“”fortelecommunications” In the group, providers will consider deploying Agentic AI to manage networks, operational support systems, and customer experience to resolve issues faster.Meanwhile, AI ecosystems will turn data into real-time insights, and digital services through cross-industry collaboration platforms will lead to new streams of revenue.
next,”energy“The Group believes that AI can help accelerate the energy transition, make systems smarter, more resilient and more efficient, improve grid stability and integrate renewable energy. “Green AI” is here, where AI contributes to reducing its own energy use and carbon emissions through optimization of hardware, workloads and cooling systems. Self-adaptive infrastructure covers everything from chips and operating systems to tracking carbon emissions, allowing AI to create value without adding unnecessary energy burdens.
lastly,”public service“AI will help increase productivity and agility, allowing people to access financial, agricultural, public health, and education services at the right price and in a local context. In 2026, government agencies will emphasize responsible, safe, ethical, and transparent AI through strong governance frameworks to reduce risk and build public trust.”
5 big AI trends that are driving your business
IBM also summarized five AI technology trends that are driving organizations across five key business areas.
Internet of AI: Generative AI and Agentic AI will become the core infrastructure of your organization. Foundational and specialized models work together to improve efficiency, governance, and innovation at scale. At the same time, AI will move from centralized data centers to privacy-friendly decentralized systems. AI learns through smartphones, IoT, and edge devices using persistent memory, on-device processing, and privacy-first design.
AI as a growth promoter: Efficiency is just the starting point. The true return on investment (ROI) of AI is realized when AI creates competitive differentiation, transforms business models, creates new products, services, or revenue streams, and transforms AI from a cost center to an investment that generates sustainable returns.
ROI with trusted AI: Organizations that invest heavily in AI ethics tend to continually increase profits and ROI from AI.
Sovereign AI: Sovereign AI will proceed in parallel with the global AI model. Local models and sovereign infrastructure will grow to reflect the changing structure of the global AI landscape and meet the needs of data sovereignty, linguistic diversity, cultural context, and national security.
Quantum and AI: As quantum computing approaches “quantum advantage,” this technology has the potential to accelerate the training of AI models through optimization, sampling, and simulation of complex systems. Conversely, AI improves quantum workflows such as algorithms, error correction, and resource allocation.
Asia/Thailand business overview
Juhi said the most exciting thing about the Asia-Pacific region is that AI innovation is no longer limited to a single industry.
“We are beginning to see advances in communications that inspire manufacturing, and prototypes from manufacturing are extended into energy. The value learned and the cross-industry transfer itself will accelerate AI readiness across the region and help organizations leapfrog old development cycles. This reflects organizational leaders purposefully expanding the use of AI and focusing on measurable growth.”
If 2024 is the year of “Awakening” and 2025 is the year of “Building Acceleration,” 2026 will be the year of victory for those who turn AI into real benefits and sustainability.
From Gen AI to Agentic AI
One of the hottest trends is the shift from generative AI, which “helps you think and helps you create,” to agentic AI, which can plan, decide, and act on its own.
In the future, AI will go beyond answering questions and creating content to take on the role of process manager, replacing humans with more complex and continuous tasks.
Salesforce said Thailand's AI market is growing rapidly. Industry analysis predicts a high average annual growth rate of 32.33%, with the total market expected to reach approximately 233 billion baht by 2031.
The technological revolution driven by Agentic AI presents significant growth opportunities for organizations in Thailand by empowering the workforce through AI agents, increasing work efficiency, upgrading business operations, and improving customer experience.
AI as a necessary cost of competition
However, 2025 clearly demonstrated that the adoption of AI has become a “necessary cost” for survival, rather than a strategic advantage. Organizations that don't invest in AI will begin to lose ground in terms of speed, cost, and decision-making capabilities. Like public sector organizations, organizations that are slow to invest or lack systems will face increasing problems in keeping up with their competitors.
A Gartner study found that within 2026, 80% of government chief information officers plan to increase their GenAI budgets by 38% year over year, putting pressure on them to expand the use of GenAI to deliver faster and more efficient public services.
This situation extends not only to the organizational level but also to the national level. Countries with better digital infrastructure, talent and governance frameworks will attract more investment and innovation. Countries that still view AI only as an auxiliary tool risk being left behind in the global economic chain.
Thailand's technology guru: AI battlefield will remain fierce in 2026
Dr. Thanachart NamunondaThe founder and director of IMC Institute analyzed that when looking at the AI market as a whole from the transition period from 2025 to 2026, interesting changes will appear. Despite Google's reemergence in technology, brand, and consumer awareness, the term “ChatGPT” is still used by people as a common noun to refer to AI, with over 700 million weekly users and 75% consumer chatbot market share, giving OpenAI a significant business advantage.
But this throne won't remain stable forever, as competitors like Google are strangling it, as evidenced by the Gemini app's surging user numbers from 450 million to 650 million.
What impact will this tournament have on Thai people? Although official Thai test results have not been released yet, we can predict that Gemini 3.0 is likely to be one of the best performing models in Thai, as Google has a huge amount of Thai language data from search and YouTube. The model's ability to understand videos and images can help you better understand cultural backgrounds and dialects.
See Thai model Typhoon
At the same time, Thai models are starting to create their own Typhoon-like spaces. It has been further developed for specialized tasks that foreign models do not yet do well, particularly working with complex Thai documents such as tables and government forms, and understanding local dialects.
Therefore, it is no longer the time to stick to one AI. Smart companies and developers use methods that combine multiple models.
Finally, what happens next is a capital war and frenzied rapid development. Big tech companies are expected to collectively spend more than $400 billion in 2026 in the fight for number one. Product or model launch cycles that previously took six to seven months will be reduced to just a few months, or even just a few weeks.
The direction of technology will be toward AI agents, intelligent assistants that can actually think and act on behalf of humans, rather than just answering questions, such as automatically writing code, booking tickets, and processing complex documents.
economic opportunity or large bubble
Bloomberg reported that concerns about an AI bubble continue into 2025-2026 as investors pour in money at levels never seen before, but few people actually know for sure whether these funds will deliver the expected returns.
Technology companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on advanced chips and data centers not only to support the rapidly expanding use of chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, but also to prepare for a more profound structural shift in economic activity, shifting from humans to machines. Funded by venture capital, debt, and most recently a new “loop” financing structure, the total cost could ultimately reach trillions of dollars, raising concerns among Wall Street investors.
China on the chip and AI battlefield
Another major tipping point that continues to take shape this year is that China is becoming a major variable on the global AI battlefield after launching its chatbot DeepSeek under US sanctions restrictions on advanced chips. Rather than following the big Western models, China has chosen a different path, focusing on AI with an emphasis on “efficiency and low cost.”
DeepSeek is seen as a “warning signal” to the global AI industry, as Chinese models can compete in many areas at significantly lower costs. Meanwhile, export restrictions on advanced chips and chip technology by the United States and its allies have led China to accelerate the development of its own AI supply chain, especially in advanced chip development.
At the same time, the Chinese government is incorporating AI as a core part of its economic and technological development plans, promoting real-world implementation in industry, smart cities, and the public sector. Analysts say the AI race between China and the United States has shifted from “who has the bigger model” to “who can deploy AI more broadly and more cost-effectively.”
