SME Software Firm Info-Tech's 89% Earnings Jump Shows AI Courses Are Big Business

There is a quiet signal in Singapore's earnings season about where the money in AI actually is. Info-Tech Systems, an SGX-listed software provider serving small and medium enterprises, reported first-half earnings of S$9.7 million — up 89% year on year — and the company is pointing squarely at its AI training courses as the engine. When a business software firm's education arm becomes its fastest-growing segment, it says something about how deeply AI skilling has penetrated the SME economy.

Revenue for the half rose 22% to S$27.3 million, with the order book up 14% at S$30.4 million and customer retention holding above 90%. The subscriptions segment, the company's largest, grew 12% to S$21.2 million, but services jumped 116% to S$4.9 million — the fastest-growing line. That services bucket includes Info-Tech Academy, launched in 2024, whose cumulative registrations have climbed past 23,000 from around 18,000 at the end of 2025. More strikingly, over 85% of the Academy's first-half revenue came from AI-related courses. The company declared an interim dividend of 1.68 cents, a 45% payout ratio.

This is not an isolated story. Broker RHB flagged in June that Info-Tech is positioned to benefit from a "structural shift" in the government's AI push, and Singapore's national AI strategy has consistently treated skills as the binding constraint on adoption. For SMEs — the segment Info-Tech serves across 28,000 organisations — the demand for AI courses is less about hype and more about a practical scramble: businesses need staff who can actually apply the tools.

The numbers also hint at a broader commercialisation of AI education. A listed company reporting 89% earnings growth with an AI-training arm doing the heavy lifting gives investors a concrete, repeatable benchmark for the skills economy — something policy announcements and enrolment figures alone cannot provide. Shares closed 2.65% higher at 97 cents on Aug 11, a modest market reaction that suggests the market is still pricing this segment conservatively.

Why it matters for Singapore: The Info-Tech results turn "AI upskilling demand" from a talking point into a line item. If AI courses can meaningfully move the earnings of a listed SME software firm, the training layer of Singapore's AI economy has genuine commercial weight — and that attracts capital, competition and better courses. For SME owners watching from the sidelines, it is also a nudge: the businesses adopting AI training are the ones showing up in earnings calls, and the gap between them and the rest is widening.