Google, Temasek and Bain: 243 million Southeast Asians use generative AI daily

243 million daily users and a $368 billion economy

The 11th edition of the e-Conomy SEA report, produced by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company, finds that generative AI is now an everyday tool for 243 million people in Southeast Asia, or 58% of the region's working population. According to the Google AI blog post accompanying the report, adoption is scaling four times faster than the mobile internet rollout did, and the effect is visible in the broader economy: gross merchandise value is set to reach $368 billion in 2026, up 17% year-on-year, keeping the region on course to exceed $1 trillion by 2035.

The report, titled Building the Intelligent Economy, also adopts tokens as its benchmark for measuring the AI economy and projects a 60-fold surge in regional AI usage over the next five years, driven largely by growing confidence in agentic commerce.

Growth across every sector

E-commerce remains the anchor at $226 billion in GMV, up 18% year-on-year. Shoppers are using multimodal discovery and in-app assistants to work through complex purchases, which the report links to roughly 10% higher conversion rates and order volume uplifts as large as 75%.

Online travel reached $59 billion (+10%), where generative AI has overtaken social media as the second-most used tool for planning complex itineraries, behind traditional search engines. Online media generated $44 billion in revenue (+22%), with personalised feeds and ads delivering a 10 to 20% uplift in engagement quality as commerce media grows into a $4 billion market. Mobility and food delivery hit $40 billion (+15%) helped by predictive suggestions, smarter routing and offerings like pooled rides. Digital financial services processed $1,650 billion in gross transaction value (+16%), with real-time fraud detection, broader credit access and personalised recommendations, alongside Singapore's regional leadership in digital wealth platforms.

Trust is clearing the path for AI agents

Digital automation is already routine: 72% of users rely on everyday features such as price tracking. Looking ahead, 75% say they would be willing to let AI agents autonomously compare prices and complete transactions on their behalf.

That willingness is rooted in optimism. According to the report, 62% of people in the region trust AI tools more than they did a year ago, citing proven track records (56%), rising familiarity (55%) and output accuracy (53%). Comfort is conditional, though. Users say they want robust privacy safeguards (44%), transparent information about what AI can and cannot do (36%), and the ability to reverse agentic transactions (30%) before embracing new agent capabilities.

Four conditions for the next five years

To support a 60-fold increase in regional AI usage by 2030, the report argues the ecosystem must evolve in four areas:

• Agentic adoption and sustainable economics: businesses should move beyond using AI to answer single questions and start completing multi-step tasks end to end, backed by privacy safeguards and clear safety rules, while the cost of running models keeps falling so firms of all sizes can participate.
• Physical infrastructure: data centre capacity in the region needs to expand roughly threefold over the next five years, with AI workloads taking a dominant share of total infrastructure.
• Model and energy efficiency: national frameworks such as Singapore's binding Power Usage Effectiveness rules under its Digital Infrastructure Bill, paired with expanded clean energy access like Malaysia's Corporate Renewable Energy Supply Scheme, should guide next-generation facilities.
• Regional governance: the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement, expected in November 2026, would establish what the report calls the world's first region-wide digital trade pact and could unlock further growth.

Why it matters

The report is one of the clearest signals yet that Southeast Asia is adopting generative AI as infrastructure rather than as a novelty. If the 60-fold usage projection holds, the binding constraints shift from consumer appetite, which the survey data suggests is already there, to data centre capacity, energy policy and cross-border regulation. Both the $368 billion figure for 2026 and the $1 trillion trajectory for 2035 depend on those pieces falling into place, making the DEFA negotiations an early test. It is worth keeping in mind that the report's authors include Google, a major AI vendor, but the adoption numbers it documents describe a structural shift in how one of the world's fastest-growing digital markets works, shop and pays.