AI Summit in Singapore Focuses on Infrastructure Shift as Industry Moves Beyond Experimentation

Media Partners Asia hosted its first AETHER Summit in Singapore, convening senior executives from telecommunications, media, artificial intelligence, healthcare and investment sectors for discussions on how AI is transitioning from experimental technology to core infrastructure.

The closed-door forum ran at Marina Bay Sands, where industry leaders examined AI’s shift from pilot programs toward capital-intensive, system-level deployment across networks and platforms.

A consensus emerged that the industry’s primary challenge has moved from technical capability to execution at scale. Competitive advantage now hinges on how effectively organizations integrate AI into real-world systems spanning compute infrastructure, connectivity, data management and governance.

“AI is no longer a tool or a feature. It is a system-level economic force reshaping infrastructure, media, advertising, and experiences end to end,” said Vivek Couto, CEO and executive director of Media Partners Asia. “The defining challenge now is execution and how leaders invest, govern, and scale AI responsibly in environments that touch millions of users.”

Discussions centered on infrastructure’s evolving role in the AI era, with participants examining how global investment is flowing toward compute resources, data centers, networks and energy systems. Infrastructure is increasingly seen as the primary bottleneck shaping AI outcomes.

Telecommunications operators are positioning themselves as AI-native platforms. As intelligence embeds across networks and customer service, telcos are moving beyond traditional connectivity to become delivery platforms for AI services including real-time inference, personalization and automation.
Success in this transition depends less on accessing advanced models and more on capital allocation, platform architecture and organizational transformation, leaders said.

The summit tackled AI’s impact on media and entertainment economics. AI production tools are compressing timelines and cutting costs across animation, post-production, marketing and localization, challenging traditional studio and agency advantages.

But declining production costs are flooding the market with content, intensifying competition for attention. Authenticity, creative judgment and taste are emerging as differentiators in an oversaturated landscape.

Content libraries are being repositioned as strategic training data for proprietary AI systems, reordering value chains from labor-intensive workflows toward capital-intensive technology infrastructure. The shift raises questions around intellectual property rights and cultural stewardship.

Participants emphasized AI’s expanding role in public services and national development. Leaders discussed population-scale deployments across fraud prevention, digital identity, healthcare, education and citizen engagement.

Trust, accountability and governance emerged as critical unresolved constraints. As AI systems become more autonomous, participants stressed the importance of limiting scope, maintaining human oversight and designing for verifiable outcomes.

The summit framed governance as a design challenge requiring early attention rather than a regulatory afterthought.

AETHER operated as a closed-door forum, with a CEO session under the Chatham House Rule. Insights have been compiled into the AETHER 2026 Summit Report analyzing AI’s deployment phase and implications for infrastructure and media.

JioStar and BytePlus supported the inaugural summit, with research partnership from MPA subsidiary ampd.

Speakers included Uday Shankar, founder and CEO of Bodhi Tree Systems and vice chair of JioStar; Vikram Sinha, president director and CEO of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison; Simon Fuller, founder of XIX Entertainment; and Vicki Dobbs Beck, VP of immersive content innovation at Lucasfilm/ILM.

Other participants were Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of telecom at Nvidia; Sharad Devarajan, adjunct professor at Columbia Business School and co-founder and CEO of Graphic India; Anton Reynaldo Bonifacio, chief AI officer and chief information security officer at Globe Telecom; and Oscar winner Mark Sagar, chief AI officer at FaiBLE Media.

Technology and investment executives included Ken Xu, solutions architect director at Alibaba Cloud; Jawn Lim, regional head of solution architecture for GenAI at BytePlus; Dr. Wei Chu, chief scientist and co-founder of INF Tech; Pinn Lawjindakul, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners; Guy Piekarz, CEO of Panjaya; Josh Baillon, co-founder of Collective Imagination; Jed Weintrob, CEO and co-founder of 30 Ninjas; and Ulf Ewaldsson, AI-RAN advisor and former president of technology at T-Mobile.

Ronit Satchi-Fainaro, head of the Gray School of Medical Sciences at Tel Aviv University, also participated.

Media Partners Asia is an independent insights and advisory platform focused on connectivity, entertainment and technology sectors across Asia Pacific. Founded in 2001, MPA operates leadership forums including APOS and AETHER.