Temasek's ST Telemedia Starts AI Startup to Serve Asian Firms

Yoolim Lee (Bloomberg) -- ST Telemedia, a unit of Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte, has set up a startup to help Asian companies adopt artificial intelligence and cloud technologies, in line with the city-state’s ambitions to transform the economy through technology.

The startup, called Leap, has grown its team to 60 AI and cloud professionals since it was established 10 months ago. It has operations in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, and aims to double its staff by the end of this year.

“It is a startup but with an access to capital and assets that are untypical of a startup,” Leap Chief Executive Officer Ron Totton said. “We are ambitious to scale” through organic growth and mergers and acquisitions, he said.

Leap has acquired a majority stake in Cloud Comrade, a Singapore-based cloud computing consultancy. The company recently added Mediacorp Pte, a media and entertainment company that’s also owned by Temasek, to its clientele.

Singapore said this week it will allocate a further S$300 million ($221 million) to spur research in digital innovation, and plans to roll out artificial intelligence and cloud-based solutions to every business sector by 2020 among other initiatives.