Singapore, 23 May 2025 – Grab, Southeast Asia’s leading superapp, today announced the launch of its inaugural Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence (AI COE) located in Tower B, the newest wing in GrabHQ@one-north. Supported by Digital Industry Singapore (DISG), the AI COE aims to accelerate AI-driven solutions that improve accessibility, boost productivity and growth, and contribute to smart nation building across Southeast Asia.
“With over 1,000 AI models powering our platform, we’ve seen firsthand how we can leverage AI to improve lives. Recent advancements in AI hold the promise to transform how we interact with technology, foster innovation and bridge digital divides. Grab is uniquely positioned to turn these breakthroughs into meaningful solutions that tackle real-world challenges, by leveraging our rich data, expansive platform and passionate talent. This is what it means to be AI-first with heart, and it’s the driving force behind the launch of our AI Centre of Excellence,” said Suthen Thomas, Chief Technology Officer, Grab.
“The establishment of Grab’s AI Centre of Excellence underscores Singapore’s vision to be the world’s most AI-driven economy. From Singapore, Grab is developing sophisticated AI solutions to create tangible value for users, empower businesses, and uplift communities across Southeast Asia’s 700 million people. These efforts will strengthen Grab’s capabilities, and groom and attract talent that will improve Singapore’s position as a leading talent and innovation hub,” said Philbert Gomez, Executive Director and Head, Digital Industry Singapore.
The AI COE is set to generate at least 50 high-value roles by 2025 across Product, Engineering, Data Science and Analytics. These positions will enable Singaporeans to work on transformative AI innovations that address Southeast Asia’s unique challenges, and can potentially be exported to other international markets.
Key focus areas of Grab’s AI COE include:
- AI for Accessibility
Generative AI is reshaping how people interact with technology. Grab’s AI COE is committed to developing solutions that make digital services more accessible for underserved communities, including individuals with disabilities, the elderly and those less familiar with technology.
In collaboration with the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped (SAVH), the AI COE is developing a Voice Assistant feature to enable visually-impaired users to book Grab rides using voice commands, enhancing the accessibility of Grab’s services.
SAVH members played a pivotal role in testing and refining the feature to ensure it meets the needs of the community. Commenting on the experience, Lyn Loh, Head of Accessibility Services from SAVH said: “SAVH is pleased to support Grab’s efforts in making technology more inclusive for the visually impaired community. Initiatives like the Voice Assistant sets a new benchmark for inclusivity in transport and digital services. We are thrilled to support this meaningful innovation and look forward to the positive impact it will have on the daily lives of individuals with visual impairment.”
Built on OpenAI models, Grab has fine-tuned the speech-to-text model with 80,000 local voice samples and names of points of interest, boosting its recognition of Singaporean accents and building names from 46% to 89%. To further enhance the model’s accuracy, Grab will launch a voice donation feature within the Grab app in June to enable Singapore users to contribute voice samples to help make Voice Assistant more intuitive and inclusive.
Voice Assistant is currently being piloted in Singapore, with plans to further expand its capabilities. Beyond supporting visually-impaired users, Grab is also exploring similar initiatives to simplify navigation for underserved communities, particularly the elderly.
- AI for Productivity and Growth
Grab aims to empower employees, platform workers and small businesses to harness AI for smarter decision-making, innovation, and enhanced livelihoods.
The AI COE is building a specialised foundational model, uniquely trained on Grab’s real-world data, to more accurately represent and interpret the behaviours of app users, driver- and delivery-partners as well as merchant-partners. This model will enable Grab to build AI solutions that offer hyper-personalised recommendations, improving user and partner experiences.
Additionally, the AI COE will also develop infrastructure and tools to support Grabbers on creative ideation and rapid experimentation of advanced AI technologies. Grab’s in-house Large Language Model Kit, which contains pre-built code incorporating advanced AI models, enables Grabbers to set up a secure infrastructure to test AI-powered solutions in half a day, a reduction from 1.5 weeks previously.
For driver-, delivery- and merchant-partners, the AI COE will scale AI-powered solutions that improve productivity and drive growth. Projects include the next generation AI Driver Companion and the intelligent AI Merchant Assistant. Driver AI Companion offers real-time recommendations on optimal positioning for bookings, efficient routing, and tailored reward programmes based on driving patterns, while Merchant AI Assistant delivers proactive business insights and recommendations as well as operational support to fast-track small business growth online and offline.
- AI for Smarter Nations
Grab bridges the digital and physical worlds, transforming real-world data into actionable solutions that improve daily life and support government initiatives.
The AI COE will develop new capabilities for Grab’s KartaDongle and KartaDashcam Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, extending their applications beyond mapmaking, fleet management and safety, to contribute to smart nation building. These advancements include real-time road hazard detection to accelerate infrastructure management, real-time traffic intelligence to enhance urban planning, and real-time rain and flood monitoring to support emergency response planning.
In Singapore, for example, Grab’s expanded partnership with PUB, Singapore’s National Water Agency, integrates Grab’s IoT data and incident reports from driver-partners, with PUB’s flood monitoring data, to deliver real-time flood intelligence. This collaboration enables accurate flood alerts to be communicated to driver-partners via the app, which will help in minimising traffic disruption during heavy rains. It will also support PUB in responding quickly to any reports of flooding incidents across Singapore.
Grab’s Artificial Intelligence Centre of Excellence represents a significant step in harnessing AI for good by building solutions that empower communities, drive economic growth, and support sustainable development across Southeast Asia.