Philippine businesses are embracing artificial intelligence (AI) as a way to grow their operations rather than simply cut costs, according to the AI Business Application Readiness and Accessibility Survey commissioned by Alibaba Cloud, a global provider of AI infrastructure and the intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group.
The survey found that 91% of Philippine enterprises are optimistic about adopting AI, slightly above the regional average of 90%. More than half (57%) said they are “very positive,” with many already exploring or deploying AI in their organizations.
That confidence is supported by cloud adoption. Around 74% of Philippine companies have already moved all or most of their IT infrastructure to the cloud, giving them a stronger foundation to deploy AI applications.
Unlike many businesses that initially use AI to lower costs, Philippine respondents ranked driving innovation and creating new business opportunities (68%) as their top goal. This was followed by improving efficiency and reducing costs (54%), enhancing customer experience (51%), gaining a competitive advantage (50%), and increasing revenue (39%).
“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, Alibaba Cloud Philippines.
Gong added that Philippine businesses in the financial services and retail sectors are showing particularly strong interest in AI.
Despite the optimism, companies continue to face challenges. Data privacy and security topped the list of concerns among Philippine respondents at 51%, followed by high implementation costs at 41%.
Across Asia, AI is increasingly becoming part of daily business operations. About 75% of companies surveyed said AI is now indispensable to their business, while only 1% said it is not a priority.
The survey also found that 95% of organizations plan to increase spending on AI products, with more than half expecting to raise budgets by over 20% for cloud infrastructure, AI platforms, and AI models.
Companies are using AI primarily for data analysis and decision-making (66%), customer service such as chatbots (64%), marketing and content creation (58%), software development (55%), and human resources (38%).
“The research findings reinforce Alibaba Cloud’s belief that AI, delivered on top of scalable, secure cloud infrastructure and models, will be the defining technology platform for the next decade,” Dr. Feifei Li, chief technology officer and president of International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, said. “As we enter the agentic AI era, our focus is shifting from producing efficient tokens to enabling actionable outcomes. By building a comprehensive agentic cloud, we provide the critical infrastructure — such as runtime sandboxes and orchestration — that empowers enterprises to build the agent-native products of tomorrow seamlessly.”
The survey indicates that many Philippine organizations are preparing for broader AI adoption, although concerns over data privacy, security, and implementation costs remain.
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