First announced in 2024, the flagship AI program underscores AWS’s support for Singapore’s Smart Nation and National AI Strategy 2.0 (NAIS) initiatives across six strategic pillars – Public Sector, Workforce, Enterprise, Startups, Communities, and Research and Development.
“Singapore's bold AI vision demands collaboration across sectors to succeed,” said Elsie Tan, Country Manager, Worldwide Public Sector, Singapore at AWS. “By bridging public and private innovation, strengthening digital infrastructure, and investing in future talent, we're helping transform Singapore into a global AI hub where technology drives positive societal impact.”
AWS AI Spring has made significant progress in the last year across all six pillars. Here are the highlights:
Workforce and Research development
As AWS deepens its investment in Singapore's AI ecosystem, workforce development and research initiatives stand at the forefront of our commitment to nurturing local talent. The past year has seen significant collaborations with leading educational institutions, creating pipelines for AI-skilled professionals who will drive innovation across the region.
A centerpiece of these efforts is our new partnership with the National Institute of Education (NIE), where we're establishing the Technology for Education Centre (TEC) to equip future educators with essential cloud computing and AI skills. This collaboration with NIE, an autonomous institute within Nanyang Technological University, creates a collaborative hub on the NIE campus that offers professional development programs for faculty, supports joint research in data analytics and AI, and provides hands-on workshops for students.
The partnership with NIE will also drive applied innovation in education by focusing on the practical use of cloud and emerging technologies in teaching and learning environments. As part of the collaboration, AWS will provide access to a range of digital learning resources, including self-paced courses and training programs such as AWS Skill Builder. These resources are designed to enhance the existing digital curriculum at the NIE and strengthen competencies in cloud technologies among educators and NIE staff. This is one part of how AWS continues to help train the trainers of tomorrow.
In addition to the NIE, AWS is working with other institutes of higher learning (IHLs) such as Temasek Polytechnic (TP), where we launched the FutureX innovation center last year. This facility gives both students and local businesses practical access to cloud technologies and AI resources, building a skilled digital workforce throughout the Asia Pacific region. By combining AWS cloud and AI expertise with TP's educational framework, we're helping prepare tomorrow's tech professionals while supporting Singapore's national digital transformation agenda.
Partnerships with IHLs and the Institute of Technical Education are contributing to AWS's goal of training 5,000 learners in Singapore annually on AI skills across these educational centers through 2026, creating a sustainable pipeline of AI talent for Singapore's growing digital economy.
Our workforce development efforts have also gained further momentum through our partnership with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) on their Company-Led Training program (CLT). The CLT places fresh Singaporean graduates and mid-career professionals with companies for on-the-job training, helping build digital skills through structured training and mentorship while working with leading technology companies. AWS is proud to be helping the IMDA boost AI talent this year by placing aspiring AI talent with Singapore-based companies.
Public Sector innovation
AWS has been contributing to various Singapore government agencies and ministries in the past year as part of our ongoing support for the government’s NAIS 2.0 strategy. The NAIS is Singapore’s approach to deepen the use of AI to transform its economy, and has been a central pillar of Singapore’s Smart Nation vision since 2019.
For example, with Synapxe, Singapore's national HealthTech agency, AWS is powering the enhanced HealthX Innovation Sandbox 2.0—a secure, cloud-based environment designed specifically for developing and validating digital health solutions ready for real-world implementation. Hosted on AWS, the platform provides innovators with access to more than 2,300 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) APIs, synthetic healthcare datasets, and simulation environments, enabling them to test and scale applications, while adhering to strict standards for privacy, interoperability, and clinical relevance.
The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) also worked with an AWS Partner, NCS, to transform its contact center operations using generative AI (Gen AI) technology. The enhanced system halved inquiry handling times and enabled seamless communication across Singapore's four official languages - Mandarin, English, Malay, and Tamil. With Gen AI-powered assistance for call agents and automated call summaries, MOM has significantly improved both citizen service delivery and operational efficiency, ensuring inclusive service for all Singaporeans.
Enterprise empowerment
AWS's Enterprise pillar is also gaining ground through strategic public and private partnerships. The collaboration between AWS and IMDA's GenAI x Digital Leaders initiative is helping businesses of all sizes deploy AI solutions quickly and securely. Through strengthened engagement with IMDA, AWS aims to accelerate Gen AI adoption among digitally mature companies in Singapore by increasing tech-discovery sessions, workshops, and one-on-one consultations. This enhanced collaboration focuses on reducing development costs and deployment time, while expanding access to our technical experts, including model developers and implementation partners.
One company that has benefitted from the GenAI x Digital Leaders initiative is SaladStop!. The company has developed a Gen AI assistant using Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, delivering personalized meal recommendations based on dietary preferences and order history. The tool is projected to help boost operational efficiency and could double online orders, as the company enhances its nutrition experience across 80 global outlets.
Meanwhile, bolttech, a Singapore-headquartered insurtech company, is using Amazon Bedrock to build intelligent agentic AI-enabled bots that enhance the customer experience. These bots can speak with its customers in their native language, conduct basic claims processing without human intervention, and offer personalized immediate responses to questions on customers’ insurance policies. The same engine is also available to its employees, allowing them to develop and deploy their own internal Gen AI applications.
Razer, a leading lifestyle brand for gamers, is also soon launching its Razer AI Game Assistant and Razer Quality Assurance (QA) Companion on AWS Marketplace, helping game developers streamline production with tools for real-time advice, automated testing, and performance tuning. Built on Amazon Bedrock, it can plug in to video game engines like Unreal and Unity. These tools are part of Razer’s broader WYVRN AI gaming ecosystem. QA Companion, developed in collaboration with Side, accelerates bug detection and QA workflows. AWS’s secure infrastructure enables Razer to scale access for developers globally and help them streamline workflows, boost productivity, and accelerate their development cycles.
These are just some of the collaborations demonstrating how partnerships between government, technology providers, and local businesses can create a thriving AI ecosystem that drives innovation across the economy.
Startup Acceleration
AWS continues to foster innovation among Gen AI startups across Southeast Asia. The 2024 AWS Generative AI Spotlight program launched with 40 startups, including 12 from Singapore.
These participants are advancing rapidly using AWS technologies. Bunker Tech, for instance, has integrated Gen AI into its financial analytics SaaS platform to deliver data insights with executive-ready recommendations, while klikit has enhanced its AI-embedded point-of-sale and payments platform with klikit AI, supporting multiple business functions from research to customer service.
Other Singapore-based innovators in the program include Reforged Labs, which enables cost-efficient game marketing content production through video analytics and automated ad generation, and Level 3 AI, which deploys AI agents to transform business process outsourcing and help organizations scale operations.
Communities
Across Singapore, AWS’s work with organizations democratizes access to AI through upskilling initiatives and community-driven programs that bring AI capabilities to diverse populations. These collaborative efforts are helping to create a more inclusive AI ecosystem that benefits all Singaporeans.
AWS is fostering AI skills development through the ASEAN Large Language Model (LLM) League—a Gen AI fine-tuning competition and collaborative learning program co-developed with AI Singapore. This initiative helps organizations and students gain hands-on experience with AWS AI services through instructor-led challenges, demonstrating how Gen AI upskilling can drive innovation across broader communities.
The democratization of AI extends to grassroots efforts as well. AWS is providing technical support to the Gen-C learning community, a nationwide volunteer-led movement backed by the National Library Board (NLB),. and led by local industry practitioners. Gen-C organizes regular meetups and workshops to upskill Singaporeans in Gen AI, covering essential topics like prompt engineering, working with large language models, and model fine-tuning. AWS contributes cloud technical expertise and infrastructure, enabling community members to explore and build with Gen AI tools.
Through these volunteer-led initiatives and open resources, AWS is helping demystify AI for the wider public, building grassroots confidence and skills that will enable more Singaporeans to participate in the country's AI-driven future.
To expand AI access across Southeast Asia’s diverse language communities, AWS also partnered with AI Singapore to launch the Pan-Southeast Asia Generative AI Developer Challenge—a regional competition and learning initiative designed to encourage the development of multilingual LLM applications. The program provides developers across ASEAN with access to Amazon Bedrock and a selection of foundation models tuned for local languages and cultural context, including SEA-LION v3.5. Participants gain hands-on experience building applications that solve real-world problems in education, commerce, and government services—all while supporting native language use and inclusion.
Research and Development
Last but not least, AWS is also deepening its commitment to Singapore's R&D ecosystem through strategic partnerships that harness cloud technology, to help power the next generation of AI-enabled solutions across the nation.
Complementing this initiative, AWS is supporting the National Healthcare Group (NHG) to launch a Digital Innovation Studio—a cloud-based healthcare innovation platform developed by the Centre of Healthcare Innovation (CHI). Through this collaboration, AWS will provide technical support and infrastructure to accelerate digital transformation and innovation throughout the NHG cluster. AWS is also working with the Advanced Remanufacturing Technology Centre (ARTC), A*STAR, to equip manufacturing talent with Gen AI capabilities through training and hands-on workshops. In addition, AWS developed a Gen AI agent for the logistics and manufacturing sectors, which was demonstrated during the official launch of the Sectoral AI Centre of Excellence for Manufacturing.
These partnerships represent a significant advancement in Singapore's technology landscape, creating interconnected environments where professionals, technologists, and innovators can collaborate to develop solutions that will improve operational efficiency, aid in patient outcomes, and deliver the next round of innovative solutions that will benefit citizens in Singapore. We look forward to working with all of our partners, customers, researchers and more in the years ahead as we build a Gen AI future, together.
