The plan focuses on strengthening public artificial intelligence research capabilities, says the Ministry of Digital Development and Information.
Singapore is investing more than S$1 billion (US$786 million) in its National AI Research and Development Plan (NAIRD) to strengthen public artificial intelligence research capabilities over five years from 2025 to 2030, the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) said on Saturday (Jan 24).
The plan, announced by Minister for Digital Development and Information Josephine Teo at the Singapore AI Research Week 2026 gala dinner, supports Singapore’s broader AI ambitions under its updated National AI Strategy (NAIS) 2.0.
It builds on ongoing AI research efforts in research, innovation and enterprise, MDDI said.
Singapore launched its first National AI Strategy in 2019, which saw the country embark on national AI projects in education, healthcare, logistics, security and municipal services.
The updated NAIS 2.0, announced by then-Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong in 2023, aimed to more than triple the number of AI practitioners to 15,000, and help Singapore become a place where the world’s top AI creators gather.
The latest S$1 billion investment taps on the National Research Foundation (NRF) investment of S$37 billion in research, innovation and enterprise, announced in December last year, and the previous tranche of S$28 billion.
The S$37 billion investment will address various needs, including growing and enhancing Singapore’s talent pool, and leveraging AI as a transformative force over the next five years, NRF then said.
KEY FOCUS AREAS
NAIRD focuses on three key areas: fundamental AI research, applied AI research and talent.
Despite breakthroughs, there are “fundamental limitations” in AI development, Mrs Teo said.
“For example, AI training and inference remain extremely resource-intensive. Their draw on energy and water cannot be ignored,” she said, adding that Singapore already has one of the region’s densest concentrations of data centre capacity.
Under the plan, Singapore will establish AI research centres of excellence that house local and international researchers.
The research centres of excellence, hosted in public research institutions, will focus on “long-term, difficult questions”, Mrs Teo said.
They will advance research and development efforts in areas such as responsible AI, which safeguards against AI risks and protects AI systems from being exploited.
These research centres will also look into reducing AI’s reliance on data, emerging AI methodologies and general-purpose AI, such as developing AI that can perform multiple tasks across different domains.
In terms of applied research, the plan will build capabilities to support the adoption and application of AI in industry and initiatives driven by research, innovation and enterprise domains.
Mrs Teo said the updated plan aims to nurture “bilingual research talents” who are proficient in AI and have domain expertise.
“We aim also to build core AI engineering capabilities for the translation of theory to systems and applications,” she added.
To build a talent pipeline, the plan will continue to support initiatives to develop interest in AI research among youths. For instance, the National Olympiad in AI in Singapore prepares pre-university students to participate at the international level.
At the tertiary level, the plan aims to provide students with exposure to top AI research institutions both locally and abroad, by continuing to scale up national programmes such as the AI Singapore PhD Fellowship Programme and the AI Accelerated Masters Programme.
Singapore has also established schemes to support and develop faculty, through the AI Visiting Professorship, which facilitates collaboration between local and international researchers. To date, the scheme has supported eight awardees.
Mrs Teo said the AI research centres of excellence will also be “significant platforms” for talent development.
“In parallel, we will continue to attract top-tier AI startups and tech companies to base their research and innovation teams in Singapore,” she said.
GROWING AI RESEARCH
Research is a key driver in AI efforts to ensure that Singapore remains at the forefront of AI innovation, MDDI said.
In 2025, Singapore ranked third in AI research in The Observer’s Global AI Index, behind the United States and China. The index ranks countries on their level of investment, innovation and implementation of AI.
More companies have also set up corporate research labs in Singapore, such as Microsoft Research Asia and Google DeepMind, which opened an AI research lab in November last year.
