Indonesia Seeks Added Value from AI Investment Boom
Indonesia is seeking to turn its large digital market into bargaining power to attract investment, technology transfer, and talent development amid intensifying competition in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry across the Asia-Oceania region.
Soegiharto Santoso, Chairman of the National Information and Communication Technology Entrepreneurs Association (Aptiknas), said the large domestic market needs to be leveraged to encourage global technology companies to build business capacity in Indonesia.
“Indonesia’s large market must become bargaining power to attract investment, technology transfer, talent development, and open markets for Indonesian solutions. We must not merely be a place where technology is consumed, while the added value, expertise, and ownership develop in other countries,” Soegiharto said in Jakarta on Tuesday (11/8/2026).
According to him, AI competition has shifted from merely application development towards control of a broader industrial chain. Computing infrastructure, semiconductors, data centres, energy, cyber security, data, talent, and technology standards are now part of inter-state competition.
This situation opens opportunities for Indonesia to attract investment while strengthening the position of national companies in the regional technology value chain.
The Stanford AI Index 2026 recorded private AI investment in the United States reaching US$285.9 billion in 2025. In Asia-Oceania, the technology industry chain has also developed with varying strengths, ranging from Taiwanese semiconductors, Japanese and South Korean manufacturing and automation, Indian digital talent, to China’s industrial scale and research.
Meanwhile, Southeast Asia has become one of the regions with rapid digital economic growth. The region’s digital economy value has exceeded US$300 billion based on gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2025 and has the potential to reach around US$2 trillion by 2030 through the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA).
Soegiharto said Indonesia needs to ensure that this growth does not stop at an increase in the number of technology users.
“The measure of success must be concrete. Whether investment enters, Indonesian workers acquire new competencies, national companies obtain technology transfer, industrial productivity increases, and Indonesian-made solutions can enter the regional market. That is the economic value we must pursue,” he said.
Thus, the economic opportunities from AI do not only come from the use of technology by domestic consumers and companies, but also from Indonesia’s ability to become an investment location, a talent development centre, and a production and development base for technology solutions for the regional market.
Indonesia’s position in international technology cooperation has also become more open after becoming one of the 29 founding countries of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) in July 2026. However, involvement in this cooperation needs to be followed by strengthening domestic industrial capacity so that it does not stop at intergovernmental cooperation.
Karim Taslim, Chair Committee of the ASOCIO Digital & AI Summit 2026, said companies’ need for AI technology is now increasingly related to business aspects, especially efficiency and productivity.
“AI is no longer about hype. For companies, the question is now simple: whether AI investment can reduce costs, increase productivity, create new revenue, and strengthen competitiveness. Therefore, the AI conversation must be increasingly close to the real needs of industry,” he said.
According to Karim, this change has made companies pay more attention to return on investment (ROI), data and human resource readiness, security, and the ability of technology to be applied at scale.
From Indonesia’s perspective, this development opens space for the national technology industry to develop solutions that suit the needs of the real sector while reaching markets in the region.
Karim said one of the next challenges is ensuring that these opportunities produce concrete business cooperation between Indonesian companies and regional technology players.
“The opportunity as host must be converted into transactions and real cooperation. We want Indonesian companies to gain partners, find the technology they need, meet investors, and obtain a path to enter other countries’ markets,” Karim said.
This context is one of the focuses of the ASOCIO Digital & AI Summit 2026, which will bring together industry players from 25 Asia-Oceania economies in Jakarta on 5-7 October 2026. The forum will discuss, among other things, industrial AI, data centres and cloud, cyber security, digital infrastructure, FinTech, HealthTech, EdTech, and talent development.
For Indonesia, the forum is one channel to connect national companies with investors and regional technology partners. Its strategic value lies in the ability to turn these meetings into investment, technology transfer, improved workforce competencies, and market access for Indonesian companies.