GIC Expands AI Investment Strategy Beyond Chipmakers to Companies Adopting AI
Source: KrASIA
Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC has been investing in artificial intelligence since 2020, with a portfolio that includes Anthropic, Vantage Data Centers, and semiconductor supply chain companies. Now CEO Lim Chow Kiat says the fund is extending its AI focus toward companies leveraging the technology to transform their businesses.
Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC has been investing in artificial intelligence since 2020, with a portfolio that includes Anthropic, Vantage Data Centers, and semiconductor supply chain companies across Japan and the US. Now it is taking a broader view.
CEO Lim Chow Kiat told Nikkei Asia the fund is extending its AI-related investment focus beyond AI developers and chipmakers toward large publicly listed companies that can leverage the technology to transform their businesses. "The winners will be those that can successfully transform themselves, and the losers will be those who fail to adopt AI and might see value erosion or disruption as a result," Lim said.
Among the investments reflecting this shift is US drugmaker Eli Lilly, which uses AI in drug development and manufacturing — a sector where Singapore has been building its own biomedical and AI capabilities through initiatives like A*Star's AI in Healthcare programmes. GIC's move mirrors a broader trend in Singapore's investment ecosystem, where Temasek and SGInnovate have also been backing AI-adopting enterprises across verticals from finance to logistics.
To identify winners, GIC looks for structural advantages such as proprietary data that companies can use with AI to boost productivity. Lim noted that global semiconductor companies are nearing full production capacity, with valuations appearing to price in those growth prospects — suggesting the fund sees greater upside in the broader adoption layer than in the chip supply chain alone.
GIC also announced plans to deploy an additional USD 30 billion into hedge funds over the next three years as part of a diversification strategy, with CIO Bryan Yeo noting that hedge fund returns are lowly correlated with traditional asset classes. The fund's 20-year annual real return was 3.4% above inflation, down from 3.8% a year earlier, while its nominal return stood at 5.6% over the same period.
Why it matters for Singapore: GIC manages an estimated USD 930 billion in assets and is one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds. Its expanding AI investment thesis — moving from pure-play AI infrastructure to companies applying AI across industries — signals where the fund sees long-term value creation. For Singapore's tech ecosystem, this means GIC-backed portfolio companies may increasingly look to the city-state as a base for AI-enabled regional operations, reinforcing its position as a hub for AI talent and deployment.
