APEC’s AI Initiative

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (hereafter ‘APEC’) endorsed its AI Initiative for 2026-2030. APEC includes countries such as the United States, China, Canada, and Indonesia. The AI Initiative embodies three main pillars and some action points to unlock the full potential of AI. This blog provides an overview of pillars such as statements on collaboration, the exchange of best practices, and capability building, as well as key action points. 

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (hereafter ‘APEC’) endorsed its AI Initiative for 2026-2030 during the 2025 APEC Leaders’ Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea. APEC is an economic forum that fosters sustainable economic growth and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region by adopting a wide variety of initiatives. APEC exists of 21 member economies such as the United States, the People's Republic of China, Canada, Indonesia, Australia, Russia, Thailand and more. 

The APEC’s AI Initiative highlighted that unlocking the potential of AI will enhance economic growth, the improvement of living standards of the population and empower people and businesses. The strategy can be summarized by three main pillars: 

1. advancing AI innovation and promoting secure, accessible and reliable AI ecosystems; 
2. cooperation and capacity-building initiatives;
3. leveraging energy and efficient technologies and fostering resilient AI infrastructure investment. 

The key action points: 

• Coordinated approaches: (i) by assessing the current status and priorities regarding the development and adoption of AI; (ii) by encouraging collaboration by bringing together stakeholders and exploring possibilities for public-private partnerships, especially for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises; (iii) by setting up exchange programs for sharing the best practices and policies, (iv) by delivering continuous efforts to adopt secure and reliable AI.
• Fostering the necessary knowledge and skills to fully harness the transformative potential of AI: this on the level of the public sector (upskill public sector personnel to accelerate the adoption of AI in the public sector), private sector (share best practices to promote sector-specific AI adoption, innovation and transformation) and the labor force (encourage lifelong learning for all and share information on effective upskilling and reskilling programs for human resources) as well. Consumers are also targeted to have at least a basic digital literacy and AI readiness through various efforts. In addition, partnerships between member economies are encouraged to share expertise.
• Enabling AI friendly ecosystems: acknowledging that stakeholders must invest in a resilient AI infrastructure, this includes cloud computing and data centers, power sources , grids and more. Policies must also facilitate partnerships among member economies and the private sector. Other efforts that must be promoted are for example the development by the private sector of predictive analytics, demand management, and energy optimization to enhance energy system efficiency, security, and reliability. Dialogues must be initiated to explore opportunities for investing in resilient AI infrastructure. 

In short, the APEC AI Initiative is a framework that guides member economies toward policies promoting the development and deployment of AI. Member economies acknowledge that this requires partnerships and that AI literacy is needed at all levels. They also recognize the importance of efforts to develop ingenious AI ecosystems. 

Shannen Verlee