SINGAPORE – Singapore launched three new initiatives to support companies of all sizes in boosting their capability to implement and scale artificial intelligence (AI) and use the technology to transform their businesses.
The initiatives reflect Singapore’s recognition that AI will rapidly become the defining force behind the next wave of innovation, transforming how new ideas, products and services are developed and commercialised.
Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong announced the initiatives at the Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology (SWITCH) 2026 on Oct 27, noting that Singapore will explore ways to make AI work better for its industries and workers, to build an economy that is more innovative, competitive and inclusive.
“AI offers opportunities to raise productivity, and develop new products and capabilities,” he said in his speech at the event’s opening ceremony held at Marina Bay Sands.
The initiatives follow the four national AI missions – advanced manufacturing, finance, healthcare and connectivity – announced by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong during Budget 2026.
Led by Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG) in partnership with other Government agencies, the new initiatives include a Champions of AI programme to help ambitious Singapore-based companies committed to making AI a core driver of growth.
Dubbed by EnterpriseSG as the national flagship AI initiative, the programme will begin with a cohort of 24 companies across various industries, with more companies progressively coming on board.
The list of champions includes well-known local names such as DBS, OCBC, UOB, ST Engineering, Seatrium, PSA International, Singapore Airlines, Singtel Singapore, Keppel and Sembcorp.
The agency will work closely with these companies to develop tailored, long-term AI transformation roadmaps and provide them with access to curated AI expertise and solution providers, supporting enterprise-wide deployment of AI and change management, as well as workforce redesign and upskilling.
The second initiative is a series of agentic AI workshops to provide hands-on guidance to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) for adopting and scaling AI solutions, and catalytic AI solutions workshops that will advance sector-wide AI adoption, starting with the advanced manufacturing, trade and logistics sectors.
Agentic AI is an artificial intelligence system that can accomplish a specific goal with limited supervision. It consists of AI agents—machine learning models that mimic human decision-making to solve problems in real time.
The workshops will enable micro-entrepreneurs and small business owners to start their AI journey, identify practical use cases and build working prototypes tailored to their own businesses.
In the pilot run of the initiative, more than 280 small businesses were supported to apply agentic AI tools in areas such as marketing, sales and customer service.
More workshops will be rolled out next month and scaled further in 2027.
EnterpriseSG said feedback from workshop participants showed that many businesses today are experimenting with AI but lack in-house tech capabilities and bandwidth to refine, integrate and deploy these solutions to meet their operational needs.
The agency will look into providing support to companies for last-mile AI deployment.
Perhaps the most ambitious of the three initiatives is MARVEL-AI, which stands for Accelerating Advanced Materials Innovation through AI and Automation.
Advanced materials are substances intentionally engineered, modified, or synthesised to exhibit novel or significantly enhanced physical and chemical properties. They deliver superior performance, structural strength, durability, and sustainability compared to traditional metals, ceramics or polymers.
These engineered materials act as the baseline enabling agents for industries – such as semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, energy and chemicals – allowing breakthroughs that are physically impossible with conventional inputs.
While newer materials can unlock better products, each material candidate has to go through a lengthy R&D process – experimentation, characterisation, validation, process development and industrial translation.
This can involve multiple development cycles, substantial resources and separate hand-offs between research and downstream development.
Hence, MARVEL-AI is designed to change the speed and scale of materials innovation, with a differentiated proposition that connects AI-enabled materials discovery, experimentation and validation with the pathway towards real-world industrial applications.
The initiative is likely to put Singapore on the map of advanced materials’ innovation – an area of intense competition among a handful of countries including the US, China, Japan and South Korea, the UK and Switzerland.
Led by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), the initiative is supported by the Ministry of Energy, Trade and Industry, EnterpriseSG, Singapore Economic Development Board and National Research Foundation.
The initiative received initial funding of S$150 million from the Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2030 (RIE2030) – Singapore’s 5-year S$37 billion science and innovation master plan announced last year.
MARVEL-AI is focused on four materials classes: metal alloys, polymers and organics, ceramics, and composites.
It also aims to create high-value startups, anchor large multinationals with materials development mandates, and uplift local enterprises with frontier technologies.
Gan, who is also the Minister for Energy, Trade and Industry (Trade), said AI models such as Google’s Project GNoME (Graph Networks for Materials Exploration) and Microsoft’s MatterGen have shown the potential of AI to accelerate materials discovery.
He said the AI models will identify promising materials and design experiments, while the highly automated A*Star laboratories will rapidly synthesise and test them.
“This will create opportunities for industry partnerships, enterprise growth and new ventures. We will also develop talent with capabilities spanning materials science, AI and automation, creating good job opportunities.
“Together, these efforts can deepen our industrial capabilities, develop new sources of growth, and strengthen Singapore’s position in advanced materials innovation,” he said.
