The Growth of AI in Thailand: Opportunities for Local Businesses

For TOPS shoppers, the impact of AI is already tangible. Before leaving home, they can ask a question in the app to check whether a nearby store has an item in stock. Launched in December 2025, the retailer’s AI customer service connects conversations with real-time inventory and order information.[1]

On the production side, Thai packaging company SCGP is making a similar connection. It brings customer orders, capacity across factories and production schedules into a shared system, using data and AI to help allocate orders.[2] From helping consumers find products to helping businesses plan production, AI is becoming part of everyday commerce and operations.

These developments give Thailand’s AI market a more concrete shape. Banks need to handle large volumes of interactions accurately. Factories focus on quality, downtime and capacity. Retailers need to convert interest into sales, while tourism and healthcare providers manage complex service processes. Those differences shape where demand comes from, what businesses are willing to pay for and how quickly applications can spread.

At TATC, we believe understanding this market requires looking at the applications already in use, the forces driving demand and the scope for extending successful solutions. Manufacturing and banking show strong signs of practical deployment. The frequent, recurring activities of retail and e-commerce offer opportunities to demonstrate value relatively quickly. Further progress in tourism and healthcare depends closely on integration with business systems and specialist service expertise.

1 Scaling manufacturing AI across production lines and factories

Manufacturing deserves close attention. A survey published by NECTEC in September 2026 covered 574 public and private organisations across 10 industry groups. Manufacturing recorded the highest level of AI use among the sectors surveyed.[3] This finding reflects adoption within the sample and provides a useful indication of the foundations for industrial AI demand.

That demand is driven by the recurring costs of production. Equipment downtime, inconsistent quality, material waste and delivery delays all affect factory performance. When an AI solution reliably addresses even one of these problems on a working production line, its value can accumulate over time and across higher production volumes.

In June 2026, SCGP disclosed that AI was already helping allocate orders across its network of 15 factories.[2] The significance lies in where AI is being used: it is beginning to inform which factory takes an order and how production capacity is matched to customer demand.

TATC sees an important opportunity in extending applications that have proved their value in one setting to similar equipment, comparable production lines and additional factories. Equipment suppliers, engineering firms and industrial software companies that already serve manufacturers can draw on their understanding of production processes, on-site experience and customer relationships to develop solutions with AI technology partners.

Realising this market’s long-term value requires substantial implementation work. Equipment interfaces, data quality and operational reliability each need to be addressed. Industry-specific solutions that can be deployed across sites are better placed to support an ongoing business than projects that require development to begin again each time.

2 Banking and financial services are developing specialist AI applications

Banks have a more mature foundation for AI deployment. When the NECTEC survey separated financial institutions into subgroups, banks received an AI readiness score of 70.7%, reaching the “Ready” level, while non-bank financial institutions scored 22.8%.[3] The gap highlights substantial differences within financial services. The maturity of banks should not be taken as representative of the entire sector.

Banking and financial services involve large, recurring volumes of customer communication, document processing and operational review. These activities create repeated demand for AI and opportunities to apply a capability at scale. Once a solution works reliably within a daily process, it can potentially support a greater volume of business. Accuracy, access controls and the ability to trace results therefore become important purchasing criteria.

In February 2026, SCBX described Thai-language AI applications that were already being used to review sales conduct at its subsidiary AutoX and assess the quality of debt-collection conversations at CardX. These systems combine Thai speech recognition with large language models to analyse business conversations.[4] They illustrate a specific direction for financial AI: supporting the quality management that sits behind customer interactions.

In TATC’s assessment, local businesses are more likely to find opportunities in specialist areas, including Thai-language processing that captures meaning in a business context, integration with existing systems, development for specific workflows and ongoing operational support. Leading institutions already have technology teams, so external partners need to demonstrate which capabilities they can add. This market merits a long-term commitment from firms with financial-sector experience. Businesses new to AI are better placed to participate through partnerships with relevant specialists.

3 Retail and content services offer opportunities in everyday work

In retail and e-commerce, content, products and customer conversations change every day. In November 2025, the e-Conomy SEA 2025 report from Google, Temasek and Bain projected that Thailand’s e-commerce gross merchandise value would reach US$33 billion that year, up 22% from the previous year, with video commerce a major driver.[5] These figures describe the expansion of e-commerce and provide context for the growing workload in content production, customer service and product operations.

Brands, merchants and content service providers continually need to introduce new products, adapt materials for different channels and respond to customer enquiries. Tasks such as producing text, images and video, organising product information and communicating in Thai offer practical starting points for small-scale AI trials. Because these needs are closely tied to daily operations, businesses can begin with specific tasks and expand use gradually.

A more consequential development is the integration of AI with retailers’ transaction systems. The AI customer service already available at TOPS can check store inventory and order status.[1] By drawing on actual business data, it gives customers information directly relevant to a purchase decision.

TATC expects further growth in this area to come from connecting content, customer enquiries, product information and orders. Local e-commerce service providers, marketing agencies and software companies can incorporate AI into their existing services, extending their capabilities in product information management, customer communication and systems integration.

Merchants can also use tools offered directly by platforms. A service provider’s ability to earn recurring revenue therefore depends on managing content quality, product information and operating processes together, at a cost customers can sustain. Frequent demand creates an entry point; consistent business value gives customers a reason to renew.

4 Tourism AI needs to connect customer enquiries with bookings

One indication of tourism’s potential comes from how travellers seek information. In Agoda’s survey conducted in 2025 for its 2026 Travel Outlook, 69% of Thai respondents said they were likely to use AI to plan their next trip.[6] This measures intention to use AI and points to its potential role in travel decisions.

Tourism services involve many recurring questions whose answers depend on specific circumstances: how many guests a room can accommodate, what transport is available, which dates can be booked and what a quoted price includes. Different languages and time zones make consistent responses harder to provide. These characteristics give hotels, travel agencies and local experience providers a business reason to adopt AI.

Recommending a hotel and reliably completing a booking require substantially different capabilities. Information about room availability, prices, cancellation terms and service capacity must remain current. Complex enquiries also need to reach staff promptly. Further development of tourism AI will depend on connecting this operational information with the relevant workflows.

TATC therefore sees particular promise in two areas: helping businesses organise and maintain accurate product information, and linking multilingual enquiries to existing booking and customer service processes. Firms that understand local tourism products and service networks can work with technology partners to provide these capabilities. The scope for scaling them will need to be tested through businesses’ actual use and purchasing decisions.

5 Healthcare AI is becoming part of hospital operations

The opportunities for healthcare AI include much of the specialist work involved in running a hospital. Processing medical records and documents, reviewing the use of healthcare resources and coordinating services all take time from clinical staff and management teams.

BDMS has publicly reported that BURT, its internally developed AI system for medical resource management, has been extended to more than 30 hospitals within the group to support utilisation review.[7] The broader significance is that an AI solution has become part of a workflow that can be replicated across hospitals.

Long-term demand in healthcare arises from the volume of specialist services, the complexity of processes and the limits on staff time. A system that reliably reduces repetitive work allows professionals to devote more time to tasks requiring their judgement, giving hospitals a reason to continue using it. Hospital networks also provide a route for extending solutions that have been validated.

TATC sees this as a market for businesses with experience in health information systems, hospital operations or specialist services to work alongside AI technology teams. Growth depends on data quality, professional validation and compatibility with hospital workflows. People who understand the sector need to help define the problems and review the results.

6 Local business opportunities grow as industry needs evolve

Taken together, these developments inform TATC’s view of Thailand’s AI market. In manufacturing, the opportunity to watch is the extension of individual applications across production networks. In banking and specialist financial services, it is sustained deployment within established processes. Retail, e-commerce and content services offer recurring tasks where value can be tested relatively quickly. Further progress in tourism and healthcare depends on connecting service workflows and extending proven industry solutions.

Local businesses can participate in several ways. They can use AI to improve their existing operations, or combine accumulated industry expertise with technology to create new services for external customers. In August 2026, SCGC reported that DRS by REPCO NEX, which incorporates AI-based data analysis, was already serving power operators including B.Grimm Power.[8] This provides a practical example of industrial expertise becoming a specialist digital service.

As AI moves from occasional use into everyday operations, requirements for data processing, systems integration, deployment environments and ongoing reliability become more specific. Those requirements will help define opportunities for collaboration in cloud services, on-site equipment, computing resources and operational support. The appropriate mix of resources will depend on the operating conditions of each industry.

TATC will start with AI application services, responding to the needs of Thai businesses through partnerships with local firms that bring customer relationships, practical use cases and industry expertise. Alongside this work, we will gradually develop partnerships across technology, hardware and computing resources. Our focus is on turning the practical applications now taking shape into local services that businesses can continue to use and partners can reliably deliver.

The growth of Thailand’s AI industry will be visible in how more factories plan production, how more merchants serve their customers and complete transactions, and how more specialist service providers manage their daily work. Understanding what is changing in these industries will help local businesses find opportunities that match their capabilities.

Sources

• [1] TOPS | Launch of AI customer service and real-time stock checking | 3 December 2025
• [2] SCGP | Data and AI in production and order management | 25 June 2026
• [3] NECTEC | AI Readiness Survey 2026 and differences across sectors | September 2026
• [4] SCBX | Thai-Native AI in operational quality assurance | 12 February 2026
• [5] Google Thailand | Thailand findings from e-Conomy SEA 2025 | 27 November 2025
• [6] Agoda | 2026 Travel Outlook Thailand market factsheet
• [7] BDMS | Innovative Sustainability | BURT deployment across hospitals
• [8] SCGC | Industrial AI services from DRS by REPCO NEX | 26 August 2026