When Techcom Securities Joint Stock Company (TCBS) launched Vietnam’s first fully online IPO subscription service, it was one of three major capabilities the company delivered in a single quarter. The speed behind it: AI. Over 460 TCBS staff members now use Kiro, an agentic AI-powered software development environment from Amazon Web Services (AWS), cutting development time by nearly 25%, with 70% of AI-generated code passing first reviews. TCBS is one example of how Vietnamese businesses are using AI to move faster, ship more, and compete harder.

New research from the Unlocking Vietnam’s AI Potential 2026 study, released today at AWS Cloud and AI Day Hanoi, reveals that 26% of Vietnamese businesses (around 245,000) have now adopted AI, with 78% of adopters expecting AI-driven growth in the next year.

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.

AI adopters also reported solid results: 73% say AI plays a critical or important role in their overall business strategy; 75% report productivity gains, up from 66% last year; and 64% say AI has increased their revenue by an average of 15%.

While momentum is building, sustaining it will take more than ambition. As more businesses move from experimentation to implementation, three foundations will determine their pace: a clear AI strategy backed by governance, reliable ways to measure return on investment, and the right skills to use AI responsibly.

Different businesses, different journeys

Vietnam’s businesses have ambitions to transform with AI, with 69% of businesses saying AI adoption is a top or high priority, and 84% expect their use of AI to increase over the next year. This adoption spans large enterprises, SMEs, and AI-native startups, with each of them having their own priorities and needs. Even though 61% of AI adopters say they're still experimenting, the early returns are promising with 71% reporting that their AI investment has either broken even or delivered a positive return. The healthcare and financial sectors are showing how that ambition is shaping up:

  • In financial services, 41% of businesses have adopted AI, compared with 26% overall, and 79% report productivity gains.
  • In healthcare, 23% have adopted AI, compared with 26% overall, and 69% report productivity gains.

Despite stricter compliance requirements, innovation has not stalled. OmiGroup, a Vietnam-based healthcare IT company, built OmiKG on AWS, a research tool that uses AI to trace the root causes of chronic diseases. In a controlled research evaluation, OmiKG identified 15 of 17 molecular mechanisms for Type 2 Diabetes, far outperforming two alternative AI approaches. The tool helps practitioners understand the biological “why” behind a condition, such as whether the root cause is toxin exposure or diet, and inform targeted treatment.

Agentic AI is already accelerating Vietnam’s businesses

Some of Vietnam’s businesses have already embedded AI agents into their workflows, accelerating innovation and supporting international growth. 38% of businesses surveyed have heard of agentic AI. Of those, 8% have already embedded AI agents in core workflows, and 19% are experimenting with or piloting them.

Early movers are reaping outsized rewards, with 81% experiencing overall productivity gains. Among these businesses, 68% of adopters report increased operational efficiency or productivity, 61% report faster decision-making and execution, and 49% report improved scalability of operations.

NoteX is an AI-powered voice intelligence and speech platform built in Vietnam and scaling globally. Running on AWS, NoteX has reduced its AI processing costs and latency by 30% and scaled to over 1 million users across Vietnam and over 20 countries in its first year. Built on AWS services including Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker, NoteX trains and deploys its own voice models at scale. This allows its two-way voice translation tool, Saydi, to deliver accurate multilingual live translations and automatically identify different speakers across Vietnamese, English, and Japanese conversations in natural voice outputs. It also runs on the AWS Local Zone in Hanoi to serve data residency needs of regulated industries.

“AWS gives us the infrastructure to train, deploy, and scale our proprietary voice models across over 20 countries without managing foundational model infrastructure ourselves, allowing us to focus on our tech while reducing costs. With the AWS Local Zone in Hanoi, we run our proprietary language models closer to regulated Vietnamese customers. This allows us to deliver low latency and full compliance while scaling across 20+ countries at lower cost.” said Nguyen Luu, CEO, NoteX & Saydi.

Building agents outwards: the accelerated journey of AI-native startups

Vietnam’s AI-native startups are outpacing their peers. Free from legacy IT, they are shipping AI-powered products that scale faster and reach further. As a result, these cloud-first startups have reported 147% average annual revenue growth in the past year.

They are also 4.8 times more likely to earn more than US$1 million in annual revenue, and 96% expect AI to drive revenue growth in the coming year. 74% of startups say that their timelines for innovation are accelerated thanks to AI, compared to 66% across all businesses.

Diaflow shows what’s possible. Founded by a Vietnam-based team, this enterprise AI agent orchestration service already counts over 40,000 users, 75% of them in the United States. Built on Amazon Bedrock, Diaflow handles agent orchestration and governance while giving customers the freedom to adopt frontier AI capabilities of their choice. Users have executed over 100 million AI tasks to date.

Building the foundations for Vietnam to achieve its AI ambitions

With 61% of AI adopters still in the experimentation phase, the transition to full implementation will require stronger foundations in three areas.

  1. Strategy and governance will determine a business’ pace of transformation. Today, 23% of AI-adopting businesses say they have a formal and comprehensive AI strategy in place, almost double the 12% reported in 2025. Of these, 28% established a formal data governance framework and 19% implemented comprehensive responsible AI frameworks that address governance, oversight and risk management.
  2. Measuring returns on investment will also help to clarify the impact of AI adoption. Only 13% of businesses polled have a clearly defined and consistently applied framework for measuring AI returns on investment (ROI), and 46% lack reliable ways to measure ROI.
  3. Skills for the AI era remain in demand, with 54% of businesses recognizing that a shortage of digital and AI skills are barriers to adopting and expanding AI use. 87% of employers say reskilling existing employees is important to their AI strategy, so workers can ethically use AI while interpreting, challenging, and validating its output. Here, Vietnam is pushing ahead, with 26% of employees having participated in some form of training in the past year, up from 19% in 2025.

What is evolving, however, are the types of AI skills required. As AI systems become more capable, businesses have identified that human judgement is the critical capability for an AI-enabled workforce. 62% of business leaders say critical thinking and judgement will be crucial, while 57% of leaders say the ability to interpret, validate and importantly challenge AI-generated outputs will become more important in the next five years.

Businesses are also willing to pay for this talent. Companies say they would increase salaries by an average of 41% more for AI-ready workers.

The path forward for Vietnam

Vietnam's businesses can act today to turn AI adoption into measurable impact. Here are six quick takes:

  • Accelerate business readiness to move from pilot to organization-wide deployment
  • Build confidence in AI investments with clear ways to measure ROI
  • Adopt interoperable, international standards and industry-led best practices
  • Strengthen infrastructure foundations by adopting cloud and managed infrastructure, and planning for infrastructure needs ahead of time
  • Nurture human capabilities to expand AI literacy and strengthen human judgment
  • Use sector leader successes to accelerate adoption through collaboration and sharing best practices

AWS is here to support Vietnamese businesses' ambitions. We recently announced the AWS Hanoi Local Zone, which brings AWS infrastructure closer to organizations in Vietnam. We have also trained more than 157,000 people in Vietnam in cloud and AI skills to date. AWS is also running the Vietnam First Cloud & AI Journey program to strengthen the pipeline of Vietnamese developers, with over 15,000 having gone through the program already since 2021.

"Vietnam's goal of becoming an ASEAN AI hub by 2030 is on track, marked by strong interest and adoption of the technology," said Eric Yeo, Country General Manager, AWS Vietnam. "Every organization is at a different point in its AI journey, but the direction is clear. Businesses that move thoughtfully from experimentation to implementation, supported with cloud infrastructure, regulatory clarity, and skills will be best positioned to compete and grow."

To learn more about this research, including practical steps businesses can take to turn AI adoption into long-term business impact, read the full report here.