Google’s e-Conomy SEA report forecasts Southeast Asia’s digital economy at $368 billion in 2026

Southeast Asia’s digital economy is accelerating as generative AI becomes embedded in everyday consumer behavior, according to a new assessment co-authored by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company. In the 11th edition of the e-Conomy SEA report, the region’s digital economy is projected to reach $368 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2026, growing 17% year-on-year, and to exceed $1 trillion by 2035.

The report says generative AI is already part of daily life for 243 million people across Southeast Asia, representing 58% of the working population. It also characterizes AI adoption as moving far faster than the early spread of mobile internet, scaling four times as quickly, which it links to a shift from basic AI assistance toward more autonomous, “agentic commerce” experiences.

“Agentic commerce” in the report refers to AI agents that can take action on a user’s behalf, such as comparing prices or completing transactions. The report says confidence in these capabilities is expected to drive a 60-fold surge in regional AI usage over the next five years, using what it calls “tokens as the new benchmark for the AI economy,” a metric that measures consumption or processing of AI in terms of computational token usage.

The forecast is built on performance across multiple digital sectors. E-commerce is projected at $226 billion in GMV for 2026, up 18% year-on-year, with multimodal discovery and in-app assistants supporting more complex purchases. The report links these personalized experiences to conversion and order-volume lift, citing uplifts up to 10% higher conversions and order-volume increases as large as 75%.

Online travel is expected to reach $59 billion in GMV in 2026, up 10% year-on-year. While search engines remain the top tool for trip planning, the report says generative AI has overtaken social media to become the second-most-used option for building complex itineraries. In online media, the report forecasts $44 billion in revenue in 2026, up 22% year-on-year, describing tailored content feeds and more relevant advertising as supporting engagement improvements.

Mobility and food delivery are projected at $40 billion in GMV for 2026, up 15% year-on-year, with AI-driven features such as predictive suggestions and improved routing. Digital financial services (DFS) are described as especially significant, with $1,650 billion in gross transaction value (GTV) in 2026, up 16% year-on-year, helped by real-time fraud detection, broader credit access, and personalization that complements human advice.

The report also points to consumer readiness for greater automation. It says 72% of users rely on everyday digital automation features like price tracking, and 75% express willingness to let AI agents autonomously compare prices and complete transactions for them. Trust indicates are also a key part of the picture, with 62% saying they trust AI tools more today than they did a year ago, citing proven track records (56%), familiarity (55%), and output accuracy (53%).

At the same time, the report frames adoption as contingent on guardrails. Users, it says, expect clarity and limits, including robust privacy safeguards (44%), transparent information about what AI can and cannot do (36%), and the ability to reverse agentic transactions (30%). To support the projected 60-fold increase in regional AI usage by 2030, the report argues Southeast Asia must expand data center infrastructure and improve energy efficiency while also setting unified digital trade policies to support safe, cross-border activity.

For investors and policy makers, the immediate takeaway is that AI is no longer just a technology upgrade in Southeast Asia’s digital economy, but a change in how commerce and services are discovered, compared, and completed. The report’s sector-by-sector framing also suggests that growth is being pulled by consumer-facing applications in e-commerce, travel, media, mobility, and financial services rather than only by internal enterprise automation.

The report does not provide country-by-country breakdowns or time-specific performance for individual firms. It also does not quantify how much of the projected GMV and GTV gains will come specifically from agentic commerce versus other AI-enabled improvements, leaving uncertainty around which implementation approaches will most directly determine winners and losers across the region. Still, it offers concrete near-term areas to watch, namely data center buildout, energy efficiency measures, privacy rules, and the mechanics of letting agents act with user control. Emerging deployments that add clearer consent, reversibility, and transparency could become the next pressure point for both regulators and platform providers as the market moves toward more autonomous transactions.