In Southeast Asia, generative AI has become an essential part of daily life, actively used by 243 million people (58% of the working population) and scaling four times faster than the rollout of the mobile internet. This has major implications for the region’s economy, according to the 11th edition of the annual e-Conomy SEA report1 . Building the Intelligent Economy, by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, finds that widespread AI implementation is propelling the region’s digital economy to grow 17% year-on-year (YoY) to reach $368 billion 2 in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) in 2026. This puts it firmly on track to exceed $1 trillion by 2035. Using tokens 3 as the new benchmark for the AI economy, the report projects that growing confidence in agentic commerce will drive a 60-fold surge in regional AI usage over the next five years.
Here are the three key takeaways from this year's e-Conomy SEA 2026 report:
1. AI is sustaining growth in every sector.
Across the digital economy, AI is reshaping how people live, shop, and move. E-commerce ($226B GMV, +18% YoY) anchors this shift, as shoppers use multimodal discovery and in-app assistants to confidently navigate complex purchases. These personalized experiences organically drive 10% higher conversions and order volume uplifts as large as 75%.
In online travel ($59B GMV, +10% YoY), traditional search engines remain the top platform people use to plan travel, while generative AI has overtaken social media to become the second-most used tool for organizing complex itineraries.
Online media ($44B revenue, +22% YoY) is personalizing content feeds and connecting audiences with more relevant ads, yielding a 10 to 20% quality engagement uplift as commerce media becomes a $4 billion market.
Mobility and food delivery ($40B GMV, +15% YoY) saves consumers time via predictive suggestions, smarter routing, and AI-powered offerings like pooled rides, fueling healthy transactional growth.
Finally, digital financial services ($1,650B GTV, +16% YoY) help consumers with real-time fraud detection, broader credit access, and personalized financial recommendations that complement human advice, alongside Singapore’s regional leadership in digital wealth platforms.