Three hundred sixty-eight billion, a trillion is a forecast

The visible date on this Google post is Oct 21, 2026. The judgment first: $368 billion is the 2026 digital gross merchandise value in the report. Passing $1 trillion by 2035, and a 60-fold rise in regional AI use over five years, are the report's projections. Growing data-center capacity about threefold is what the report says would be required to keep up with that projection. It is not capacity already built.

This is the 11th e-Conomy SEA report, by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, titled Building the Intelligent Economy. It says generative AI is actively used by 243 million people, 58 percent of the working-age population, and is scaling four times faster than the rollout of mobile internet. Widespread AI use is written as pushing the region's digital economy up 17 percent year on year in gross merchandise value, to $368 billion in 2026, and onto a track to pass $1 trillion by 2035. The track is the report's judgment, not a 2035 invoice.

The report projects a 60-fold surge in regional AI use over the next five years, tied to confidence in agent-completed commerce. The 60-fold figure sits on a projection. A footnote points one numbered note at a question about trust, and the body does not give a token formula that can be recomputed. This piece does not add one.

The sector values are also this report's figures. E-commerce is $226 billion, up 18 percent. Online travel is $59 billion, up 10 percent. Online media revenue is $44 billion, up 22 percent. Mobility and food delivery are $40 billion, up 15 percent. Digital financial services gross transaction value is $1.65 trillion, up 16 percent. The e-commerce passage also says personalized experiences drive 10 percent higher conversions and order-volume lifts as large as 75 percent. Those two rates are results inside the report. This page does not name the test set or the comparison.

Consumer willingness is also a set of ratios in the report. Seventy-two percent of users already rely on everyday features such as price tracking. Seventy-five percent say they are willing to let an AI agent compare prices and complete a transaction on its own. Willingness is not payment already handed over. Sixty-two percent report greater trust in AI tools than a year ago. The report's reasons are a proven record at 56 percent, greater familiarity at 55 percent, and output accuracy at 53 percent. To be comfortable with the new capability, users expect privacy safeguards at 44 percent, a clear account of what AI can and cannot do at 36 percent, and the ability to reverse an agent-completed transaction at 30 percent.

To support roughly 60-fold use by 2030, the report lists conditions, not a completion list. One is an expansion of data-center capacity to about three times over the next five years, with AI workloads taking a dominant share of infrastructure. Another is the ASEAN Digital Economy Framework Agreement, DEFA, in November 2026, which the report calls the first region-wide digital trade pact. The pact is described as upcoming. The footnote says the report covers ten Southeast Asian countries. Timor-Leste is excluded because the data are limited.