Sourced records of Chinese AI deployments across the Global South and the Middle East

ByteDance's TikTok Shop is reported to be planning a Q1 2027 marketplace launch in Saudi Arabia, bringing recommendation-algorithm-driven social commerce to ~28M monthly Saudi TikTok users; not yet live as of Aug 2026.

Established its international headquarters in Singapore in 2015 and operated data centres there, serving regional enterprise customers. In July 2025, marking its tenth anniversary in Singapore, it launched its first AI Global Competency Center (AIGCC), aiming to support 5,000+ enterprises and 100,000 developers, established an AI Innovation Lab, and rolled out 10+ industry-specific AI agents; in May of the same year, it partnered with the IMDA to drive the adoption of AI and cloud among 3,000 local SMEs and digital solution providers.

Registered Fourth Paradigm Southeast Asia Pte. Ltd. (UEN 201823563Z) in Singapore on 11 July 2018, with its registered address at 1 Fusionopolis Place, #03-20 Galaxis, in the one-north business park — the sole overseas office listed on 4Paradigm's official website. Its ACRA registration status is Live. The entity was renamed PHANCY SOUTHEAST ASIA PTE. LTD. on 14 June 2026 (as of August 2026, 4Paradigm's official website still lists it under the former name, so the equity/branding change needs to be reviewed). Its registered primary business activity is semiconductor device manufacturing, with software and application development as a secondary activity.

In February 2018, it jointly established the Alibaba-NTU Singapore Joint Research Institute with Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Alibaba's first overseas AI joint research institute, focusing on 'human-centred AI' (healthy ageing, AI lifestyle, and human-centred mobility), combining NTU's human-centred AI expertise with Alibaba's capabilities in NLP, computer vision, and machine learning; the initial phase spans five years, starting with 50 researchers, with an annual investment of several million Singapore dollars.

Its Singapore entity, SenseTime International Pte. Ltd., was registered in 2018; on 19 July 2021, it launched the SenseTime International AI Innovation Hub in Singapore as an AI capability hub for Southeast Asia, showcasing computer vision and smart city technologies, and signed MOUs with the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) Singapore and Business China to conduct AI talent development (including teacher AI capability building, student internships, and continuing education courses).

Established its first overseas office in Singapore on 23 January 2018, serving as a sales, marketing, and operations centre for the Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Macau markets (Computer Weekly: 'Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Macau'), and planned to add an R&D centre and hire approximately 50-60 AI researchers by the end of 2018 (no public evidence was found as to whether this plan was implemented). Its first regional customer was the Singapore security company Certis Cisco, which used its facial recognition solution to control access to sensitive areas such as data centres. This is a landmark early case of one of China's AI 'Four Little Dragons' expanding overseas to Singapore.

Since 2019, it decided to make Singapore its regional headquarters and implement a three-year investment plan, planning to invest billions of US dollars and hire hundreds of staff (as of Reuters' September 2020 report, it already had approximately 400 employees and 200+ open positions). The plan at the time included building a data centre in Singapore, though Reuters stated no final decision had been made. Its Singapore entity, TikTok Pte. Ltd. (UEN 201719908M, registered 17 July 2017), coordinates regional and international operations (including a US$3.8 billion data hosting investment in Thailand approved in January 2025). TikTok's CEO is based in Singapore.

In September 2020, it announced the establishment of a Southeast Asia regional hub in Singapore (compounded by geopolitical factors including India's and the United States' app bans), hosting international game publishing and cloud business, supplementing its existing offices in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. On 11 November 2025, it held Tencent Cloud Day Singapore, themed 'AI-Powered Global Opportunities', to promote its suite of AI-native products (the ADP agent development platform, Hunyuan 3D Global, AI Minutes, CodeBuddy, and others), positioning Singapore as an Asia-Pacific hub for AI collaboration and talent development. Tencent Cloud operates 8 technical support centres globally (whether Singapore is included is undisclosed); its 2025 regional infrastructure moves included a third data centre in Jakarta and the planned establishment of an office and data centre in Osaka.

The company operates its overseas business through two Singapore subsidiaries: Subsup Pte. Ltd. (UEN 202232608W, registered 14 September 2022, 8 Kaki Bukit Ave 4 #08-32), the developer entity for the AI companion app Talkie; and Nanonoble Pte. Ltd. (UEN 202410771D, registered 19 March 2024, 152 Beach Road #14-02 Gateway East), the operating entity for the text-to-video product Hailuo AI. In the first nine months of 2025, its AI-native products reached more than 200 countries and regions with over 212 million users; the prospectus revenue breakdown shows Singapore and the United States as its two primary overseas markets. It listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on 9 January 2026, raising approximately US$619 million in actual proceeds (against a planned offering cap of US$539 million), with its share price nearly doubling on the first day of trading.

Add precise dates: Ant Group's new Singapore international-division office unveiled 28 Sep 2023 (EDB, 9 Oct 2023); Ant International spun off as an independently run unit with its own board in March 2024, HQ Singapore; Alipay+ GenAI Cockpit launched 3-4 June 2025 covering payment orchestration, onboarding, compliance checks, fraud detection and dispute resolution

In December 2023, Robobus obtained Singapore Land Transport Authority (LTA) T1 and M1 autonomous vehicle licences, enabling testing on public roads such as one-north and the National University of Singapore (NUS); in November 2024, the Robosweeper S6/S1 sanitation vehicles were licensed and, within a week, launched Singapore's first commercial autonomous sanitation projects on Marina Coastal Drive and at the Esplanade; it subsequently operated Southeast Asia's first fully driverless Robobus at Resorts World Sentosa, and partnered with Grab to deploy the GXR and Robobus within Grab's Ai.R autonomous driving service; WeRide is an international member — alongside Waymo — of Singapore's Autonomous Vehicle Steering Committee.

On 31 July 2024, the company signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with ComfortDelGro (the content focused primarily on China's first-tier cities, without naming Singapore); on 20 September 2025, it formally announced its entry into Singapore, partnering with ComfortDelGro to deploy on fixed routes in the Punggol area (pending regulatory approval); from 22 June 2026, the Punggol-area service has been open to public bookings via ComfortDelGro's Zig app.

Alibaba Cloud partnered with Singapore's national AI programme AI Singapore to build the regional multilingual model Qwen-SEA-LION-v4 (released November 2025) based on Tongyi Qwen3-32B: post-trained on more than 100 billion tokens of Southeast Asian language data, covering Indonesian, Malay, Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Filipino, Tamil, and other languages; it offers 4-bit/8-bit quantised versions that can run on consumer-grade laptops, is freely available via Hugging Face, and has topped the SEA-HELM leaderboard among open-source models of the same class.

Correction: headquarters relocated from Wuhan and Beijing to Singapore (mid-2025, following the Series B financing round), with the three co-founders relocating at the same time.

At the Huawei Cloud Singapore Summit on 17 July 2025 (themed 'Accelerate Intelligence, Ignite Smarter Future,' with more than 500 attendees), Huawei Cloud set three goals: helping 10 large enterprises implement multi-cloud strategies, supporting 50+ local enterprises in moving from cloud adoption to intelligent transformation, and partnering with 100+ global partners; Singapore is the only market where Huawei Cloud has deployed 5 local Availability Zones (AZs). On 27 November 2025, at the Huawei Cloud & AI Partner Summit, it formally launched the 'Huawei Cloud Singapore AI Pioneer Partner Ecosystem Alliance,' branded 'In Singapore, For Singapore,' covering sectors including public services, retail, education, fintech, and transportation.

Zhipu AI has prioritised Southeast Asia in its overseas expansion: it has established offices in Singapore and Malaysia, operates joint 'innovation centres' in Indonesia and Vietnam, and promotes localised sovereign AI agents to multiple national governments; its Hong Kong IPO prospectus confirms that the company is involved in building 'national- and city-level foundation model platforms' in Southeast Asia. In the first three quarters of 2025, revenue from private (on-premises) large-model deployments in Malaysia and Singapore was nearly RMB 18 million (approximately US$2.6 million), making these its only overseas private-deployment markets besides the United States.

Alibaba Cloud deployed its City Brain platform in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- City Brain's first expansion beyond Greater China (an agreement had already been signed with Macau in August 2017) -- with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL). Reported deployment figures are media-reported rather than company-disclosed.

MY06 is the fourth hyperscale data-centre campus announced by Bridge Data Centres (per MIDA, 2021-12-02): approximately 40 acres, 100 MW of IT load, an investment of approximately RM2.5 billion over five years, three buildings, with Phase 1 in place by end-2022. It serves as the dedicated data centre anchored by ByteDance in Johor, Malaysia.

ByteDance established its presence in Malaysia as the anchor tenant of the BDC MY06 hyperscale data center at Sedenak Tech Park in Johor (commissioned in 2022), and subsequently announced an investment of approximately RM10 billion (about US$2.1 billion) to establish an AI center in Malaysia, together with a further approximately RM1.5 billion to expand its data center. According to disclosures by the Johor Menteri Besar (Chief Minister), ByteDance's cumulative investment in AI data centers in Malaysia has exceeded RM29.5 billion, making it a core investor in Johor's AI computing cluster.

GDS launched its Nusajaya Tech Park (NTP) data-centre campus in Iskandar Puteri, Johor in August 2023. Phase 1 comprises NTP1, NTP2 and NTP3 with 22,500 sqm (242,200 sq ft) of net floor area and 69.5 MW of IT power; GDS acquired the land in July 2021 and broke ground in April 2022 (roughly 16 months to delivery, ahead of the originally planned 2024 date). GDS CEO William Huang described the campus as a catalyst for the region's journey towards a world-class AI computing hub. GDS's international business was spun off as DayOne at the start of 2025. In June 2025 DayOne signed a 21-year contract for up to 500 MW of solar power with Tenaga Nasional Berhad under Malaysia's Corporate Renewable Energy Supply Scheme (CRESS), covering Nusajaya Tech Park and Kempas Tech Park, whose combined data-centre capacity is 120 MW.