Which Southeast Asian country ranks second globally in AI adoption

The report finds that countries investing early in digital infrastructure, AI skills training, and government-led adoption continue to lead global usage.

The United Arab Emirates ranked first globally, with 64% of its working-age population using AI by the end of 2025, placing it more than three percentage points ahead of Singapore, the world’s second-richest country by gross domestic product per capita.

Singapore recorded a GDP per capita of US$90,700 in 2025, second only to Switzerland’s $100,000, according to a recent ranking by The Economist.

Norway ranked third with 46.4% adoption, followed by Ireland in fourth place and France rounding out the top five, both with usage levels of around 44%.

Tourists walk past Marina Bay in Singapore on May 25, 2023. Photo by AFP

Despite leading globally in AI infrastructure and frontier model development, the U.S. placed 24th in AI usage, with an adoption rate of 28.3%.

Microsoft said the figures show that leadership in innovation and infrastructure alone does not guarantee broad AI uptake, noting that the U.S. lags behind smaller, more highly digitized and AI-focused economies.

The report measures AI diffusion as the share of people worldwide who used a generative AI product during the period, based on aggregated and anonymized telemetry adjusted for market share, internet access, and population.

Global adoption of generative AI tools reached 16.3% of the world’s population in the second half of 2025, up from 15.1% in the first half, the report said.

While usage is rising at record levels, adoption remains uneven. Growth in the Global North was nearly twice as fast as in the Global South, widening the gap from 9.8 to 10.6 percentage points, highlighting that AI’s benefits are expanding but not equally.