2026 Predictions Part 4: Power, value, and who wins in Asia’s digital economy

In 2026, Asia’s digital economy is defined less by access to technology than by how it is used. Artificial intelligence, automation, and cloud infrastructure are deeply embedded across enterprises, platforms, and public institutions. These capabilities are now commonplace rather than novel or scarce. They form the baseline operating environment for organisations that participate meaningfully in the region’s digital markets.

What separates outcomes is not adoption, but conversion. Many organisations deploy similar tools, work with comparable vendors, and draw from the same pools of talent and capital. Far fewer can translate these inputs into sustained economic advantage. Predictable returns, defensible margins, and long-term influence remain unevenly distributed, and that gap continues to widen.

This divergence is increasingly visible across Asia. Organisations with similar technological capabilities generate sharply different results. Some compound values steadily as they expand across markets. Others struggle as operating costs rise, coordination becomes harder, and regulatory exposure grows faster than revenue. The difference is rarely explained by ambition or innovation speed. It is explained by who retains control once systems are deployed and complexity accumulates.

Earlier parts of Tech Edition’s 2026 Predictions series examined the forces reshaping Asia’s digital economy, the operational strain created by rapid adoption, and the conditions required to participate at scale. Given those conditions, Part 4 focuses on consequences. It examines where value now settles, how power concentrates, and why influence increasingly shifts towards organisations that control coordination, distribution, and settlement across Asia’s fragmented markets.

Power consolidates above tools and models

Across Asia, AI models, automation frameworks, and development platforms are advancing in parallel. Organisations increasingly deploy similar systems, often sourced from the same vendors, trained on comparable data, and integrated through familiar architectures. As a result, differentiation at the technology layer continues to compress.

Competitive advantage, therefore, migrates upward. Economic leverage accumulates above the tools themselves, in how intelligence is assembled into working systems. Control over data flows, workflow orchestration, and decision rights determines how insight becomes action, how accountability is enforced, and how revenue is realised.

This distinction has practical consequences. Two organisations may deploy the same AI model, yet produce very different outcomes depending on who decides when decisions are triggered, how exceptions are handled, and where authority ultimately sits. Power resides with those who define these rules, not with those who merely operate the tools.

Asia’s structural fragmentation magnifies this effect. Regulatory divergence, payment heterogeneity, infrastructure constraints, and local compliance requirements increase the cost of operating consistently across markets. Each new geography introduces friction rather than seamless scale. Coordination becomes difficult to reproduce, and that difficulty gives it economic value.

Michael Komasinski, Chief Executive Officer of Criteo, describes this dynamic through the lens of agentic commerce. “New channels expand the ecosystem rather than replacing what came before,” he says. Each additional channel creates opportunity, but it also introduces another layer that must be integrated, governed, and reconciled. Organisations that control how new channels connect with existing ones retain leverage even as individual technologies become interchangeable.

Coordination becomes the primary economic asset

Fragmentation turns coordination into scarcity. Each additional market adds regulatory, operational, and commercial overhead rather than enabling smooth expansion. Enterprises must align customer journeys, compliance regimes, data flows, and infrastructure choices simultaneously, often under different legal and cultural constraints.

Value increasingly accrues to organisations that absorb this complexity on behalf of others. Platforms and intermediaries that unify data, intent, and execution reduce friction not only technically but economically. By simplifying decision-making for participants downstream, they shape how ecosystems function and how returns are distributed.

Agentic commerce makes this shift more visible. Intelligent assistants and automated discovery expand consumer choice, but they also scatter demand across interfaces. A single purchase journey may involve search engines, conversational agents, marketplaces, social platforms, and brand-owned environments. Coordination determines whether these signals reinforce one another or fragment the path to conversion.

Brands that lack coordination lose visibility into intent. Those that control it can route demand efficiently, maintain consistent experiences, and defend margins. The economic outcome depends less on who attracts attention and more on who can reconcile it.

The same logic applies inside enterprises. Just as coordination shapes outcomes across external channels, hybrid architectures and distributed workflows increase reliance on intermediaries that provide visibility and integration across internal systems. Coordination becomes embedded in long-term contracts, pricing models, and partnership structures. What appears operational increasingly determines economic outcomes.

Distribution and settlement define value capture

As agentic systems extend deeper into commerce and enterprise workflows, value increasingly concentrates at execution and settlement. Intelligence shapes intent and preference, but economic outcomes depend on where transactions are completed and value is ultimately captured.

In digital commerce, payment flows, identity verification, compliance, and risk management carry more economic weight than discovery and engagement. Brands may attract attention through new interfaces, but platforms that close transactions and manage regulatory exposure define margins, commercial terms, and bargaining power.

Shane Happach, Chief Executive Officer of Coda, frames this shift directly. “The winners will be those who master the shift from simply thinking about payment processing to enabling seamless value exchange for end users.” In Asia’s fragmented markets, this mastery requires deep local integration and regulatory fluency. The leverage comes from controlling settlement rather than interaction.

Inside organisations, the same concentration dynamic applies. Just as value in commerce settles at execution and settlement, applications generate insight, but platforms that determine how insights translate into action control monetisation. This explains sustained investment in middleware, orchestration, and observability layers that sit between intelligence and execution. As these layers consolidate, pricing power follows because they become increasingly difficult to bypass.

Boards and procurement quietly reshape markets

As AI becomes embedded in core operations, decision-making authority shifts upwards. Technology choices are no longer delegated to individual teams or innovation units. Boards and executive committees now decide which systems scale, which vendors remain, and which initiatives are shut down. These decisions are evaluated based on financial exposure, regulatory risk, and operational resilience, not on technical novelty.

This shift changes how capital is deployed. Rather than spreading investment across many experiments, organisations concentrate resources where coordination already works. Platforms with established distribution, intermediaries embedded in day-to-day workflows, and vendors that meet regulatory expectations attract larger budgets and longer commitments.

Procurement reinforces this pattern. Enterprises reduce vendor sprawl and deepen relationships with fewer partners that behave predictably under stress. Cost efficiency still matters, but it now sits alongside accountability and risk containment. Vendors are judged on how clearly responsibilities are defined and how systems perform when conditions deteriorate, not only when everything works as planned.

Over time, this produces concentration without headline consolidation. Markets remain competitive, but repeated renewal and selection are narrowing ecosystems around a smaller group of trusted intermediaries.

Governments shape winners through participation rules

While enterprises and platforms drive day-to-day market dynamics, governments influence outcomes by setting the rules of participation. Licensing regimes, procurement standards, and compliance frameworks determine which organisations can operate at scale and which remain constrained, regardless of technical capability.

Across Asia, data protection, AI governance, and digital identity frameworks are maturing unevenly, but their economic effects are consistent. Organisations that embed accountability, auditability, and control into system design gain access to larger markets and more stable operating conditions. Those that treat compliance as an afterthought face higher costs, limited eligibility, or delayed expansion.

As agentic systems take on greater autonomy, governance moves from a supporting function to an operating requirement. Trusted data foundations, clear accountability models, and cross-border compliance determine whether autonomous systems can be deployed beyond pilots and local use cases. Without them, acceleration stalls before it reaches scale.

Participation rules also shape capital flows. Investors and insurers increasingly assess regulatory exposure alongside financial performance. Organisations with clear compliance pathways attract funding on better terms, reinforcing concentration around disciplined operators that can expand without triggering regulatory friction.

A narrower path to durable advantage

Asia’s digital economy is entering a more selective phase. Technical capability is widespread, but value accrues unevenly as markets tighten. Power concentrates around coordination, distribution, and settlement, while boards and procurement increasingly determine which technologies scale and which stall. Governments reinforce this selectivity by setting participation rules that shape access to markets and capital.

This environment rewards economic discipline. Organisations that align innovation with operating models, capital allocation, and regulatory constraints endure. Those who pursue novelty without integration struggle to convert activity into sustained returns.

The region’s diversity amplifies complexity, but it also rewards those who can operate across differences without fragmentation. In this phase of digital growth, winners are defined less by what they deploy and more by what they control.

Editor’s note: This article draws on insights shared by technology and business leaders from Criteo, Coda, Salesforce, Sonar, Commvault, Exabeam, and other organisations as part of a multi-company contribution to Tech Edition. Some inputs have been synthesised into broader industry analysis.

2026 Predictions Part 1: The five forces reshaping Asia’s digital economy
2026 Predictions Part 2: From AI ambition to operational reality in Asia
2026 Predictions Part 3: Trust becomes the operating system of Asia’s digital economy
2026 Predictions Part 4: Power, value, and who wins in Asia’s digital economy