AI reshapes global investment landscape, opens new opportunities for Việt Nam

AI reshapes global investment landscape, opens new opportunities for Việt Nam

Artificial intelligence is reshaping global markets, corporate strategies and investment opportunities, creating a new divide between winners and losers, experts said at SSI’s Gateway to Vietnam webinar.

Speaking at the webinar, “THE AI RESET – Winners, Losers & the New Global Investment Map”, held on June 3, Thomas Nguyen, chief global markets officer of SSI Securities Corporation, said AI is no longer just a technology-sector story; it is directly transforming financial markets, corporate competitiveness and the way people work.

He added that AI is driving a fundamental “reset”, redrawing the map of winners and losers across the global economy.

Bradley Warden, managing director and senior portfolio manager at Nomura Asset Management International, said AI represents far more than another technology cycle.

While personal computers, smartphones and cloud computing largely enhanced existing workflows, AI introduces a fundamentally different layer of capability through reasoning, analysis, inference and automated decision-making.

According to Warden, the world is currently in the foundational infrastructure phase of AI, with substantial investment flowing into data centres, GPUs, semiconductors, memory and computing capacity.

Real demand is already emerging, particularly in software development, where AI tools can reduce development timelines from weeks or months to days or even hours.

Warden also noted that AI is reshaping the global technology value chain. Companies once viewed as less attractive or highly cyclical in sectors such as semiconductors, memory, data storage and computing infrastructure could regain strategic importance as data-centre architectures evolve.

These firms often own the physical assets and proprietary technologies needed to address the infrastructure constraints and bottlenecks emerging from rapid AI adoption.

Phạm Lưu Hưng, chief economist and director of the Investment Analysis and Advisory Centre at SSI, said Việt Nam does not need to compete directly with the US or China in the race to develop foundational AI models.

Instead, the country's most promising opportunities lie in the application layer, where AI can be deployed across finance, consumer services, e-commerce, quality management, logistics, data analytics and business operations.

In the financial sector, AI can support highly personalised products, improve customer conversion rates, enable dynamic risk pricing, automate processes and enhance customer service.

Hưng also highlighted the growing need for domestic AI infrastructure. Demand for local data centres, GPU capacity, electricity and computing infrastructure is poised to surge as AI adoption widens.

For financial institutions handling sensitive information, local data storage and processing requirements could become increasingly important, creating new opportunities for infrastructure developers, industrial park operators, data-centre providers and power companies.

For technology companies such as FPT, the challenge lies in the potential automation of some traditional outsourcing services. However, significant opportunities could emerge if these firms reposition themselves as AI implementation partners, leveraging their deep understanding of local markets and their ability to translate AI capabilities into practical business solutions.

Nguyễn Đức Thông, CEO of SSI, described AI as more than an incremental technology upgrade. It is a transformative force that is reshaping how businesses operate, think, invest, serve customers and manage organisations.

“Driving an AI-first model is one of our key priorities this year.”

One example is SSI’s early adoption of AI-powered coding tools. After approximately six months of implementation, these tools have become an integral part of the technology team’s workflow, helping increase programming productivity by two to three times while significantly shortening time-to-market for new products.

Thông stressed that AI is not replacing humans but redefining their role. Rather than performing tasks directly, employees will increasingly focus on defining requirements, validating outputs, ensuring quality control, and supervising AI systems.

This shift requires new skills, particularly in instructing, guiding, and managing AI.

SSI also sees considerable potential for AI in business operations. According to Thông, many back-office processes involve manual, repetitive tasks such as data verification and document processing. AI agents can automate much of this work, allowing employees to move from execution roles to supervisory and decision-making functions.

Responding to SSI’s experience, Warden described AI as a form of “digital labour”, where processing capacity continues to expand rapidly while the cost of utilisation steadily declines. 

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