Southeast Asia’s digital economy to hit $368 billion

URL Source: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/around-the-globe/google-asia/e-conomy-sea-report-2026/

Generative AI is now an essential part of daily life for 243 million Southeast Asians. Read about how this will impact the region’s economy in our 11th e-Conomy SEA report.

Managing Director, Southeast Asia and South Asia Frontier Markets

To support a projected 60-fold increase in regional AI usage by 2030, the region's broader digital ecosystem must systematically evolve across four critical conditions:

!Image 1: Cover image for the e-Conomy SEA 2026 report titled Building the intelligent economy by Google, Temasek, and Bain and Company. A 3D illustration features a glowing yellow star surrounded by miniature scenes representing digital sectors, including data cen

In Southeast Asia, generative AI has become an essential part of daily life, actively used by 243 million people (58% of the working population) and scaling four times faster than the rollout of the mobile internet. This has major implications for the region’s economy, according to the 11th edition of the annual e-Conomy SEA report1 . Building the Intelligent Econom y, by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, finds that widespread AI implementation is propelling the region’s digital economy to grow 17% year-on-year (YoY) to reach $368 billion 2 in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) in 2026. This puts it firmly on track to exceed $1 trillion by 2035. Using tokens 3 as the new benchmark for the AI economy, the report projects that growing confidence in agentic commerce will drive a 60-fold surge in regional AI usage over the next five years.

Across the digital economy, AI is reshaping how people live, shop, and move. E-commerce ($226B GMV, +18% YoY) anchors this shift, as shoppers use multimodal discovery and in-app assistants to confidently navigate complex purchases. These personalized experiences organically drive 10% higher conversions and order volume uplifts as large as 75%.