Philippine businesses continue to show strong confidence in artificial intelligence, according to a new survey commissioned by Alibaba Cloud, with most organizations viewing AI as a catalyst for innovation and business growth rather than simply a tool for reducing costs.
The report, titled The AI Business Application Readiness and Accessibility Survey, found that 91% of Philippine respondents have a positive attitude toward AI adoption, including 57% who are already actively exploring or implementing AI initiatives. The findings also show that 74% of local organizations have migrated all or most of their IT infrastructure to the cloud, providing the digital foundation for broader AI deployment.
AI seen as a driver of growth
Among Philippine respondents, 68% identified driving innovation and creating new business opportunities as their primary objective for adopting AI. Other priorities included improving operational efficiency and reducing costs (54%), enhancing customer experience (51%), gaining competitive advantage (50%), and supporting revenue growth (39%).
Across Asia, enthusiasm for AI was similarly strong, with 90% of surveyed organizations expressing optimism about AI adoption and only 1% indicating that AI was not a business priority.
Investment plans continue to grow
The survey also found that organizations are preparing to increase spending on AI technologies. Among all respondents, 95% said they plan to increase investment in AI products, with more than half expecting budgets to grow by over 20% across infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and model-as-a-service (MaaS).
Alibaba Cloud said many enterprises are moving beyond pilot projects, with approximately 75% reporting that AI has become an important part of day-to-day business operations. Organizations are also expanding their use of AI development platforms and foundation models to support data analysis, customer service, marketing, software development, and human resources.
Security remains the biggest concern
Despite growing confidence in AI, respondents continue to identify several barriers to broader adoption.
In the Philippines, data privacy and security ranked as the leading concern, cited by 51% of respondents, followed by high implementation costs at 41%. Across the region, respondents also highlighted shortages of AI skills, regulatory and ethical concerns, system integration challenges, uncertain return on investment, and limited availability of suitable industry-specific solutions.
According to the survey, organizations are looking for more comprehensive end-to-end AI platforms that combine cloud infrastructure, AI models, governance, and security within a single ecosystem.
Demand for integrated AI and cloud platforms
The research found that 45% of respondents prefer fully integrated AI and cloud solutions over standalone AI products or hybrid deployments. Respondents said integrated platforms simplify deployment, centralize security and governance, improve cost visibility, and help organizations accelerate AI implementation. Enterprises also expressed interest in more industry-specific AI solutions, additional skills development, vendor training, successful implementation case studies, and stronger executive support to help scale AI adoption.
“The pace of AI adoption in the Philippines is driven by two factors: large enterprises are pursuing AI initiatives as part of their top-level strategic digital transformation, while small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are adopting software to meet their operational needs for cost reduction and efficiency improvement,” said Grant Gong, head of solutions architect at Alibaba Cloud Philippines. He added that businesses in the Philippine financial services and retail sectors have shown particularly strong interest in AI adoption.
Supporting multilingual AI adoption
The survey also highlighted the growing importance of local-language AI models across Asia. Respondents from markets including Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand reported that broader availability of high-quality local-language models would help accelerate AI adoption. Alibaba Cloud noted that its Qwen family of large language models supports more than 200 languages and dialects, reflecting increasing demand for multilingual AI capabilities across the region.
In Summary
Alibaba Cloud’s latest survey suggests that Philippine enterprises are embracing AI as a strategic growth platform rather than simply a cost-saving technology. While optimism, cloud readiness, and investment continue to increase, organizations remain focused on addressing privacy, security, implementation costs, skills development, and access to integrated AI and cloud platforms before scaling deployments further.