Renowned global artificial intelligence (AI ) pioneer AI Fund has teamed up with KX Venture Capital (KXVC) to develop AI startups and train young people to utilise AI, with the aim of enhancing Thailand's competitiveness.
KXVC is the venture capital arm of Kasikorn Business-Technology Group (KBTG).
Through the partnership, AI Fund and KXVC will collaborate to build new companies and strengthen connections between their respective ecosystems.
Andrew Ng, managing general partner of AI Fund, said AI is the "new electricity" which will bring about major transformations in the same way electricity did 100 years ago.
"AI is a collection of tools that is evolving. And this is the decade of generative AI general-purpose technology," he added.
He said the new general-purpose technology brings opportunities, creates many valuable projects and starts new companies in an efficient way. Companies also have opportunities to integrate AI into their existing businesses.
Generative AI (GenAI) will have an impact on high-wage workers as all knowledgeable workers can use GenAI to be more productive, but they need to be trained effectively and this will create a lot of new opportunities to build new types of software that were not possible before.
He added that he sees opportunities for a bright future for AI in Thailand, in particular key applications for tourism, healthcare and agriculture.
Policymakers and the private sector should commit to education by increasing training in the technical aspects of AI. Moreover, the country should create momentum for an AI startup ecosystem.
"We are at the peak of AI transformation, AI is everywhere in everyday life and business is starting to adopt AI," said Ruangroj Poonpol, group chairman of KBTG.
He added that 2030 will be the key turning point for economic overhaul driven by AI. At that time domain-specific AI or vertical AI will dominate every industry with faster development, better price performance and higher accuracy.
AI will bring unprecedented economic change contributing 15.7 trillion to global GDP. It will boost labour productivity which will account for 55% of global GDP during 2017-30.
"We are racing into a turning point and we need to prepare our people to be AI ready," he added.
KXVC has already signed a strategic partnership with AI Fund, aimed at growing and scaling new AI companies.
This collaboration will leverage the strengths of AI Fund's venture studio model and KBTG's tech expertise from various industries to catalyse the growth of new AI companies that are poised to transform industries.
Mr Ruangroj added that the AI Fund model and KXVC will seek industry pain points, gather ideas and validate market and technical feasibility, build startups and recruit CEOs to grow at scale. All these processes could be achieved within six months from the start.
"The partnership will bring in a co-build model to set up new AI companies to create AI projects that impact industries and we will open to other partners to strengthen the AI ecosystem in Thailand ," Mr Ruangroj added.
Moreover, KBTG signed a memorandum of understanding with AI Fund and the Equitable Education Fund to offer AI assistance for education by exploring co-building AI technology solutions to tackle mental health and education equality in Thailand.
Mr Ng said the future trend will be "Agentic AI" workflows as AI redefines its role from a static tool to a dynamic collaborator through iterative process and focus on continual improvement.
Agentic workflow will increase efficiency, creativity and precision in AI applications.