Vietnam talks to AI in Vietnamese

From the editor

Vietnam already sits at both ends of the AI boom. Its factories make the servers and electronics that AI runs on, and AI-related goods drove more than 70% of its recent export growth, the World Bank found. And millions of its people now use AI tools every day, mostly in Vietnamese.

What is still thin is the middle: companies that build AI products here, for Vietnamese users and businesses, and get paid for them. I think this is where overseas Vietnamese fit best. Many of us use these tools at work abroad, know how such products are built and sold, and read Vietnamese well enough to see where a model gets it wrong.

Vietnam already has the users. The next few years will show whether it also builds what they use, and how much of that overseas Vietnamese help build.

Quang Do, Editor · Founder, Overseas Vietnamese

The big story: How Vietnam uses AI, and where the money goes

Every year Google, Temasek (Singapore's state investor) and Bain & Company measure Southeast Asia's internet economy in a report called e-Conomy SEA. Its Vietnam edition, released on 5 Nov, puts the value of everything bought online here (gross merchandise value, or GMV) at $49bn in 2026, up 20% from $41bn last year, and on track for $90bn by 2030. E-commerce makes up two-thirds of it, at $32bn, followed by online media ($7bn), ride-hailing and food delivery ($6bn) and online travel ($5bn). Its 20% growth ties Malaysia for the fastest in Southeast Asia.

45m people use generative AI · 2 in 5 of them use it daily · 44% of consumer journeys start with AI · 80% of AI chats are in Vietnamese

Then there is how people use AI. The 45 million users equal about 65% of the working population. On average each uses at least five different AI tools, 44% of consumer journeys (from looking up a product to planning a trip) now begin with one, and four in five users would let an AI agent make purchases for them. Use is wide but not yet deep: per person, Vietnam ranks fourth of six in Southeast Asia in how much AI it uses, below the regional average. An AI chat is becoming the first place people look before they buy, the role Google search and Facebook played for the past decade.

Most of these conversations happen in Vietnamese, and Vietnamese text takes more tokens, the units AI models charge by, so it costs more to run on most global models. Local companies have an edge here, since a model trained on Vietnamese prices, brands and rules can answer questions a global model gets wrong. Vietnamese companies are building such models: Viettel trained a 120-billion-parameter Vietnamese model this year, and FPT, Zalo, MoMo and others formed the Au Lac AI Alliance in 2025.

Money follows the habit, but not yet into AI products. Digital payments are set to reach about $197bn this year, up 21%, and digital loans to grow 34% to $14bn, the fastest-growing part of the digital economy. Both are areas where Vietnamese banks and wallets such as MoMo are already strong. The state is investing too. Vietnam's AI Law took effect on 1 Mar 2026, and the 2027 budget plans VND 120,000bn (about $4.6bn) for science, technology and digital transformation, ten times the yearly level before the Politburo's 2024 Resolution 57 on science and innovation.

Timeline (filled = happened, hollow = planned)

• ● Jun 2025: FPT, Zalo, MoMo and others launch the Au Lac AI Alliance to build Vietnamese language models
• ● 10 Dec 2025: The National Assembly passes the Law on AI
• ● 1 Mar 2026: The AI Law takes effect
• ● May 2026: Viettel trains a 120-billion-parameter Vietnamese model
• ● 5 Nov 2026: e-Conomy SEA Vietnam: a $49bn digital economy and 45 million AI users
• ○ 2026 to 2027: The Ministry of Science and Technology sets up a national AI development fund
• ○ 2030: Digital economy projected at $90bn

Why it matters: For anyone selling to Vietnamese customers, that means showing up in AI answers in Vietnamese, not only in search and social media. For job seekers and founders, the opening is inside companies: the World Bank says only a small share of Vietnamese small and medium firms use AI and advanced digital tools well.

What to watch: Whether investment catches up with use. Investors made 11 private funding deals in Vietnam's digital economy in the first half of 2026, down from 13 a year earlier, and the national AI fund is still to be set up.

Chart of the week: Where Vietnam's $49bn goes online

Gross merchandise value by sector, 2026 forecast, $bn, with growth on 2025

Source: e-Conomy SEA 2026 (Google, Temasek, Bain & Company), via Vietnam Briefing and VIR.

E-commerce is $32bn of the $49bn, grows fastest at 22% and is projected to reach $61bn by 2030. For scale, the 2019 edition of the same report put Vietnam's whole digital economy at $12bn and forecast $43bn by 2025. It reached $41bn, close to target despite the pandemic years, so the $90bn forecast for 2030 is worth taking seriously. Payments are counted separately, since they measure money moved rather than goods sold.

Also this week

Tô Lâm in Tokyo, with AI on the agenda

Tô Lâm, Vietnam's General Secretary and President, visited Japan from 8 to 11 Nov. The Joint Vision Statement the two sides adopted points Japan's new development loans at AI, semiconductors, energy and digital transformation, and Japan backs Vietnam's plan to train 100 AI PhD holders. Eleven documents were signed, with no amounts published. Why it matters: Japan is Vietnam's third-largest foreign investor, and nearly 700,000 Vietnamese live there, its second-largest foreign group, so the talks on a social insurance agreement and easier visas for Vietnamese engineers, neither decided yet, touch many families.

A 10% growth target, with land paying a bigger share

The National Assembly set a 2027 target of GDP growth of 10% or more on 7 Nov and asked for a quick policy to raise foreign ownership limits in sectors that do not affect national security, with no new limits named yet. Two days later it approved the 2027 budget, in which land and housing bring about VND 775,280bn, over a quarter of domestic revenue and about 40% more than in 2026. Why it matters: next year's plan leans on the state selling land use rights, which ties public revenue to the property market.

19.5 million foreign visitors in ten months

Vietnam welcomed 19.5 million international visitors from January to October, up 13.8% on last year. China sent nearly 4.4 million, South Korea 3.4 million and Russia 1.25 million, and arrivals from Europe keep rising. Why it matters: Reaching the goal of 25 million for the year takes about 5.5 million visitors in November and December, or 2.75 million a month, well above this year's average of 1.95 million.

What changes for you

New rules for anyone who lives, works or invests in Vietnam, or plans to move here.

Unemployment benefit caps rise from 1 Jan 2027

The monthly unemployment benefit is 60% of your average insured wage over the last six months, capped at five times the regional minimum wage. Minimum wages rise by an average of 7.8% on the same day, so the cap becomes VND 28.5 million in Region I (urban Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City), VND 25.4 million in Region II, VND 22.25 million in Region III and VND 20.2 million in Region IV.

What to do: Check which region your workplace is in, and ask HR whether unemployment insurance is paid for you.

Coming up

• 18 to 20 Nov: The Trung Lương to Mỹ Thuận expressway section is expected to open.
• 20 Nov: Vietnam's National Games open in Ho Chi Minh City and run until 12 Dec.
• 21 Nov: The Assembly votes on the Social Insurance Law and is expected to vote on three new expressways.
• Late Nov: Partner institutes meet in Hanoi to sign an Asian mathematics network led by Ngô Bảo Châu's institute.
• 12 Nov to 12 Dec: 25 OV events in 15 cities and online. See OV events.

More to read

Vietnam's Birth Rate: Big Cities, an Ageing Country and a Ten-Year Window. Why big cities have fewer children, and why the next ten years matter for Vietnam.