Amid a global slowdown in cross-border investment, countries in East and Southeast Asia—particularly India, Singapore, and Malaysia—are emerging as key destinations for AI-related capital, according to a new report by Moody’s Analytics.

A graph titled ‘U.S. AI Investment Directed at Asia’ in the report illustrates cross-border investment projects (CIPs) in AI from 2022 to 2025, segmented by source and destination in billions of dollars. On the destination side, India leads as the top recipient, drawing over $10 billion in AI-related investments, followed by the United States and Singapore. Other Asia-Pacific economies such as Malaysia, Japan, Australia, and Vietnam have also attracted notable funding. The United States, however, stands out as the dominant source of outbound AI investment, committing nearly $45 billion—far exceeding contributions from Taiwan, China, and Japan. This underscores both the centrality of U.S. capital in the global AI landscape and the growing strategic significance of Asian markets as hubs for AI development.

While global investment flows have weakened due to geopolitical tensions and economic fragmentation, investment in artificial intelligence is accelerating. “AI is the one area defying the global slowdown in cross-border investment,” the report states, highlighting that semiconductors and data centres—the backbone of AI infrastructure—continue to attract substantial funding.

This momentum has turned the spotlight on Asia. “India, Singapore, and Malaysia are rapidly establishing themselves as prime destinations for data centre projects or chip manufacturing,” the report notes. This trend is attributed to cost advantages, rising local demand, and supportive government policies.

India, in particular, stands out for its growing economy and deep digital talent pool. These strengths have made it an attractive option for companies looking to build or expand data centre capacity. Meanwhile, Singapore and Malaysia benefit from strong policy incentives and competitive operating costs.

At the same time, the United States continues to dominate AI-related investment, both as a source and destination. Tech giants such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI are driving a wave of investment in data centres and semiconductor facilities. “The U.S. leads because of its large consumer market and business-friendly environment,” the report notes, further bolstered by aggressive policy pushes such as the CHIPS and Science Act. However, the report also highlights that “Taiwan, China, Japan, and Germany are also major sources of AI-related cross-border investment,” signalling a broader global effort to localise critical infrastructure and hedge against concentrated risk.

Even as the number of individual projects has declined, the overall dollar value of AI investment has surged. “The increase in the total dollar amount of AI investment coincides with a fall in the number of investment projects, suggesting a shift towards fewer but larger projects,” the report observes. This reflects the massive scale and capital intensity of projects now underway—especially those catering to the demands of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI systems.

In a fragmented global economy, AI infrastructure spending may offer rare common ground—at least for now.