.
The upcoming ASEAN Digital Economic Framework Agreement will only add to this momentum.
Singapore can be your gateway. AI solutions tested and deployed here may well find good uses in other parts of our region.
The opportunity for you is not just to invest, but to build together with the many players in our vibrant AI ecosystem.
Across Singapore and ASEAN, there is much potential for deep partnerships.
We welcome you all to be an active member of our AI Hub, to grow in Singapore, for ASEAN, and the world.
Thank you.