Singapore Launches Agentic DeFi Forum as AI Agents Prepare to Move Money

Singapore has spent the past year building the rails for an economy where software agents — not just humans — do business. That ambition took a concrete step forward this month with the launch of the Agentic Decentralized Finance Forum, a new platform that ties together AI, blockchain and digital finance under one roof. The message from organisers is clear: the next phase of the digital economy will be driven by autonomous AI systems transacting on financial infrastructure, and Singapore wants to be where that infrastructure gets built.

The forum was inaugurated on August 6 at the SMEICC 2026 conference in Suntec Singapore, supported by the Singapore Innovation Centre and the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It gathered around 250 invited participants from government, financial institutions, technology companies and academia — including StraitsX, MetaComp, BitGo, Chainalysis, Xapo Bank and the National University of Singapore — to discuss agentic AI, tokenised real-world assets, decentralised identity and post-quantum security. The event also marked the signing of a five-party memorandum of understanding involving Raffles Capital, VIA Labs with Animoca Brands, AIDX Tech, the China-Singapore AI Association and HICOOL, alongside Singapore Blockchain Week.

The timing matters. StraitsX chief executive Tianwei Liu framed the forum's central question: what happens when AI agents become actual participants in commerce, executing transactions and managing assets within regulatory limits? That scenario demands payment, settlement and identity infrastructure built for machine users — and Singapore's existing licensed stablecoin ecosystem, anchored by MAS-regulated players like StraitsX (which has processed over US$30 billion in stablecoin transactions), is a head start most markets don't have. MetaComp, backed by Alibaba with a US$35 million pre-Series A this year, is similarly building AI-enabled infrastructure for the emerging financial economy.

For Singapore, the forum is less about any single product and more about sequencing. The partnership announced here feeds directly into Singapore Blockchain Week, scheduled for November 13-17, which will cover agentic commerce, institutional tokenisation and real-world assets, and is being positioned as a cross-border platform connecting into the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone. The AI x DeFi Convergence Pitch Competition and an AI-powered agentic commerce ticketing platform from VIA Labs and Animoca Brands give the ecosystem concrete deliverables to show by then.

Why it matters for Singapore: The agentic finance wave tests whether Singapore's approach to AI governance — its accreditation work and regulatory frameworks, as NUS associate professor Edward Tay noted at the forum — can keep pace with machines that move money autonomously. If the city-state can pair its trusted digital infrastructure with the experimentation happening around Blockchain Week, it strengthens its claim to be Asia's hub for the next generation of financial services, where AI agents are citizens of the economy rather than tools of it.