Singapore Tops Global AI Maturity Rankings — But Most Firms Still Haven't Adopted AI
Source: Tech in Asia
A new study from workspace software firm Notion ranks Singapore first among the markets it surveyed for AI maturity, with 21% of organisations reaching the top two levels of its adoption model — well ahead of the 12% global average. The headline is flattering.
A new study from workspace software firm Notion ranks Singapore first among the markets it surveyed for AI maturity, with 21% of organisations reaching the top two levels of its adoption model — well ahead of the 12% global average. The headline is flattering. The fine print, drawn from the same report and Singapore's own official data, is more complicated: 71.5% of organisations here have not adopted AI at all.
Notion's 2026 study found that 38% of Singapore's most advanced AI organisations cited government policy as a driver of adoption. The city-state also recorded the world's narrowest AI confidence gap, with 48% of decision-makers and 39% of knowledge workers reporting high confidence in their organisations' AI capabilities — an unusually small split between the people funding AI and the people using it.
The split picture matches what policymakers have been saying. In a June 5 parliamentary speech, the Ministry of Manpower noted about three in ten firms had adopted AI, and seven in ten AI-using firms were already seeing productivity gains. The barriers it cited are familiar ones: implementation costs, a lack of in-house expertise, and — for smaller firms — an unclear strategy.
The government's response has been to spend its way through the gap. More than S$400 million is set aside for the Enterprise Workforce Transformation Package, and eligible businesses will receive S$10,000 under a redesigned SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit later this year. The logic is to make adoption cheap enough and skills available enough that the laggards close the distance to the frontier.
Why it matters for Singapore: The gap between the 21% of firms at the AI frontier and the 71.5% that have yet to start is the defining feature of Singapore's adoption landscape right now. The country's advantage is not that everyone uses AI — it is that the policy machinery for closing the gap is already in motion. The question to watch over the next year is whether the leading cohort's edge widens into an elite tier, or whether the middle finally catches up.
