APEC headlines often center on geopolitics and trade diplomacy, with good reason. However, at the APEC 2025 CEO Forum, themed ‘Bridge, Business, Beyond’, it was clear that beyond the political headlines, a story on artificial intelligence (AI) is also unfolding in Asia-Pacific’s boardrooms, factories, and startups where businesses are at the tipping point.
Across the region, businesses are using AI and agents to drive transformation and innovation, both at speed and scale. We are witnessing a shift from AI experimentation to real execution and results.
Companies are no longer asking “What can AI do?” but “How fast can we make it work for us?”.
1. Agentic AI is driving a new wave of productivity
The most exciting development isn’t another algorithm—it’s the rise of agentic AI, systems that can reason, decide, and act autonomously. Unlike early generative models that improved efficiency by 20%, agentic AI is producing undeniable productivity returns.
In Australia, Lendi Group’s AI agents save 55,000 hours of manual work annually and improve customer satisfaction by 20%. In Korea, LG Electronics achieved a 288-fold performance gain by cutting market analysis from three days to just 30 minutes. In Japan, Mitsubishi UFJ boosted proposal-ready customer leads tenfold and lifted deal conversions by 30%.
These examples show that the benefits of AI aren’t theoretical. They are measurable, profitable, and accelerating.
2. Asia’s AI maturity is turning vision into value
Across APEC economies, businesses have moved past pilot projects. They’re scaling AI for real-world impact, working backwards from the customer to transform experiences rather than just automate existing processes, and this is where leadership comes into play.
Telkomsel in Indonesia used AI to strengthen network reliability for 159 million customers—cutting incident analysis time by 21% and resolution time by 83%. India’s Apollo Tyres applied AI to streamline its production lines, reducing troubleshooting effort by 88%.
These examples represent a mindset shift. Businesses in Asia aren’t adopting technology for its own sake—they’re embedding it into their strategy and a customer obsessed culture to deliver results faster, at scale, and with purpose.
3. A new wave of leadership
Technology moves fast, but it is technology combined with true leadership that can navigate these unchartered territories and demonstrate, with purpose, what is really possible.
As AI systems become more autonomous, responsible governance and digital literacy must grow in tandem to drive inclusive growth. The most successful organizations in the region are the ones where everyone is a builder. Growing AI literacy from the boardroom to the classroom; equipping leaders, engineers, and policymakers with the skills to innovate responsibly; hiring for learning agility, resilience, and the boldness to experiment; and nurturing strong value systems in teams – all critical for leaders to achieve.
The leaders in Asia who embed Gen AI technology and an innovation mindset into their culture, investing in talent and skills to accelerate this technological shift will be the ones who help Asia succeed in the AI future.
Balancing an innovation mindset with accountability that builds customer trust will be a strategic differentiator. The companies that get this right will move faster, scale safer, and earn public confidence in the era of autonomous AI.
4. Infrastructure is the foundation for long-term results
Agentic transformation doesn’t happen in isolation— successful agentic transformations require the unique data that organizations across Asia have developed- customer insights, operational knowledge, business processes- combined with the most advanced cloud environment available. With the right infrastructure- compute, storage, databases, and inference services that operate reliably at scale, organizations of all sizes across Asia can truly leverage the AI opportunity.
Right now, business leaders face a critical decision – their infrastructure choices today will shape their competitive position tomorrow. Companies that migrate their enterprise data to secure, scalable cloud environments, while their teams focus on building agent driven innovation, are the ones unlocking the full potential of AI faster and better.
5. Collaboration creates shared prosperity
Perhaps APEC’s most enduring value lies in the power of partnership. And similarly, Asia’s AI story is one of collaboration—where large enterprises, startups, and small businesses are together an innovation engine for the region.
The most compelling aspect of Asia-Pacific’s AI transformation is how it creates mutual benefits. Small businesses gain access to enterprise-grade AI capabilities and new global customers. Large enterprises benefit from diverse talent pools and innovation ecosystems. In the AI economy, collaboration creates more value than competition.
The bottom line
The APEC Summit underscored the responsibility that policymakers and businesses have to shape a prosperous future for the Asia Pacific. Across the region, companies are proving that with the right mix of technology, infrastructure, and trust, AI can power inclusive growth and long-term competitiveness.
The challenge for business leaders is not if AI will transform their industries—but how quickly and how adeptly they can lead their customers and teams through this period of rapid transformation.
Asia stands at the center of the world’s next wave of innovation. With our culture of invention, bold ideas, and collaborative spirit, this region isn’t just participating in the AI revolution – it’s defining it.
