This year's summit ran from 26 to 28 August 2026 at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center (QSNCC), drawing over 350 exhibitors. Marking its third consecutive year at Techsauce Global Summit in Thailand, iFLYTEK also took home "The Sauciest AI-Driven Company" award against more than 50 competing companies. Under its "Discover Next-Gen AI" campaign, Booth D1 presented a full lineup of AI solutions from the iFLYTEK Open Platform, spanning public services, office productivity, smart living spaces, and enterprise infrastructure.

1. Communication & Public Service Solutions

• AI Translation Screen: A transparent, dual-sided AI translation screen display that enables real-time, face-to-face communication across languages. Powered by iFLYTEK Spark LLM, it features auto-language detection, multimodal noise reduction, and a virtual customer service assistant, ideal for transit counters, airports, tourist centers, and hotel front desks.
• GuideX: A digital human virtual receptionist combining hardware and software to deliver multimodal interaction through face wake-up, sound localization, gesture recognition and space sensing. Beyond answering queries, it offers real-time direction guidance to specific booths. GuideX is already deployed globally, including at Don Mueang Airport in Thailand (supporting over 30 languages), the Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs & Port Security, SMRT in Singapore, and Safaricom customer service centers in Kenya.

2. Enterprise AI & Productivity Tools

• Stars MaaS: A Model-as-a-Service platform enabling organizations to access, manage, and fine-tune large language models with zero code across 5 steps: Data Creation,Model Selection, Fine-Tuning, Outcome Evaluation and Model Deployment. Supporting more than 50 mainstream foundation models, including iFLYTEK Spark and DeepSeek, it reduces fine-tuning time from days to hours.
• Astron Agent & Astron Workflow: Astron Agent is a cloud-based intelligent agent that analyzes intent, breaks down complex tasks, and executes multi-step workflows using internal enterprise knowledge bases. Astron Workflow provides a drag-and-drop visual interface for building business processes. Both tools integrate with leading LLMs (Spark, DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, MiniMax), feature over 16,000 pre-built skills, and maintain cross-session project memory.
• Ocean Enterprise AI Agents: A productivity suite featuring OceanDoc (AI presentation slide generation with speaker notes), OceanNote (multilingual meeting transcription with speaker separation and action item summaries), OceanTranslate (multimodal translation across text, documents, audio, and video in 100+ languages while preserving layout), and OceanPraxis (immersive role-play training simulations with performance evaluation).

3. Smart Spaces & Enterprise Infrastructure

• WallEX: An AI agent solution for smart spaces across premium hotels, residential properties, and commercial buildings. Integrating with sensors, Nurmina intelligent ambient lighting and third-party device ecosystems, it supports international standard protocols including Matter and KNX to control lighting, climate, curtains, and security via single voice commands. WallEX is live in flagship projects across Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, and Jamaica.
• All-in-One Solutions: An integrated hardware-and-software solution designed for secure on-premise deployment in government, finance, and media sectors. The unit houses an AI Hub (speech recognition for 35+ languages, TTS, translation, OCR), a Data Annotation & Training platform, and a Smart RAG Agent for internal document Q&A. The 4U model features 4 CPU cards and 8 NPU cards for high-capacity enterprise workloads.

As part of the iFLYTEK Open Platform's broader portfolio, these solutions demonstrate iFLYTEK's full-stack capabilities across models, AI development platforms, enterprise agents and integrated hardware-software applications. To accelerate its localization strategy in Thailand, iFLYTEK also signed letters of intent with Chulalongkorn University and Zense to co-develop Thai speech recognition and natural language processing technologies, marking a concrete step forward in its local partnership roadmap.

Techsauce, a platform driving the technology and business ecosystem, announced the successful conclusion of Techsauce Global Summit 2026, an international technology and business conference held from 26–28 August 2026 at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center (QSNCC). Held under the theme “The Race to the NEXT…”, the summit welcomed attendees from 60 countries, with the highest representation from Singapore, China, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea, reflecting the platform’s role in connecting Thailand’s ecosystem with regional and global markets. 

The Summit also featured a diverse range of international pavilions from across Asia, Europe and North America, bringing together companies, startups and ecosystem partners from markets including Canada, the Czech Republic, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and beyond.

Across three days, the event featured 10 stages, more than 350 speakers, over 350 exhibitors, and more than 40 workshops and masterclasses spanning AI and Agentic AI, the digital economy, the future of finance, healthspan and HealthTech, food systems, and corporate innovation. The summit brought together more than 1,000 C-level executives and over 500 investors, and facilitated more than 1,500 business-matching connections.

“The NEXT” Is Thailand’s Opportunity in a New Global Order

Oranuch Lerdsuwankij CEO and Co-founder of Techsauce Media Co., Ltd., observed that the world is becoming increasingly polarised. Strategic technologies such as semiconductors and clean energy are becoming instruments of national strategy, while supply chains are seeking a “new home”. This presents an opportunity for Thailand and Southeast Asia to move beyond their traditional role as low-cost manufacturing bases and become strategic hubs connecting technology, capital, policy and business. “The NEXT is not only about advanced technologies or emerging trends. It is about opportunity,” Lerdsuwankij said. She introduced the N-E-X-T framework: New Reality, Effect, eXperiment and Together, encouraging organisations to understand change, assess its impact, test something new within 30 days, and identify the right partners.

The Summit was also joined by Mr. Chaichanok Chidchob, Minister of Digital Economy and Society, who highlighted the government’s role as an enabler of Thailand’s digital transformation and the importance of public–private collaboration in accelerating innovation. He also presented the Prime Minister’s Digital Awards 2025, recognising organisations and individuals shaping the country’s digital future.

With Thailand’s digital transformation accelerating at the national level, the conversation at Techsauce Global Summit 2026 also turned to how organisations can adapt from adopting individual technologies to fundamentally rethinking how they operate.

Becoming AI-Native Is Not About Adding Tools. It Requires Redesigning the Organisation.

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee AI expert and investor, former Google China executive, and author of AI Superpowers, said AI is driving the cost of “intelligence and action” towards near zero. Models offering comparable capabilities have become approximately 175 times less expensive in just two years, while Agentic AI can now write code, use tools and execute multi-step workflows. However, deploying many AI applications does not automatically translate into business outcomes if those systems do not understand an organisation’s real context and processes. Dr. Lee proposed building an Enterprise Universe Model that connects data through ontologies, multi-agent systems and a Boss AI. He also advocated restructuring organisations around Directly Responsible Individuals (DRIs), or “mini-CEOs”, who own outcomes end to end, while people continue to provide vision, human understanding, trust-building and accountability.

Techsauce Advances the Healthspan Economy

Healthspan remains a key agenda that Techsauce continues to advance through its platform. Opening the Healthspan stage, Mr.Pattana Promphat, Minister of Public Health, emphasised that success in healthcare should not end with helping people live longer; those added years must also be healthy, independent and self-reliant. As Thailand moves towards an ageing society and non-communicable diseases place a growing burden on patients, families and the healthcare system, healthcare must shift from treatment to prevention, and from reactive to proactive care.

AI, genomics, biotechnology, digital health and wearable devices can help assess disease risks earlier and enable personalised care. Thailand’s strengths in medical talent, universal health coverage and the wellness industry create an opportunity for the country to become Asia’s healthspan and longevity hub. To deliver meaningful impact, innovation must be trusted, affordable and capable of reducing health inequality.

Another example of bringing deep tech into real-world use was the Chula Innovation & IP Expo 2026, organised by the Chulalongkorn University Innovation Hub (CU Innovation Hub). The expo showcased research, technologies, intellectual property and startups from Chulalongkorn University, while connecting researchers and entrepreneurs with industry, investors and international partners to open pathways for technology transfer and investment.

From Knowledge to Business Opportunity

From Thailand’s national-level opportunities to the design of AI-native organisations and the application of technology in healthcare, Techsauce Global Summit 2026 showed that “The Race to the NEXT” extends well beyond the conference stages. It took shape across the innovation exhibition, hands-on workshops, Business Matching, Meet the VCs, Executive Networking and side events held throughout Bangkok. Together, these mechanisms connected people with business challenges, capital, technology and implementation capabilities, helping ideas move towards projects, partnerships and commercial opportunities. A key takeaway from Techsauce Global Summit 2026 is that competitive advantage in the new global order does not come from adopting technology first. It comes from selecting the problems that matter, redesigning organisations and systems, experimenting quickly with purpose, and building cross-sector collaboration. For Thailand, the opportunity lies in leveraging regional strengths and connecting technology with the economy, healthcare, skills and capital, enabling the country to move from responding to change to helping shape the next playing field.

Techsauce Connects Ecosystem Voices with Thailand’s National Agenda

In his closing remarks, Professor Dr. Yodchanan Wongsawat, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, highlighted Techsauce’s role in connecting people, technology and opportunity. He also described the event as a forum through which the public sector can hear directly from entrepreneurs, investors and participants, translate those perspectives into policy, and help move the country forward.

“Today, Techsauce is no longer simply a conference. Techsauce is a platform, and one that Thailand should be proud of. I am ready to be a good partner to Techsauce and to listen to the conversations taking place here: what the government can build on, which policies should be adjusted, and which voices from entrepreneurs, investors and participants the public sector should hear to help move the country forward,” said Professor Dr. Yodchanan Wongsawat, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation.

Announced at Techsauce Global Summit 2026, the partnership combines OpenAI’s frontier AI capabilities with Fellow Intelligence’s local enterprise expertise, giving Thai organizations greater support as they move from experimenting with AI to deploying it across real business workflows.

Positioning itself as OpenAI's first boutique consulting partner in Asia-Pacific, Fellow Intelligence operates as an official OpenAI reseller in Thailand. The firm delivers ChatGPT Enterprise and Education licensing alongside capability assessments, hands-on workshops, hackathons, and change management programs executed by its parent firm, Thinking Machines Data Science. Fellow Intelligence, together with Thinking Machines, reports having upskilled over 10,000 professionals and co-built more than 3,450 custom AI assistants for major clients, including CPF, CPN, the Stock Exchange of Thailand, King Power, Sansiri, and UNDP.

The partnership comes as AI adoption in Thailand continues to accelerate. Sharma revealed that Thailand now ranks among the top 20 countries globally for weekly ChatGPT and Codex usage, with local Codex adoption surging 350x in recent months. Furthermore, roughly 30% of ChatGPT classified consumer messages in Thailand are now work-related. 

“Thailand has quickly become one of the region’s most active AI markets, and we’re seeing businesses move beyond experimentation towards putting AI to work in meaningful ways,” said Sid Sharma, Head of Go to Market, ASEAN at OpenAI. “Fellow Intelligence brings deep local expertise and experience helping organizations navigate that transition. Together, we want to make it easier for more Thai businesses to access frontier AI capabilities and turn them into real outcomes.”

Data from OpenAI’s latest report revealed that "frontier firms" (organizations furthest along in AI integration) are generating roughly eight times the output of peers stuck in pilot phases. This performance gap has nearly tripled in just five months. Sharma emphasized that the true measure of AI value isn't model selection or token costs, but "useful intelligence per dollar": how reliably tasks are completed and how that value compounds over time.

"An 8x output gap sounds intimidating. It's like something that takes years to close. In our experience it isn't. Thai professionals already have a baseline fluency with ChatGPT, as the stat shows, a third of what Thais bring to ChatGPT is already work. Our people didn't wait for permission. The real gap isn't readiness, it's the distance between staff using AI quietly and organisations putting it into the workflows that matter. ChatGPT Enterprise, with proper training, is where we start. We want Thailand's frontier firms counted in the hundreds, not the handful it is today." – Kamin Phakdurong, CEO of Fellow Intelligence

For Thai enterprises, the partnership makes local adoption simple and straightforward: Thai Baht invoicing, dedicated in-market deployment support, and training from a team deeply integrated into the local ecosystem. OpenAI framed the move as a long-term commitment to the market. "We are investing right back into Thailand," Sharma stated, adding that OpenAI wants to keep building "with Thailand, within Thailand, and with developers and the ecosystem here in Bangkok."If your organization is considering about getting started with AI (whether that's ChatGPT Enterprise licensing, team training, or planning an organization-wide AI rollout), you can find out more about Fellow Intelligence at https://fellowint.com

Informal money transfer networks such as Hundi and Hawala still move roughly $300 billion a year, even though the system is more than 500 years old, has no app, no blockchain, and no technology holding it up at all. The question of how something that old still stands in a world equipped with AI, cryptocurrency, and digital payment rails is exactly the line Aswin Phlaphongphanich, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of DeeMoney, used to open his own session, with a footnote attached from the very start: as a fintech founder, he does not endorse anyone using this network, because it is illegal in most countries.

In his session, titled 'Unspoken Facts of Global Payments: How Fintechs Changed the Banking Game' at Techsauce Global Summit 2026, Aswin  spoke about the things people inside the payments industry know but rarely say out loud. They all point back to a single conclusion that took roughly 20 years to crystallise, which is that technology does an excellent job of moving information, but what actually moves money is trust. Each fact that follows comes from a different corner of the business, from liquidity and regulation to customer behaviour, and each one arrives at that conclusion from a new direction.

The 500-Year-Old Network No Technology Has Managed to Bring Down

What Hawala and Hundi have done better than banks, fintechs, and crypto founders over the past hundred years is understand from the outset that the real currency of moving money is not technology, but the trust between the people at either end.

Aswin admits this was not something he could see at the beginning. When DeeMoney started around 10 years ago, the thinking was to build the best app with the smoothest Know Your Customer (KYC) journey, on the assumption that customers would choose the service because of the technology. The truth he found later was the opposite.

There Is No Global Money Transfer Network, Only Local Networks Woven Together

The first misconception is about the role of technology. The next one is about the network itself, because most people believe there is one beautiful global money transfer system out there moving funds on their behalf. That system does not exist.

What does exist is a set of local payment networks, one country at a time, woven together until they can carry money across borders. Every local regulation and every local payment channel has been stitched in line by line. Even the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), which many take to be a global transfer network, is in reality only a messaging platform between financial institutions. Funds still have to be converted into local currency and travel through the destination country's own rails before the recipient on the other side of the world actually receives anything.

A Payments Company Is Really a Treasury and Liquidity Company

When the network in use is a weave of local systems, what gets money to its destination within minutes is not the speed of the code. Aswin says that when DeeMoney was founded, the team thought it was building a really cool payments company. What it turned out to be building was a treasury and liquidity company, because without treasury and liquidity management running 24 hours a day, seven days a week, technology means almost nothing in this industry.

The example he gave was sending money from Bangkok to the United Kingdom at three in the morning on a Saturday and expecting it to arrive at five minutes past three. What makes that possible is not technology, but someone in the treasury team pre-funding the money on Wednesday and converting it into pounds sterling on Friday, ready for a customer who turns up in the small hours of Saturday. All of it is a great deal of orchestration that has to land in perfect harmony every single time.

Moving Money Is Easy, Moving It Legally Across Borders Is the Real Work

Liquidity is only one side of the job. The heavier side is the legal framework. Aswin sums it up briefly: moving money is easy, but moving money legally across borders is extremely hard.

Cryptocurrency is the clearest example of the point. The technology can update a ledger from one side to the other in milliseconds, but the genuinely hard part is making that process compliant across multiple corridors and multiple regulators at the same time, which is why most people are still not using cryptocurrency to send money abroad in daily life.

The Winning Formula Is Multiplication, Not Addition

The question that follows is who wins this game, fintechs, banks, or both working together. The answer Aswin offers has nothing to do with the type of player, and everything to do with four components that all have to be in place: technology, compliance, liquidity, and trust.

The reason he describes it as multiplication rather than addition is that if any one of the four is zero, the entire result becomes zero immediately. All four have to work in harmony before a network can earn a customer's trust and genuinely move money.

Why Money Cannot Travel the Way a Chat Message Does

The question Aswin says he is asked most often is this: if sending a message from Bangkok to New York through a chat app takes a few seconds, why can money not travel the same way?

What most people see is the tip of the iceberg, which holds only the fee and the foreign exchange rate, after which the money is supposed to arrive. What sits below the waterline is the complexity that has to be orchestrated every day, from speed, liquidity, and pre-funding to compliance, reconciliation, handling failed payments, managing refunds, and running a customer support team seven days a week. All of it works behind the scenes so that the journey of money from one point to another looks as simple as possible to the user.

The Four Fabrics of Trust DeeMoney Has Woven Together

None of that complexity below the waterline means anything unless it ends in trust. Aswin explains that DeeMoney has woven four fabrics of trust together. The first and most important is the trust of customers. The second is the trust of the regulator, which granted the licence to perform this job on behalf of consumers. The remaining two are the banks and the fintech partners, more than 70 of them across the network, because no fintech moves money legally across borders on its own.

Seeing the business this way also changed how the business is defined. At the start, the team thought it was running a remittance company, but it learned quickly that remittance is only one product running on the highway the company had built, or what Aswin calls a trusted financial bridge between Thailand and the world. Today DeeMoney processes more than 7 million transactions worth over $5 billion a year, and Aswin states that it is the largest cross-border payments fintech in Thailand. Cross-border payments already run on this highway, while collections and stablecoins are the products lined up next.

Banks Are Built for Stability, Customers Want Freedom

When trust has to come from all four fabrics at once, the difficulty lies in the fact that each side wants something different. Aswin is emphatic that banks do their own job very well as custodians of customer funds, holding them with care, keeping them away from risk, and protecting them from fraud. From the customer's side, however, what people want is freedom and authority over their own money, and that balance is hard to strike.

The main reason is that the banking system was built over roughly a hundred years to deliver trust, stability, control, and compliance, while customer behaviour has changed drastically over the past 15 years. People who book a ride through an app and get a car within seconds, or buy something online and receive it almost immediately, expect the same of their money. Yet most bank treasuries still do not operate on US holidays and stop accepting transactions after half past three on a Friday afternoon, while customers expect money to move around the clock. The task for fintechs is to deliver both sides at once, every time.

Customers Do Not Pay to Move Money, They Pay to Remove Uncertainty

Once customer expectations shift that far, what customers are actually buying shifts with them. Aswin recalls that the team used to believe customers chose the service for a good exchange rate, for the flat 125 baht fee to send money anywhere in the world, or for speed measured in seconds. What they found instead is that customers do not pay to move money, they pay to make uncertainty go away.

Uncertainty here goes by another name, which is friction along the entire path from hitting send to the money being received. What customers want is the certainty that funds arrive every single time, without having to call a service centre to ask where the money currently is. The hard part of the job, then, is attaching that certainty to every transaction.

A Future Where Payments Disappear from View, and Customers May Not Be Human

Another question Aswin says he is asked just as often is what the future of cross-border transfers looks like now that AI, blockchain, and a long list of other technologies are all in hand. For about five years his answer was that the cost would fall to zero and everyone would move money for free. He no longer sees it that way.

What he expects instead is that the payment experience itself will gradually disappear from view, embedded into the customer journey of whatever app or platform the user already has open. Payments stop being a separate website or app and become part of the experience the user is already in, and eventually AI or a machine may carry out the transaction without the person having to think about it at all.

The picture that follows is that customers in the future may no longer be human, but a billion AI agents acting on behalf of users on the platform. Aswin admits nobody knows exactly what that will look like, but what keeps him up at night is that for the past hundred years the industry has learned only how to win human trust, while the next 10 years may be about trusting machines instead.

Stablecoins and Deposit Tokens, the Big Cost Every Fintech Is Waiting to Shed

The question and answer session after the talk circled back to the cost that sits at the heart of the business. Aswin says the single largest cost in this business is liquidity and pre-funding, and that it is truer for fintechs than for other players, because a fintech has no bank deposits and has to run entirely on its own working capital and balance sheet.

For that reason, deposit tokens and stablecoins are a game-changing moment for every fintech, if they can genuinely take pre-funding out of money movement. Aswin assesses that it is still very early in Thailand, and if he had to guess, it could be roughly 12 to 18 months before this class of technology becomes part of money transfers, while several parts of the world are already live with it, which gives Thailand something to learn from.

As for the question of machines using financial services in place of humans, Aswin answered plainly that he does not have a precise answer. The only thing he can say is that until now the industry has built technology for humans to use. The moment AI starts taking responsibility for and authorising payments on behalf of the account holder, the element of trust that anchors this entire talk changes completely, because where a person used to decide how to send money from Thailand to the United Kingdom, an AI agent may soon be the one authorising and authenticating that transfer instead.

The question left hanging since the start of the session, of why no technology has brought down a 500-year-old network, therefore has its answer in the same line Aswin closed with, that technology does a great job of moving information, but trust is what moves money. And if the future in which financial customers are not human does arrive, the industry's next task will not be shaving a few more seconds off the journey, but working out how trust gets handed from humans to machines.

Source: 'Unspoken Facts of Global Payments: How Fintechs Changed the Banking Game' session at Techsauce Global Summit 2026

Some parts, I admit, were difficult challenges for me. But I have to thank the team for believing in me when others said it couldn’t be done.

When Techsauce asked Tanit Chearavanont, Group Chief Wholesale Business Officer of CP AXTRA Public Company Limited, how he felt about receiving two awards, his first answer did not begin with numbers or his own success. He went back to the day he decided to shut down Makroclick and move everything onto Makro PRO—the day an external consultant told the team to their faces that this approach could not be done and that he might fail.

At Techsauce Awards 2026, Tanit received The Sauciest Tech Visionary of the Year award, while Makro PRO received The Sauciest Tech Scaleup award. Backstage at the awards, Techsauce sat down for an in-depth interview with Tanit, joined by Tirayu Songvetkasem to discuss the vision, decisions and working process behind the four-year journey that brought a traditional wholesale business to this point.

The conversation showed how difficult it is to separate the award for the leader from the award for the platform. Whenever Tanit spoke about vision, he returned to the team. Whenever Thirayu spoke about scaling up, he returned to the leader’s direction and decisions.

Two Awards on the Same Journey

Tanit received The Sauciest Tech Visionary of the Year award for his role in leading Makro’s transformation from a traditional wholesale business into Retail Tech. The Sauciest Tech Scaleup award went to Makro PRO, a platform launched in 2022 that has grown into a Thai e-commerce platform and become Thailand’s No. 1 e-commerce platform in first-party (1P) sales, according to Euromonitor.

Over the same period, e-commerce’s share of Makro’s sales rose from 3% to more than 30%. The figures show just how far the business has come.

Although the growth has been impressive enough to look like a proven formula, what both men told Techsauce was that there was never a point along the way when the team could simply keep using the same approach and continue moving forward indefinitely.

The Day They Had to Choose How to Move Forward

One of the most important decisions came when Tanit chose to shut down Makroclick and move everything onto Makro PRO. An external consultant had told the team to their faces that no one could migrate systems in this way and that Tanit might fail.

What Tanit saw at the time was that if CP AXTRA wanted to build a large e-commerce platform, maintaining two applications with two separate engineering teams would constrain the business’s ability to scale. He therefore believed that Makroclick and Makro PRO had to be consolidated into a single application, before SmartOne, another B2B system, was later integrated as well.

The system consolidation enabled Makro PRO to support approximately 250 to 260 million baht in daily sales. But the journey was not smooth. Tanit admitted that he was concerned about whether the Order Management System, along with each part of the back-end infrastructure, would be able to handle the transaction volume.

The team pressed ahead with a clear understanding that keeping teams and systems separate would not take the organization far enough, even though no one at the time could guarantee that every part of the plan would work perfectly.

One Transformation Was Not Enough

The decision to shut down Makroclick and consolidate everything into Makro PRO was only the beginning. Once the new system went live, the team found that organizational transformation did not end with a single change. Every time the business grew, the systems and ways of working they had just created could become too small for the next goal.

Tirayu Songvetkasem, Chief Digital Officer – CP AXTRA Public Company Limited, had worked on the front line alongside Tanit from the beginning. From his perspective, Makro PRO’s transformation was a process of “Continuous Disruption,” because every time sales increased, the previous way of working began to struggle with the new scale.

When daily sales rose from 12 million baht at the start to 30 million baht, the team had to change how it worked. When sales reached 70 million baht, systems that had once worked had to be adjusted again. And as the platform continued to grow to several times its previous scale, the organization had to change with it—across systems, processes and team management.

For this team, speed therefore covers the entire process: making decisions quickly, identifying problems quickly, admitting mistakes quickly, solving problems and reorganizing the team fast enough. Tanit distinguishes speed from the number of hours worked. He does not expect people to work a 996 schedule—from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week—but he does expect results that reflect the same level of speed.

Behind that speed is the discipline not to remain attached to the old way of doing things. Scaling a business from tens of millions to hundreds of millions, and from hundreds of millions to the next goal, cannot be achieved using the same operating system throughout the journey.

The 4-3-3 Formula of a Leader Willing to Decide

Tanit summarizes his approach to decision-making with the “4-3-3 strategy.” If he has to make 10 decisions, he accepts that 4 may turn out very well, 3 may deliver ordinary results that can be improved, and the remaining 3 may be mistakes.

Tanit explains that a decision that turns out to be wrong is not always a bad decision. It is a cost of learning that an organization must be willing to accept, because waiting until every piece of information is complete may cause the team to lose the opportunity to learn from the real market.

However, his decisiveness does not mean that a leader should think alone. Tanit says that he always consults the people around him and his team, because several minds can examine a problem from more angles than one mind alone.

A leader’s job is to listen enough, then have the courage to decide when the time comes.

This model gives the word “visionary” a highly practical meaning. Vision does not end with seeing the future. It must come with the ability to make decisions while information remains incomplete and to lead the team in learning from the outcomes that actually follow.

From Buying Technology to Building It Together

Problems with the order management system, in-store picking and certain off-the-shelf software systems led the team to realize that CP AXTRA could not rely solely on purchasing technology from external providers. Tanit therefore began building critical systems in-house, from order management and loyalty systems to the Pricing Engine.

At the same time, building everything in-house would require too many resources. The answer was therefore a Co-Creation model that transformed the relationship with technology companies from buyer and seller into partners jointly developing technology.

This approach led to the development of technology suited to the Thai context and the filing of 4 patent applications. They cover a personalized search-ranking system, an encoding system for Thai-language processing, a product-search system that combines keyword matching with semantic matching, and a voice-ordering system in which multiple AI models work together.

Co-Creation therefore meets two needs: CP AXTRA gains access to knowledge from global partners, while the Thai team retains a role in designing the technology and owns the intellectual property created in Thailand.

The Next Goal: Becoming an ASEAN Retail Tech Leader

After establishing a base in Thailand, Tanit’s goal is to make CP AXTRA a Retail Tech leader in ASEAN. The next stage is to expand into international markets, starting with Southeast Asia.

Tanit believes Thailand still lacks a Thai-built e-commerce platform capable of competing at the regional level. He therefore wants to see Makro PRO grow to stand in the same market as global platforms and to make the team that has built it together since day one proud of what they have achieved.

When asked when he wanted to reach that point, Tanit answered: within two years. He wants Makro PRO’s sales to match the transaction value of Thailand’s second-ranked platform. This goal still lies in a future that has yet to arrive, and he knows that the decisions of one person alone cannot take the organization there.

Tanit cannot be the only one holding the sword. It has to be a team. Everyone has to believe for us to get there.

The story of Makro PRO therefore does not define the word “visionary” solely through the ability to see the future. It defines it through what happens afterward: making decisions when the full answers are not yet available, building new systems when the old ones can no longer support the business, and bringing a large number of people together in the same direction.

And that may be where this year’s two awards converge. Vision only becomes meaningful when there is a team that turns it into reality. Scale, meanwhile, cannot happen without a direction clear enough for everyone to believe in and move forward together.

In the Techsauce Global Summit session "AI-First in Action: Inside an Enterprise AI Transformation," Techsauce CEO Oranuch Lerdsuwankij sat down with Kaweewut Temphuwapath, Chief Innovation Officer of SCBX and CEO of SCB 10X, to discuss the direction SCBX, a technology group worth more than 20 billion USD, is taking across its three generations of business:

• Traditional banking (Gen 1)
• Digital lending (Gen 2)
• Digital assets and SCB 10X, which manages over 600 million USD in venture capital, driving the group's push to become a genuinely AI-first organization (Gen 3)

This is the summary of the session, distilled into a practical framework for any leader trying to transform both themselves and their company.

Defining "AI-First": Start With an Ambitious Goal, Not a Definition

"AI-first" or "AI-native" risks becoming just another buzzword, so we must undefine it first. SCBX chose not to get bogged down in technical definitions, and instead set bold, quantifiable goals nearly two years ago to rally the organization around a shared direction:

• 75% AI-enabled revenue: a target for 75% of income to be generated with AI's direct involvement
• 15% AI talent: a goal for 15% of the workforce to be classified as genuine AI talent
• Adoption speed matched to the business: recognizing that different parts of the organization can't move at the same pace. The traditional bank (Gen 1) has to prioritize system stability and risk controls, while Gen 2 and Gen 3 businesses can move much faster in adopting new technology

A Three-Layer Architecture to Escape the "Pilot Trap"

One of the biggest challenges for large organizations is getting stuck in a sandbox structure where dozens of scattered AI initiatives never translate into actual profit. To avoid this, SCBX organized its AI strategy into three layers, giving the entire organization a shared framework:

• Layer 1 — Use Cases (focused on P&L impact): Every flagship project must have a clearly measurable effect on profit and loss, whether that means increasing revenue or cutting costs. Critically, these must be business-driven initiatives, not IT projects.
• Layer 2 — Capabilities (focused on reusability): Build "central capabilities" that any team across the organization can plug into. A Thai-language conversational AI, for example, only needs to be built once then it can be adapted for sales, customer service, or collections across the business.
• Layer 3 — Infrastructure & People (focused on scalability and governance):
  • Agentic platform: a foundational structure that allows AI agents to work together precisely, with tight control over latency and cost
  • Enabling processes: reworking compliance and risk management so they accelerate AI adoption rather than becoming a bottleneck
  • Single backlog: consolidating and prioritizing every AI project across the company into one unified backlog, simplifying investment decisions

The Typhoon Case Study and Thailand's Sovereign AI Strategy

Two years ago, when SCBX first began developing Typhoon—its own Thai-language large language model—the effort became a defining lesson for the company's technology leadership. Rather than starting from scratch, the team built on top of leading open-source models like Llama and Mistral, fine-tuning them to achieve a breakthrough in Thai-language performance that other models hadn't yet matched.

Over time, as top global models improved their own Thai-language capabilities, SCBX shifted strategy by adopting a mix of different open-source models rather than relying on a single one. But the most valuable asset to come out of the process wasn't the model itself. It was the talent pool: the team of engineers with deep expertise in fine-tuning and token optimization.

In business terms, the real prize is cost advantage where the organizations that win will be the ones that drive down the cost per token while holding quality steady. Today, Typhoon has evolved beyond being just a model the company built; it now serves as a hub for spreading AI knowledge across the organization, helping every department apply the right technology effectively.

Building an AI Culture at Scale

The heart of becoming an AI-first company isn't having the most advanced technology — it's motivating people and building an AI culture across the entire enterprise. That means bringing every team and every generation of employee together.

Shift the mindset: AI is the new baseline skill

SCBX draws a compelling comparison: in the near future, AI proficiency won't be optional anymore, it will be as fundamental as typing, using email, or knowing Excel and PowerPoint. Today, a candidate who said "I don't know how to use email" or "I can't use a computer" would likely be screened out immediately. AI skills are heading toward that same standard. Every employee will need to adapt in order to stay valuable and keep pace with the technology defining this era.

Attitude matters more than skill

From a leadership perspective, teaching AI skills isn't the difficult part, there's no shortage of courses and training available. The real challenge is attitude. A common pattern: an employee tries AI once, decides "it's not as good as a human," and gives up entirely. In reality, this often just means they haven't yet learned how to prompt effectively or experimented enough. Building the right AI culture means encouraging open-mindedness and persistence rather than abandoning the effort after one try.

Turning training into a lasting community

To drive this shift, SCBX trained 100% of its employees on Copilot over the past year. But classroom training alone isn't enough to build a lasting culture. Therefore SCBX also built an internal community centered on three things:

• Best practices: identifying employees who've used AI to solve real pain points in their day-to-day work
• Democratizing knowledge: having those employees share their techniques and experience with their peers
• Building momentum from within: seeing a colleague get faster, better results with AI naturally inspires others to learn, but making that happen at scale requires management and HR to actively gather these stories and spread them across the organization

SCBX's transformation into an AI-first company shows that success doesn't come from hoarding the most advanced technology or running hundreds of lab experiments. It comes from a clear vision, a functional system, and bringing people together to move forward as one team.

Source: Session on ‘AI-First in Action: Inside an Enterprise AI Transformation’ hosted by Ms. Oranuch Lerdsuwankij, CEO of Techsauce, and Mr. Kaweewut Temphuwapath, Chief Innovation Officer of SCBX and CEO of SCB 10X at Techsauce Global Summit 2026

From the session “Olympics of Finance: Synergy for the New Frontier of Growth” at Techsauce Global Summit 2026, held on August 26, 2026, at the Main Stadium.

Just a few weeks after Techsauce Global Summit 2026, Thailand will host the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group from October 12 to 18, 2026, at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center. The meetings will bring together financial policymakers, business leaders, and international organizations to discuss the direction of the global economy and key development challenges.

As host, Thailand must clearly answer a crucial question: How can it turn international attention into investment, reform, and opportunities that reach businesses and workers?

Dr. Santitarn Sathirathai, Vice Minister for Finance; Kattiya Indaravijaya, Chief Executive Officer of KASIKORNBANK; and Alejandro Alcala-Gerez, Operations Manager at the World Bank, came together to explore how the public sector, financial institutions, and international development organizations can work in concert to ensure that capital strengthens Thai businesses, workers, and the wider economy.

Turning a Global Forum into Momentum for Reform

Dr. Santitarn argued that an international financial forum should be more than a temporary gathering. It should serve as the starting point for sustained reform momentum. Thailand’s traditional growth model, built largely on adding labor and resources, is reaching its limits. The country therefore needs new mechanisms that can unlock productivity and innovation.

Meeting this challenge requires cooperation between the public and private sectors, rather than simply producing polished strategy documents. The critical gap lies between plans on paper and the institutional mechanisms needed to put them into practice.

Alejandro Alcala-Gerez echoed this view. Many countries already have strong analyses and compelling visions, he noted, but have yet to identify and address the specific regulatory bottlenecks holding them back. Upgrading an economy does not always begin with drawing up a list of new industries. It may instead start with removing the barriers that prevent a country from realizing its existing potential.

Credible execution has therefore become a source of national competitiveness. Capital is seeking markets with predictable regulations, sustained investment in human skills, and clear sustainability standards. As competition is no longer determined by labor costs alone, the ability to deliver on commitments carries greater weight.

Growth That People Can Feel

Becoming a hub for trade, investment, or supply chains requires trust at two levels. The first is international confidence in Thailand’s rules and direction. The second is the confidence of people at home that greater integration with the global economy will genuinely benefit communities, workers, and small businesses.

Dr. Santitarn pointed to new investments in areas such as data centers and smart industries. Export or growth figures may look impressive, but the more important question is how much of the resulting economic activity flows into local economies. If people do not see the benefits, resistance to global economic integration will inevitably grow over time.

This perspective gives “resilience” a meaning that extends beyond surviving a crisis. Kattiya explained that businesses must be able to adapt, transform, and grow amid volatility. Doing so requires knowledge, technology, access to new markets, risk management, and stronger entrepreneurial capabilities.

From Lending to Financing Business Transformation

For banks, helping customers recover from a crisis remains necessary, but it is no longer sufficient in an economy facing structural change. Kattiya argued that banks must move from helping businesses recover to preparing them for the future, and from financing transactions to financing business transformation.

This means that access to capital is only one part of the solution, particularly for SMEs contending with shifts in supply chains. Banks, government agencies, technology providers, and other partners must work together to build an ecosystem that gives businesses access to knowledge, technology, and markets alongside financing.

The same framework applies to transition finance. Many decarbonization projects still face considerable uncertainty and lack a sufficiently established track record of returns. The challenge is to turn net-zero ambitions into bankable projects, enabling private capital to flow into the transition at the scale required.

Capital Follows Clarity

Alejandro Alcala-Gerez noted that Thailand has important foundational assets and policy direction. Converting that potential into investment, however, requires clarity in the business environment, regulation, and workforce capabilities. He cited digital services as an example: although Thailand has strong financial infrastructure, unlocking the industry’s potential requires the country to address regulatory and talent constraints at the same time.

The same is true of the green transition. Dr. Santitarn observed that the energy transition can deliver several benefits simultaneously: climate action, greater energy security, lower logistics costs, and opportunities to build new industries. These outcomes will materialize only when projects and regulations give investors a clear view of what is feasible in practice.

Ultimately, the power of finance should be measured by the system’s ability to turn capital into skills, productivity, and opportunities that reach businesses and workers. With volatility remaining a persistent challenge, Thailand’s most important answer lies in building credibility through tangible execution.

Reference: “Olympics of Finance: Synergy for the New Frontier of Growth,” a session featuring Dr. Santitarn Sathirathai, Kattiya Indaravijaya, and Alejandro Alcala-Gerez at Techsauce Global Summit 2026.

If an organization could finish its entire annual plan in two months, what would it do with the capacity it had just created?

That was the question Sid Sharma, Head of Go to Market for ASEAN at OpenAI, posed to business leaders at Techsauce Global Summit 2026 during his session, ROI of Intelligence: Capturing Growth Beyond the Productivity Trap.

The question takes AI beyond the familiar measures of hours saved and costs reduced. As AI becomes capable of handling longer and more complex assignments, its greater return may come from what an organization can now attempt: advancing projects that were previously stuck, exploring ideas that never had enough resources, and bringing long-term plans forward.

From better answers to completed work

Sid described the evolution of AI through a shift in how its value is measured. In the early days of ChatGPT, users asked a question and received an answer. Models then became better at reasoning and gained access to files, applications, and systems, giving them more context. The next step was agents that could take action, followed by teams of agents capable of coordinating with one another.

User expectations evolved with those capabilities. A few years ago, an AI-generated travel itinerary could feel impressive. Today, people increasingly expect AI to book the tickets, add the flights to their calendars, and manage the related steps until the task is complete.

The unit of value is therefore moving from an answer to an outcome. Organizations are looking beyond how well a model responds and asking how many assigned tasks it completes, whether the quality holds up, and whether people can depend on the result in their daily work.

Sid called this the “Effectiveness Era.” The central question is how much more capable AI can make people across an organization, rather than how much more of the same work each person can be expected to produce.

When AI becomes a personal operating system

Sid illustrated the change with his own workflow. His work spans email, Slack, hundreds of Google Docs, and multiple AI agents that continuously bring him information. He used Codex and ChatGPT Work to build a personal operating system that acts like a chief of staff.

Every hour, the system reviews new information, prioritizes it, decides which tasks it can advance with the context already available, and prepares the issues that still require Sid’s attention. When he opens his computer, he no longer needs to begin by checking every channel. He starts with a view that helps him decide where to direct his energy.

He also described assigning a long-horizon task that ran for two days while retaining the context needed to produce an outcome. This kind of capability allows AI to work across multiple stages, including research, analysis, and production, instead of being limited to isolated question-and-answer exchanges.

Using AI as a personal assistant is still only the starting point. The larger business impact emerges when these capabilities become part of the organization’s shared workflows.

The 8.3x gap between frontier and typical firms

OpenAI described one group in its analysis as “frontier firms,” defined as the top 10% of enterprises by output tokens per employee. The metric does not capture ROI in full, but it provides one signal of how much real work organizations are delegating to AI.

According to the data Sid presented, the gap between frontier and typical firms expanded from 2.6x to 8.3x within five months. The difference comes from how AI is embedded in work, not simply whether employees have access to a licensed tool.

Frontier firms share three characteristics. They provide broad access to AI, their leaders actively support and use the tools themselves, and they treat AI as an organizational ecosystem. They do not hand employees a chatbot and immediately expect one person to do the work of ten. Instead, they build an environment where people can work more creatively and where AI can carry tasks further.

Agentic use is also spreading beyond engineering. OpenAI’s data showed growth of more than 100x in legal teams and more than 40x across sales, marketing, and recruiting within the enterprises studied.

These figures suggest that enterprise AI is moving from a specialist tool for developers to infrastructure for many forms of knowledge work. That expansion, however, depends on aligned access controls, organizational data, and governance.

A shared intelligence layer across the company

Sid presented the idea of an “intelligence layer” across the organization. In this model, ChatGPT Work supports employees, Codex supports technical users, APIs allow developers to embed AI in products, agents carry work across teams and tools, and controls give administrators governance and oversight.

The core of this layer is shared context and organizational memory, rather than the number of tools deployed. When agents can access the right information, understand permissions, and pass work between systems, AI can help manage an end-to-end process.

In the NVIDIA example shown during the session, one employee said that manual number-crunching had previously consumed around 40% of their time. That process now runs automatically twice a week. Sea Group, meanwhile, has deployed ChatGPT Work across the organization and uses Codex as part of an integrated agentic development workflow, moving beyond passive code completion.

When teams begin delivering products earlier than planned, companies have to reconsider their roadmaps. If something scheduled for six to ten months from now can be built today, the leadership question changes. The priority is no longer limited to accelerating the existing plan. Leaders must decide what the organization is ready to create with its new capacity.

In Thailand, Sid announced that Agoda is using Codex with almost every developer, covering software development, cybersecurity, CI/CD processes for testing and deploying code, and broader improvements to software delivery. He also said Thailand ranks among the world’s top 20 markets for weekly ChatGPT and Codex usage, while Codex usage in the country has grown 350x in recent months.

These are OpenAI figures presented during the session, but they point to an important shift in Thailand. AI use is expanding beyond learning, translation, and creative experimentation toward building real systems and products.

Measure useful intelligence per dollar

As AI takes on multi-step work, measuring cost only through token prices or selecting the cheapest model can produce an incomplete picture. A smaller model may cost less per token, but if it requires more turns, more human guidance, and extensive correction before the task is finished, the total cost can be higher than using a more capable model that completes the work in one pass.

Sid proposed a different unit of measurement: “useful intelligence per dollar.” This means evaluating three things together: how many tasks are completed successfully, whether the results meet the required quality and reliability standards, and whether the value created grows as the organization continues to use the system.

What is the useful intelligence I’m getting per dollar?

This framework moves organizations beyond the productivity trap of counting only the time saved. Faster work creates growth when the organization uses its added capacity to launch new projects, improve products, or address problems that had remained unresolved because of limited people and time.

Sid outlined four steps for leaders: provide broad AI access, redesign workflows instead of merely repairing old ones, lead through hands-on use at the top, and ensure that the benefits reach every part of the workforce, including frontline employees.

Ultimately, measuring the ROI of AI requires organizations to look beyond lower costs. If a full year of planned work can be completed in two months, do leaders have the imagination, organizational readiness, and governance needed to turn the time they have gained into growth?

Reference: ROI of Intelligence: Capturing Growth Beyond the Productivity Trap, presented by Sid Sharma, Head of Go to Market for ASEAN at OpenAI, at Techsauce Global Summit 2026 on August 26, 2026.

Applications for BOI (Board of Investment) promotion submitted in the first half of 2026 reached 1.5 trillion baht, or around 45 billion USD. That's a 40% increase over the previous period and a new record. The numbers confirm that investment is flowing toward Thailand. The real question is: what will the country do with it?

Dr. Santitarn Sathirathai, Vice Minister of Finance, addressed this in his session "New Horizons for Thailand's Economy: Connecting Technology to Growth" at Techsauce Global Summit 2026. Rather than opening with technology itself, he began with the bigger picture of Thailand's economic growth—arguing that technology and innovation aren't confined to industry, but represent a genuinely new growth engine for the economy, a vision he shares with Dr. Ekniti Nitithanprapas, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. The core message of the session: success shouldn't be measured by how much investment pours in, but by how much real, lasting potential it creates for the country.

When adding more people and resources is no longer the answer

For years, Thailand's growth model relied on adding more inputs to the system of more labor, more resources. But that model is becoming harder to sustain, largely due to an aging population and a shrinking workforce. Dr. Santitarn pointed to research suggesting that this demographic decline alone could shave roughly one percentage point off Thailand's GDP growth every year.

If Thailand can no longer grow simply by adding more people and resources, the only path forward is productivity, a word that carries more weight than it might seem. Productivity isn't just about doing the same things more efficiently; it's about finding new methods to do existing work, and creating new things the world actually needs. And this challenge doesn't exist in isolation, it's unfolding against a backdrop of major global shifts happening at the same time.

A fracturing world and Thailand's role as a "Trusted Connector"

The global economy is fragmenting, and geopolitics is reshaping supply chains in real time. Companies worldwide are rethinking where to invest, where to manufacture, and who they can trust. For an open economy like Thailand, that shift brings real risk—but it also brings real opportunity.

Thailand occupies an unusual position: strong economic ties across many regions, proximity to major fast-growing economies, a stable manufacturing base, and a long track record of attracting international investment. Dr. Santitarn proposed that Thailand lean into this position and become a Trusted Connector in an increasingly fractured world.

That opportunity is already taking shape—reflected in the 1.5 trillion baht in investment applications filed in the first half of the year. What matters even more than the total figure is where that capital is going: high-tech AI and electronics, the green economy, and robotics. As this new economy takes hold, two questions follow: what can Thailand contribute to it, and what can it, in turn, contribute to Thailand?

The JPPCC and the search for new areas of investment

The first question comes down to making Thailand an attractive, high-value place to invest—one that's genuinely integrated into global supply chains. The government's mechanism for this is the Joint Public-Private Consultative Committee (JPPCC), which works directly with the private sector as one of the country's key economic pillars. One of its central goals is to define concretely how Thailand can build capabilities that make it indispensable to the global economy. Dr. Santitarn outlined three focus areas.

AI Economy: Thailand doesn't need to build frontier models—it needs to win at the application layer

The first area is the AI economy, where Thailand has already invested in foundational infrastructure: data centers, photonics, and power electronics, with government support behind it. But Dr. Santitarn raised a more pointed question.

Thailand isn't positioned to compete with global leaders in building frontier foundation models. The massive AI models that require enormous capital and computing power to train. But Thailand does have a real shot at leading in the application layer: taking existing models and turning them into practical solutions for real industries. The real opportunity lies in the startups that can build AI solutions in the sectors where Thailand already has deep expertise in healthcare, tourism, agriculture, logistics, and finance. The goal is to build a homegrown ecosystem where companies can grow domestically and eventually scale onto the world stage.

Longevity Economy: Turning an aging population into an advantage

The second area is the longevity economy, essentially flipping the aging-population challenge into an opportunity. An aging society creates new markets and demand for new services, and Thailand is already recognized globally for its healthcare and wellness sector.

The challenge is that much of the value in this space such as medical devices, pharmaceuticals, functional food ingredients are currently created elsewhere. Thailand's task is to capture more of that value domestically, by combining its strengths in public healthcare with capabilities in biotechnology, agriculture, and research, to develop its own products and innovations around aging, and eventually export them to the world.

Green economy: renewable energy as more than just carbon reduction

The third area is the green economy, where the government has made decarbonization and sustainable energy a national goal. This isn't just an environmental target, it's a potential engine for new industry, from clean energy technology to the broader supply chains that support it.

What ties all three areas together, as Dr. Santitarn emphasized repeatedly, a single underlying question: not how much investment Thailand can attract, but how Thailand creates its own value, where Thai companies fit into that value chain, and how the country builds capabilities that can't easily be replicated elsewhere.

Technology shouldn't become Thailand's economy on its own

Having addressed what Thailand can offer the new economy, the second equally important question is what the new economy can offer back to Thailand. The key point is that technology alone can't be the center of Thailand's economic strategy. Having basic AI infrastructure that's competitive on a global level isn't enough on its own.

If AI doesn't translate into real improvements for Thai industry and agriculture, it falls short. If the green economy doesn't meaningfully strengthen the broader economy, that's not enough either. And if Thai suppliers—especially SMEs—can't find a way into these emerging supply chains, then building new industries in isolation won't be enough to move the country forward.

Redefining Success: Not by the Money, But by Thai Capability

That bridge begins with redefining how we measure investment success. Under Dr. Ekniti's leadership, the Ministry of Finance isn't just counting how much money flows into the country—it's focused on how much of that new capital converts into domestic capability, and how much value it generates within Thailand over time.

Dr. Santitarn pointed to an example: projects approved by the BOI in the first half of this year are expected to create more than 82,000 jobs for Thai workers, and to generate over 10 billion USD annually in domestic procurement of raw materials and components which is roughly 42% of total production inputs. The Ministry of Finance's goal is to push that figure even further.

On the human capital side, the goal is to make sure investment translates into new skills and clearer pathways to better jobs. That's why programs like BOI SkillBridge which links new investment directly to workforce development, including upskilling and reskilling programs, matter so much. So far, 35 projects have been approved under the initiative, targeting the development of around 66,000 people, spanning AI, cloud computing, and cybersecurity through semiconductors, robotics, biotechnology, and medical technology. The end goal isn't simply to bring the new economy into Thailand, it's to use that new economy to transform the Thai economy as a whole.

New Horizons: The Same Challenge Awaits Thailand on the World Stage Later This Year

Later this year, Thailand will host delegates from around the world for the IMF–World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok, under the theme Thailand has chosen: "New Horizons: Empowering People, Building Resilience." Dr. Santitarn sees this theme as a near-perfect reflection of the challenge every country is facing right now—a world moving forward with unprecedented technological possibility, yet also becoming more fragmented, more volatile, and more uncertain at the same time.

The answer to that kind of world isn't to cut yourself off from it. Real resilience doesn't come from isolation, it comes from building strong domestic capability alongside connections the rest of the world can trust. And no one can build that future alone, which is exactly why gatherings like Techsauce matter: they're spaces that connect technology with policy, connect capital with ideas, and connect world-class innovation with local entrepreneurs.

Dr. Santitarn closed his address by emphasizing that Thailand's task isn't simply to ride the next technology wave—it's to turn capital into capability, turn new industries into opportunities for the broader economy, and turn Thailand's role as a trusted connector in a fracturing world into a genuine new source of growth for the country.

The mechanisms discussed are already in motion: the Joint Public-Private Consultative Committee (JPPCC), working with the private sector to build a new engine for investment, and BOI SkillBridge, which has already approved 35 projects. Meanwhile, the IMF–World Bank Annual Meetings will take place in Bangkok later this year.

Source: Session on ‘New Horizons for Thailand’s Economy: Connecting Technology to Growth’ by Dr. Santitarn Sathirathai, Vice Minister of Finance at Techsauce Global Summit 2026

At this year’s Techsauce Global Summit, the theme ‘The Race to the Next’ is not simply about chasing the latest technology or emerging trends.

‘The Next’ is about opportunity - opportunities that emerge as old rules are being rewritten and the players on the global board are being reshuffled.

In her opening speech, Oranuch Lerdsuwankij, co-founder and CEO of Techsauce, highlighted four key ideas for businesses, organizations, and individuals navigating this changing landscape.

1. The World Is Redrawing Its Map

We are entering an era where the rules of the global economy are changing dramatically. The world is becoming increasingly divided into different geopolitical blocs, while technologies such as semiconductors and clean energy are no longer just about products, costs, or competitiveness. They have become strategic tools tied to national security and geopolitical power.

As the world becomes more fragmented, supply chains are also looking for new homes. This creates a major opportunity for Southeast Asia, including Thailand, to move beyond being seen simply as a low-cost manufacturing base and position itself as a trusted strategic hub for the global economy.

2. The Organizations That Survive Will Be the Ones Willing to Redesign Their Systems

We are now entering a world where people who cannot code can still build applications and websites with the help of AI.

While 88% of organizations have started adopting AI, actual AI usage across individual departments remains relatively low, often still in the single digits.

This shows that the AI race is not simply about who adopts the technology first. The real competition is about which organizations can redesign the way they work and restructure their organizations around AI more effectively.

3. Human Value Has Not Disappeared - It Has Shifted

Many people are concerned that AI will take away their jobs. But AI still has limitations and can make mistakes, even with seemingly simple tasks.

What is changing is not the value of humans, but where that value lies.

As AI makes it easier to create almost anything, the most valuable human skills will increasingly be knowing what should be created, asking sharp questions, exercising judgment, making decisions, and taking responsibility.

AI still struggles to fully understand complex social contexts — and it cannot take responsibility on our behalf. Humans therefore remain responsible for setting the direction.

4. The N-E-X-T Framework for Finding New Opportunities

To close her speech, Oranuch shared a simple N-E-X-T framework for individuals and organizations to identify new opportunities and prepare for what comes next:

• N - New Reality: Identify what has already changed. What trends are emerging, and what can no longer be ignored?
• E - Effect: Understand how these changes are affecting customer behavior, your business, and your people.
• X - eXperiment: Identify ideas that can be tested and put into action within the next 30 days.
• T - Together: Growth cannot happen alone. Find the right partners — from investors and startups to governments and players from other industries — to build something new together.

Ultimately, ‘The Race to the Next’ is not about running the fastest.

It is about seeing clearly where the world is heading, choosing the playing field where you can gain an advantage, turning ideas into action, and finding the right partners to move forward together.