Singapore's Agentic AI Adoption Doubles in a Year — but Only 28% of Firms Have Risk Controls
Source: Marketscreener
Singapore's enterprises have spent the past year buying into artificial intelligence at a pace few markets can match — and the latest evidence suggests agentic AI, the next stage of that push, is taking hold faster than almost anywhere else. The question is no longer whether Singapore's businesses will adopt...
Singapore's enterprises have spent the past year buying into artificial intelligence at a pace few markets can match — and the latest evidence suggests agentic AI, the next stage of that push, is taking hold faster than almost anywhere else. The question is no longer whether Singapore's businesses will adopt the technology, but whether the foundations underneath it can keep up with the ambition.
That tension is the headline finding of the 2026 Enterprise AI Maturity Index from ServiceNow and research firm ThoughtLab, which surveyed 4,500 executives worldwide including 200 leaders from Singapore. The study found that 51% of Singapore organisations now deploy agentic AI — systems that can plan and execute multi-step tasks with limited human intervention — more than double the share a year ago. Singapore firms are also spending aggressively: 15.4% of IT budgets currently go to AI, a share growing at 108% year-on-year that ServiceNow projects will hit 20% by 2027.
The spending and deployment statistics put Singapore ahead of the global benchmark, and the numbers line up with a wider pattern. January's launch of IMDA's governance framework for autonomous AI systems made Singapore the first regulator in the world to publish rules for this category of technology, and separate surveys from SAP, Qualtrics and Deloitte have all clocked rising agentic adoption among local firms. But the new study also exposes how far execution lags intent: only 10% of Singapore organisations have built processes where AI completes multi-step business tasks end-to-end, and most enterprises are still using AI to help individual employees work faster rather than to change how the business operates.
The gap shows up most clearly in risk management. Just 28% of Singapore organisations have AI testing, auditing and risk processes in place, leaving nearly three in four firms without a safety net for systems that can act autonomously. Executives are acutely aware of the friction points: 68% cite inadequate data accuracy and access as their top AI challenge, while 58% flag data privacy and security — above the 49% global average. The firms that close these gaps are rewarded disproportionately: the study's "Pacesetters", roughly a fifth of organisations with maturity scores above 60, report 160% returns on AI investment today and expect 194% within two years, along with 5.6 times higher productivity gains.
Why it matters for Singapore: The country is already a laboratory for agentic AI — in banking, healthcare and the public sector — and this study suggests local firms are making bigger technology bets than their global peers. That lead only pays off if governance, data infrastructure and workforce skills mature alongside it. With IMDA's autonomous AI framework already in place and AI budgets set to consume a fifth of IT spending within two years, the businesses that treat risk controls and data quality as first-class investments — not afterthoughts — are the ones best positioned to convert Singapore's AI spending surge into durable advantage.
