Expanding our AI investments in Singapore

Google opened its first Singapore office 19 years ago. What started as a small office has grown into a team of nearly 3,000, serving billions of people across the region. As we enter a new era of AI, Singapore is helping to lead the way with its world-class talent and a bold national vision for the future. We share that ambition.

That’s why, at our Google for Singapore event, we announced new programs guided by our mission to empower Singaporeans today for tomorrow, and focused on building an AI-ready nation — deepening our local research and development and building a future that is beneficial for society, robust for the economy, empowering for talent and safe for all.

Here are some of the highlights:

Building new technology from Singapore, to the world

Innovation through research and development has always been at the heart of how Google builds for the future globally. Building on the recent opening of the Google DeepMind research lab in Singapore, we are expanding our local R&D footprint by investing heavily in human capital — scaling specialised teams across software engineering, research science, and user experience (UX) design. They will help build deep, local research capabilities that serve the region, and develop new technologies across Google’s products and platforms, exporting innovation from Singapore to the world.

Solving for society's challenges

AI is accelerating progress on some of humanity’s biggest challenges, and nowhere is that opportunity more profound than in healthcare. We’re partnering with local organizations to use AI to address critical health issues in Singapore.

We are partnering with AI Singapore (AISG) to support the development of Singapore’s National AI Infrastructure for health. By providing access to MedGemma, this foundational health AI model reflects the health needs of Singapore's population and enables the development of AI solutions that can speed up diagnoses and unlock more effective treatments for Singapore.

To advance preventative healthcare, we are also collaborating with local health-tech startup AMILI on a precision nutrition program that will use AI to provide people with personalized lifestyle and nutrition guidance.

In addition, to continue developing representative language models for Southeast Asia, Google.org will provide an additional US$1 million funding to AISG’s Project Aquarium, to improve the quality of Southeast Asian datasets and make them open source, empowering more developers to build culturally relevant solutions for the region

Driving innovation for growth

Singapore hosts international headquarters for many of the world’s ambitious companies. To foster deeper technical collaboration with these organizations, we're unveiling the launch of a Google Cloud Singapore Engineering Center.

This hub will bring together a new team of software engineers and frontline support teams to work directly with Singapore-based enterprises, helping them solve high-stakes global challenges while supporting pioneers in frontier industries like robotics, and clean energy.

In addition, to provide aspiring entrepreneurs with tools to test and scale their ideas, Google will launch Startup School: Prompt to Prototype to help them transform ideas into functional AI prototypes using Gemini.

Building a future-ready workforce

To fuel Singapore’s next wave of growth, we are launching ‘Majulah AI,’ our bold, renewed commitment to empower the nation for the AI economy. This initiative is the next step in a journey that has already helped nearly 350,000 Singaporeans learn new digital skills since 2020, ensuring our efforts remain a continuous and evolving part of the nation's fabric.

This comprehensive approach brings together a range of initiatives to empower every segment of the population — from youth to seniors, and professionals to entrepreneurs.

We are delivering on this by integrating our range of initiatives under ‘Majulah AI’ – from high-touch training like Skills Ignition SG traineeship for jobseekers, to Google for Startups Accelerator: AI First and AI Cloud Takeoff for entrepreneurs and developers, and scaled programs like Gemini Academy for every Singaporean, including our seniors.

To broaden our reach, we are expanding workforce support through the new Skills Ignition SG AI Challenge in partnership with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) to equip 500 graduates and professionals with hands-on AI workflow skills. This builds on the flagship Skills Ignition SG programme that has empowered 28,000 Singaporeans through its on-the-job traineeship and online courses.

Simultaneously, we are collaborating with the Ministry of Education to establish physical Google AI Living Labs across education institutions like ITE College East and Nanyang Polytechnic to empower 50,000 students and educators with AI skills by 2027.

Creating a secure ecosystem

We believe building AI responsibly means safety can't be an afterthought. That’s why as we build new tools, we're also creating new protections for the people who use them.

We are launching an AI Center of Excellence for security in Singapore to research and tackle critical emerging threats. This expanded team of research scientists, data scientists, and security engineers will work to identify and get ahead of risks in new areas like agentic AI, while advancing security and privacy for the mobile ecosystem.

To keep our young users safer online, we have also started rolling out our age assurance solution in Singapore to provide users under 18 a safer, age-appropriate experience by default — like turning on SafeSearch and applying content restrictions on YouTube and Google Play.

We are incredibly excited about the future Singapore is building and the global leadership it will bring.

Realizing this vision requires collaboration between industry, government, and the community and we are committed to continuing this journey with the country. Here’s to many more years of strong partnership between Google and Singapore.