· Singapore AI Observatory · Analysis · 6 min read
Which Singapore agencies run AI, and what each one owns
Singapore has no "AI ministry". More than forty ministries and statutory boards each own a slice: PMO sets direction, MDDI writes the strategy, IMDA holds the governance baseline, EDB brings in foreign investment, GovTech puts AI inside government first.
Singapore has no “AI ministry”. More than forty ministries and statutory boards touch AI, each owning a slice.
Setting direction
The Prime Minister’s Office sets direction. The National AI Council (NAIC) was established in February 2026, chaired by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong. AI work spans more than a dozen agencies, and this council sets the priorities.
The Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) is the lead ministry for AI and writes the National AI Strategy (NAIS). On 20 May 2026, Minister Josephine Teo announced the strategy update at ATxSummit: ten refreshed priorities and four National AI Missions — advanced manufacturing, financial services, connectivity, healthcare.
The Ministry of Finance (MOF) holds the money. Budget 2026 gave AI its own chapter; tax deductions, grants and funds come from here.
Setting the rules
The Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) is a statutory board under MDDI. It holds the national AI governance baseline and represents Singapore in governance talks abroad. In January 2026 it published the world’s first Agentic AI governance framework at Davos, and in May added feedback from 60-plus organisations and more than ten real deployment cases. AI Verify is its testing toolkit.
The Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC) sits inside IMDA and covers personal data. Whether and how AI training data can be used is drawn here.
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) covers financial services only. It issued the FEAT principles in 2018, then Veritas, then in March 2026 the MindForge AI risk management handbook.
The Cyber Security Agency (CSA) covers the security of AI systems themselves. In October 2024 it issued the Guidelines and Companion Guide on Securing AI Systems. The agentic-AI addendum came in two stages: a draft for public consultation on 22 October 2025, closing 31 December; the finalised version on 17 June 2026.
The Singapore AI Safety Institute (AISI) is run by two bodies together. On 22 May 2024, IMDA designated the Digital Trust Centre (DTC) as AISI. DTC was set up in June 2022 at Nanyang Technological University under an IMDA appointment, led by Professor Lam Kwok Yen, with S$50 million in initial funding. Since the designation, DTC does the technical research and evaluation, and IMDA as the overall government agency handles baseline policy and international engagement. The four announced initial research areas are Testing & Evaluation; Safe Model Design, Development and Deployment; Content Assurance; and Governance & Policy.
The Ministry of Law (MinLaw) and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) cover the legal boundary. Section 244 of the Copyright Act 2021 carves out an exception for “computational data analysis” — training AI on copyrighted material is not infringement so long as access was lawful. Singapore was the first in Southeast Asia to write it this way.
Funding and attracting investment
The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) is the lead ministry for industry, and owns the industry-side delivery of the four National AI Missions.
The Economic Development Board (EDB) brings in foreign investment. The Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Nvidia data centres and AI labs in Singapore were all negotiated by EDB. By 2026, more than 60 multinationals had set up AI Centres of Excellence in Singapore.
Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG) covers local SMEs, grants and digitalisation modules. With IMDA it runs the National AI Impact Programme (NAIIP), launched in March 2026, targeting 10,000 firms adopting AI within three years.
Supplying talent and research
The National Research Foundation (NRF) holds the research envelope. RIE2030 is S$37 billion, of which S$1 billion goes to public AI research from 2026 to 2030.
The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) is the national research agency, pairing AI with manufacturing, materials and biomedical work.
AI Singapore (AISG) sits under NRF and runs the concrete programmes: 100E industry projects, the AI Apprenticeship Programme, and SEA-LION, the Southeast Asian multilingual model.
SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG) and Workforce Singapore (WSG) cover training subsidies, against MDDI’s target of 100,000 AI-bilingual workers by 2029. The Ministry of Education (MOE) and the National Institute of Education (NIE) cover schools and teachers.
Government uses it first
The Government Technology Agency (GovTech) is the delivery agency. AIBots lets public officers build their own AI assistants; by February 2025 it had 40,000 users across 115 agencies and 12,000 bots built.
AI Assistant Desk is due in the second half of 2026, aiming to cover about 150,000 public officers. GovTech is also building a registry of AI agents, recording who owns each agent and what it does.
Each sector fits its own
The Ministry of Health and Synapxe do healthcare AI: clinical note generation, retinal screening, health data infrastructure.
The Ministry of Transport and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) do autonomous driving and smart traffic, plus full automation at Tuas Port.
Under the Ministry of National Development, the Housing & Development Board, Building and Construction Authority, Urban Redevelopment Authority and JTC Corporation do construction AI, smart towns and digital twins for urban planning.
Under the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment, the National Environment Agency and PUB do weather prediction, dengue forecasting, water management and flood monitoring.
The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) covers AI’s effect on employment — job redesign and mid-career reskilling.
Defence
Under the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) sit the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), DSO National Laboratories (DSO) and the Digital and Intelligence Service (DIS). DIS was established in 2022 as the fourth service of the Singapore Armed Forces, putting AI and intelligence capability into the order of battle.
Home affairs
The Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) sits under the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). HTX built the national GPU cluster NGINE, developed Phoenix LLM, and set up the Humanoid Robotics Centre (H2RC). The Singapore Police Force (SPF) uses AI against scams, and the Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) uses multimodal biometrics.
Abroad
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) works the UN and multilateral track. International engagement on AI governance is fronted mainly by IMDA — it led the ASEAN Working Group on AI Governance and the ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics. The US-ASEAN AI Ministerial in May 2026 was held in Singapore.
What the state does and what firms do
The government does two things itself: use AI inside government, which is GovTech’s; and talk governance abroad, which is IMDA’s and MFA’s.
Everything else only counts once it lands on firms and institutions. The compute EDB brings in has to be used by firms, the EnterpriseSG grants have to be claimed by firms, the NAIIP target of 10,000 firms has to be filled by firms, the SSG and WSG training has to be taken by workers, and the IMDA governance frameworks have to be followed by firms.