Singapore to invest over $779 million in public AI research through 2030

SINGAPORE, Jan 24 (Reuters) – The Singapore government will invest over S$1 billion ($778.8 million) in public artificial intelligence research through 2030 to strengthen the nation’s capabilities and global competitiveness, it said on Saturday.

The Ministry of Digital Development and Information said that the government will invest in specific priority areas of research, such as building responsible and resource-efficient AI, and in developing the nation’s talent from pre-university to faculty.

Some funds will also go towards building capabilities to support the adoption and application of AI by industries, it said in a press release. 

The initiative is the latest in a string of government investments in AI. 

In 2024, Singapore set aside S$500 million to secure high-performance computer resources to provide the infrastructure needed for AI innovation in the private and public sectors. 

It also committed more than S$500 million to AI research and development through AI Singapore, a national programme aiming at establishing deep AI capabilities. 

In 2023, AI Singapore researchers released an open-source large language model called Southeast Asian Languages in One Network, also known as Sea-Lion, with S$70 million in funding. It has been adopted by companies, such as Indonesia’s GoTo.

A recent version of the model was released in October 2025 and built on top of Qwen, a foundation model released by China’s Alibaba, with improvements made in languages such as Burmese, Filipino, Indonesian, Malay, Tamil, Thai and Vietnamese.

($1=S$1.28)

(Reporting by Jun Yuan Yong; Editing by David Stanway and Tomasz Janowski)