GenAI spending in Asia-Pacific seen reaching $555 billion in 2030

MANILA, Philippines — Asia and the Pacific, including the Philippines, is on track to increase spending on generative artificial intelligence (AI) to over $555 billion by 2030, led by software and information services.

In its latest spending guide, the International Data Corp. (IDC) said Asia and the Pacific is poised to grow investments on generative AI by 36 percent yearly until 2030.

In turn, spending on generative AI will balloon to $555.2 billion by 2030 from $121.5 billion in 2025, in a region headed by automation giants China and Japan.

By industry, software and information services will contribute the largest share to the spending at 43 percent. AI investments in the market will fund largely the development of software platforms and support technologies.

Banking and financial services will chip in the second largest share at 10 percent. Banks will be forced to spend more on AI adoption to automate some of their customer-facing applications.

The government ranks third at eight percent, while telcos place fourth with six percent, rounding up the industries that would lead the AI buildup in Asia and the Pacific.

IDC senior market analyst for Asia and the Pacific Vinayaka Venkatesh said the AI battleground would be determined by how firms move up from exploration to deployment.

“The next phase of AI adoption in Asia-Pacific will be defined by how effectively organizations can move from experimentation to scaled, operational deployments,” Venkatesh said.

Venkatesh warned that being left behind in the AI race may cost opportunities and revenues.

The region, he added, is marked by the adoption of agentic AI, which could assess, plan and execute tasks like how a human would.

What could throw off the growth of the AI industry in Asia and the Pacific is the development of rules and regulations to curb automation’s risks. Venkatesh said the lack of energy infrastructure could be a threat, given how demanding AI computing is on power.

On the ground, IDC said 32 percent of AI spending in the region is still at the entry level, such as subscription to cloud services and expansion of data centers.

The world has seen an increase since the pandemic in demand for generative AI, used to produce in an instant new content like text and video from existing materials on the web.