When hibank set out to serve Indonesia’s 64 million micro and small enterprises, the digital bank didn’t add AI as an afterthought. It built AI into the core: underwriting, fraud detection, customer service. The result is faster decisions, lower risk, and a path to profitability that traditional models couldn’t deliver at that scale.
hibank isn’t an outlier. New research from the Unlocking Indonesia’s AI Potential 2026 study, released today at the Summit in Jakarta, reveals that 40% of Indonesian businesses have now adopted AI—and 75% of those adopters report measurable productivity gains. AI-native startups in the country are growing revenue 142% year over year. The shift from experimentation to execution is no longer emerging. It’s here.
The study, conducted by Strand Partners, surveyed 1,000 business leaders and 1,000 members of the public to map how AI and cloud are being adopted across the country.
The findings mark a turning point. Indonesian organizations aren’t asking whether AI works. They’re asking how fast they can scale it, how to govern it responsibly, and where to find the talent to sustain it. What follows is the story the data tells—and what it means for businesses deciding what comes next.
The findings point to an economy entering its next phase of AI adoption. Among the adopters, 75% report productivity gains, (up from 68% last year), 72% say AI has accelerated innovation timelines, and 62% report revenue growth attributable to AI. Cloud adoption is also strengthening, rising to 62% from 54% a year earlier.
Businesses on the frontier are showing what comes next
The next wave of AI is beginning to show what is possible when organizations move beyond isolated use cases. Businesses that have adopted agentic AI report stronger productivity outcomes, with 84% reporting productivity gains. They also point to more advanced operational benefits: 47% report faster decision-making and execution, 44% report increased operational efficiency or productivity, and 38% report improved scalability of operations.
Awareness of agentic AI is still developing, with 38% of businesses saying they have heard of it. The more important signal is appetite: once agentic AI is explained, 58% of businesses say they plan to adopt it or are actively considering it.
hibank is now using Kiro, an agentic AI coding service, to modernize its buy now pay later system. With Kiro handling specification, design, and implementation through natural language, the team sped up end-of-day processing by 30% and reduced infrastructure usage by 25%.
From bolt-on to built-in: how AI-native startups are building differently
Startups show an even more accelerated version of this shift. While many established businesses are finding ways to add AI into existing workflows, Indonesia’s AI-native startups are building around AI from the start. They shape their products, operations, and business models around what the technology can do.
That model is already showing results. AI-native startups report 142% average annual revenue growth, compared with 60% for Indonesian startups overall. They are also 4.8 times more likely to earn more than $1 million in annual revenue. Almost all of them (97%) expect AI to drive revenue growth in the coming year.
Rey, a healthtech company, illustrates what this looks like in practice. The company built Olvo AI on Amazon Bedrock to automate claims processing and deliver integrated healthcare at scale. Claim decisions and reimbursement that previously took one to two weeks can now be completed in less than a day, and the platform processes more than 7,000 claims a day for more than 500,000 insured members.
One journey, different starting points
Indonesia’s adoption story reflects many different journeys, not one. Most AI adopters are still in the exploration or experimentation phase, at 56%, while 12% say AI is fully integrated into operations and sits at the center of business strategy.
SMEs present a positive picture: 38% have adopted AI, and of these, 57% are exploring or experimenting while 10% have fully integrated the technology, keeping pace with the broader business landscape.
Across all businesses, the ambition is clear. 78% expect their use of AI to increase over the next twelve months. 72% say they have a clear ambition to scale AI across more areas of the business.
Sector examples show how that ambition is taking shape
- Financial services: 58% of businesses have adopted AI, compared with 40% overall, and 78% report productivity gains
- Healthcare: 42% have adopted AI, 72% report productivity gains, and 80% say AI will transform their industry within five years.
And in the public sector, OJK has built an AI-powered omnichannel chatbot on Amazon Bedrock in the AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region. It unifies five touchpoints into a single platform that helps teams access procurement information more quickly and consistently.
The next stage is building confidence to scale
As more organizations move from experimentation to production, the foundations needed to scale AI are becoming clearer. Today, 24% of AI-adopting firms report having a formal AI strategy, 21% have established data governance, and 17% have responsible AI frameworks in place. These are the capabilities that help businesses move from activity to impact.
Measurement is one part of that shift. Most AI adopters already report positive business outcomes. The next step is formalizing how that value is measured: 47% identify reliable ROI measurement as a priority, while 19% have a clear framework for defining successful AI deployment.
Skills are another area where formalization is shaping up. Fifty-six percent of organizations identify shortages of AI and digital skills as a barrier to adopting or expanding AI. Business leaders identified interpreting, validating, and challenging AI-generated outputs to be some of the more important skills their staff need to learn over the next five years.
That points to a broader shift: as AI becomes more embedded in day-to-day decisions, organizations will need people who can use the technology confidently, question its outputs, and apply responsible judgement alongside it.
That next stage requires a combination of local infrastructure, advanced AI services, responsible AI capabilities, and skills programs. The AWS Asia Pacific (Jakarta) Region gives Indonesian businesses, government agencies, startups, and organizations access to local cloud infrastructure, with a previously announced planned investment of approximately US$5 billion over 15 years. Indonesian organizations are already benefitting by building with AWS technologies such as Amazon Bedrock and Kiro.
AWS has also trained more than 1.3 million Indonesians in cloud and AI skills to date. In 2026, AWS announced IndonesiapandAI – a play on the Indonesian word pandai, meaning smart – and MAIN, free cloud and AI training initiatives designed to make these skills accessible in Bahasa Indonesia at every learning level.
What comes next
The research identifies four priorities for Indonesia’s next phase: accelerate readiness for agentic and generative AI, especially among SMEs; build confidence through stronger ROI measurement; invest in human capability alongside responsible AI practices; and use sector leaders to share practical lessons across industries.
“Indonesia’s AI story has shifted from experimentation to execution. The results speak for themselves,” said Anthony Amni, Country Manager, Indonesia. “What matters now is turning early wins into enterprise-wide transformation. The infrastructure, the services, and the talent programs are here. The companies that move decisively will define the next decade of Indonesia’s digital economy.”
To learn more about the research, including practical steps businesses can take to turn AI adoption into long-term business impact, read the full report here.
