Singapore commits over S$1B to public AI research and 15,000 experts

Singapore is doubling down on the idea that AI leadership is primarily a research and talent game, not just a model‑release race. A billion‑dollar public commitment to AI research, new centres of excellence and 15,000 specialists is a serious national bet, especially for a city‑state of under six million people. The announcement also follows Singapore’s push at Davos for a global governance framework for agentic AI, signalling that it wants to shape both the technical stack and the rulebook.([laregione.ch](https://www.laregione.ch/estero/estero/1899409/singapore-stanzia-oltre-un-miliardo-per-l-intelligenza-artificiale-tra-il-2025-e-il-2030))

In practical terms, this money will underwrite long‑horizon work on safer, more efficient models and the infrastructure to train and deploy them. That makes Singapore an attractive hub for labs and startups that want rule‑of‑law stability plus serious compute and grant support. For the race to AGI, the move reinforces a trend: small but wealthy states using concentrated investments to punch above their weight in foundational research and compute, rather than trying to build their own OpenAI‑scale product companies.