Asia-Pacific AI agent market to surge 14-fold to US$11.2 billion by 2030, Omdia says
The artificial intelligence agent software market across Asia, Australia and New Zealand is set to expand more than 14-fold by 2030, according to research firm Omdia, as Chinese tech companies increasingly deploy automated tools across office and industrial operations. During its annual event in Beijing on Thursday, Omdia forecast that regional market revenue, which included mainland China and…
Omdia predicts that the AI agent software market across Asia, Australia, and New Zealand will surge 14-fold by 2030, reaching a value of US$11.2 billion. Currently, the market is valued at an estimated US$782 million. Chinese tech companies are leading the deployment of automated tools across various sectors, including office and industrial operations.
By 2030, AI agents are expected to make up 12.3% of the region's AI software revenue, up from 1.7% this year. AI agents leverage models to autonomously plan and execute multi-step tasks like data analysis, report writing, and software operations. China aims to have intelligent devices and agents penetrate 70% of its market by 2027 and 90% by 2030 as part of its "AI Plus" initiative.
Major Chinese tech firms are accelerating this deployment to capitalize on growing adoption within the Chinese market. Alibaba has introduced AgentCore, an enterprise platform to aid businesses in creating, managing, and monitoring AI agents, while Tencent is expanding its WorkBuddy agent workspace, which can edit documents and connect to various services.
Moody's Ratings projects that Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance, will more than double their capital spending on AI to around US$140 billion this year from US$65 billion in 2025. Cloud services remain the primary monetization channel for AI, with the use of lower-cost open-source models accelerating enterprise adoption in China.
Nevertheless, intense price competition and the smaller scale of Chinese cloud businesses make them less capable than their US counterparts in funding further AI infrastructure expansion. Omdia's chief analyst, Su Lian Jye, emphasizes that enterprises must maximize return on investment and carefully assess the value of AI's output, aligning tasks with suitable models.
The adoption of AI agents is also intensifying competition among cloud providers, as integrating models, software, and computing infrastructure can make it challenging for customers to switch to another cloud provider.
Written by urgent.news from South China Morning Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
