Southeast Asia's digital economy will grow 17% in 2026, reaching $368 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV). That is the forecast of the 11th e-Conomy SEA report, published by Google, Temasek and Bain & Company, which also projects the region will exceed $1 trillion by 2035.
Generative AI is driving the growth. It is already part of daily life for 243 million people, or 58% of the working population, and its adoption is running four times faster than mobile internet did. The report's key point is that AI is no longer confined to one sector: it is lifting the whole digital economy.
Growth across every sector
E-commerce accounts for $226 billion of GMV, up 18%. In-app assistants and multimodal search help shoppers navigate complex purchases, and the report says they lift conversions by 10% and order volumes by as much as 75%.
Online travel reaches $59 billion, up 10%. Traditional search engines remain the main tool for planning trips, but generative AI has overtaken social media as the second most used tool for organizing complex itineraries.
Online media reaches $44 billion in revenue, up 22%, and personalized feeds improve engagement quality by 10 to 20%. Commerce media becomes a $4 billion market.
Mobility and food delivery are worth $40 billion in GMV, up 15%, with predictive suggestions and smarter routing. Digital financial services reach over $1.65 trillion in transaction value, up 16%, with real-time fraud detection and broader credit access. Singapore remains the regional leader in digital wealth platforms.
Users trust AI
The report identifies consumer trust as the trigger for agentic commerce, in which AI agents compare prices and complete purchases on the user's behalf. 75% of respondents say they are willing to let them do so. Today 72% already use everyday automation such as price tracking, and 62% say they trust AI tools more than a year ago.
Users want clear conditions: privacy safeguards (44%), transparency about what AI can and cannot do (36%), and the ability to reverse agentic transactions (30%).
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Four conditions to meet
To support a 60-fold increase in regional AI usage by 2030, the report points to four conditions. Businesses must move from answering single questions to completing multi-step tasks while keeping costs sustainable.
Data center capacity must roughly triple over five years, with AI workloads becoming the dominant share. Singapore will introduce binding Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rules under its Digital Infrastructure Bill, while Malaysia is pushing corporate renewable energy schemes.
Finally, the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), due in November 2026, is set to create the world's first region-wide digital trade pact.
Data rules still differ
Demand is strong, but differing data rules across the region complicate cloud services. DEFA is designed to harmonize that framework.
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