July 21, 2025
JAKARTA – Indonesia is among the top countries globally in the number of artificial intelligence users but lags far behind in AI development, revealing a yawning digital talent gap.
Deputy Communications and Digital Minister Nezar Patria acknowledged that Indonesia is struggling to realize its full AI potential.
“One of the most critical [challenges] is the AI talent gap, especially in fulfilling the talent demand and ensuring skills are competitive enough,” he said at the launch of the AI Center of Excellence on Friday.
Indonesia would need a talent pool of around 12 million people by 2030 to support the growth of its digital economy, including AI but the existing digital ecosystem could only supply some 3 million, Nezar noted on a separate occasion a day earlier, as reported by news agency Antara.
To bridge the talent gap, he explained, the ministry had initiated several capacity-building programs for digital talent, involving collaboration with global tech firms, universities and national strategic partners.
Aaron “Ronnie” Chatterji, chief economist at OpenAI, previously revealed that Indonesia consistently ranked among the top-three countries with the largest number of AI users weekly.
However, he noted that Southeast Asia’s largest economy was lagging in terms of AI developers, citing the low level of application programming interfaces (APIs) for AI adoption.
“In terms of developers using our APIs, [Indonesia is among] the top 30 of all markets. So, there’s definitely room to grow from the developer standpoint,” Ronnie said on June 25 in a discussion held by venture capital firm East Ventures.
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Developers are up against several challenges in expanding Indonesia’s AI industry, from a lack of early-stage investment to inadequate digital infrastructure.
Irzan Raditya, CEO of local conversational AI company Kata.ai, told The Jakarta Post on Friday that venture capitalists in the country had shown less appetite to invest in emerging technologies like AI.
He pointed out that all of the digital sector in Indonesia had generated a total of US$323 million in funding, which is a far cry from the United States figure, which has secured $97 billion from its AI start-ups alone.
“This reflects the lack of financial incentives for local talent to help them focus on building AI start-ups from scratch. In addition, learning resources and local mentors remain limited,” he said.
On top of challenges in securing initial funding, AI start-up developers also struggle with access to technical infrastructure, such as graphics processing units (GPU), cloud computing and relevant data sets.
Irzan underscored the need to provide funding support for developers, as well as building a sustainable AI community and promoting use-case of AI in solving real problems across sectors in Indonesia to foster trust among both developers and investors.
Indonesia’s digital economy has suffered from a high AI start-up failure rate of more than 75 percent, while it is also lagging in technology, data and infrastructure for AI readiness, according to the Communications and Digital Ministry.
Iga Narendra, creator of AI aware online media and research agency PukulEnam, also highlighted the issue of insufficient AI learning facilities, pointing to the minimal access to affordable and adequate AI learning facilities, even at education institution level.
“On average, it will take two to three years for a lab to fulfil a request for a [supporting AI] facility,” he said to the Post on Friday.
The supporting facilities for efficient AI development include a high-performance computer with strong specifications, which could cost up to Rp 30 million (US$1,849) per unit.
He also argued that many early-stage developers grappled with the “skill and learning resiliency issue”, particularly in deepening their mathematics skills as a crucial AI “communication tool”, leading to utilization at only surface level.
However, Iga believed that Indonesia possessed vast potential for AI development, where the archipelago’s demographic diversity served as a “gold mine” for data collection in ways that could benefit the community.