Data leaders surveyed in APAC countries, are looking to increase investments in GenAI and data management this year, despite challenges.

Informatica, a leader in enterprise AI-powered cloud data management, has announced the findings of its global CDO Insights 2025 survey on the current landscape of Generative AI (GenAI) adoption, an annual study polled from global data leaders across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific regions.

The latest study found that data leaders surveyed from Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore markets, are looking to increase investments in GenAI and data management this year, despite majority of the respondents facing near-term challenges to demonstrate business value and return on investment (ROI) from their AI projects.

Key findings:

• APAC data leaders (51%) are leading their global counterparts in implementing GenAI into their business practices, surpassing the U.S. (48%) and Europe (47%). Additionally, 86% of APAC data leaders plan to boost their GenAI investment in 2025, following closely behind U.S. data leaders at 93% and ahead of European data leaders at 82%.
• Aligning with their GenAI investment planned for 2025, 32% of APAC data leaders have expressed their intent to increase investment in data management this year. With top data-related challenges including quality of data (49%), data privacy & protection (46%) and AI ethics (42%), these organistions are looking to address their concerns in data privacy and security, as well as data governance.
• Nearly all APAC organisations using or planning to adopt GenAI (98%) find it difficult to demonstrate the business value of their GenAI efforts, citing security and privacy restraints, AI ethics and data reliability as concerns.
• As AI ethics, data reliability and privacy pose the biggest data-related challenges, APAC data leaders are prioritising training the most (85%) than their global counterparts in 2025, to prepare their workforce to responsibly use GenAI or its outputs in their day-to-day operations.

“Our latest CDO study reveals that a strong majority of 92% APAC data leaders are facing pressure from C-suite to deliver quick return of investments from their current AI initiatives, but many are moving ahead to increase their GenAI investments nonetheless,” said Richard Scott, SVP for Asia Pacific & Japan at Informatica. One particular concern is attaining the readiness of their data that is required to achieve the transformative impact of AI.”

Our annual study findings also show that investments in areas like employee skillsets and a modern data management strategy will help achieve the business value the C-suite is seeking from AI – Richard Scott.

“Generative AI presents exciting opportunities for efficiency and innovation in the insurance and financial sectors, helping to accelerate digital transformation,” said David Tan, Chief Data Officer at Income Insurance, Singapore. “At Income Insurance, our approach to data and AI integrates data governance and responsible AI frameworks, achieving a strategic balance between innovation and measured oversight. To keep pace with the rapid changes driven by new technologies like GenAI, a strong foundation fosters confidence in effective cross-functional collaboration, enabling capability development and delivering measurable impact through a risk-calibrated approach.”

Richard Scott

“A strong data foundation and strategy will be imperative to embedding trust in any company’s GenAI efforts. Our annual study findings also show that investments in areas like employee skillsets and a modern data management strategy will help achieve the business value the C-suite is seeking from AI,” Scott added.

While APAC data leaders plan to be all-cloud in a year or less and nearly a third in APAC (32%) expect to have 15 or more tools to support their data management priorities, data leaders are facing the daunting task of using many disparate tools and vendors, which could make their GenAI journey forward more complicated.

Download the CDO Insights 2025 full report here.

(This article was adapted from a press release).