PE and VC firms lift AI adoption to 71% in IFC survey

Artificial-intelligence adoption among 1,600 private-equity and venture-capital firms reached 71% this year from 39% last year, Bangkok Post reported Oct. 16, citing an IFC survey discussed in Bangkok.

The finding matters because IFC and technology executives at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings framed AI as a productivity tool for emerging markets; productivity gains were cited by 54% of respondents as the main benefit.

Farid Fezoua, global director for private equity and venture capital at the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, said the priority was not adoption alone.

“The question is how we can help ensure that AI delivers productivity, innovation, jobs and opportunity, while helping emerging markets build the capabilities they need to shape their own digital future,” Fezoua said, according to the Bangkok Post.

The same survey showed adoption has not always changed core operations. More than half of adopters still use AI only in selected business functions, while skills and capacity were cited as main obstacles to wider deployment. More than 40% of non-adopters identified skills shortages as their primary barrier.

Fezoua said the commercial opening is in adapting systems to local needs rather than simply persuading more firms to experiment with AI. “Adoption is spreading faster than transformation,” he said.

The article cited several startup examples of localisation. Vidur Mahajan, founder and chief executive of CARPL, a radiology and imaging AI platform, said AI can help doctors work faster and offer medical services at lower prices.

Mahajan said CARPL provides a single platform for testing, deployment and governance of medical-imaging AI in hospitals and imaging centres, with a marketplace of more than 300 applications. He said one widely deployed AI use case is tuberculosis screening in developing countries, including in India through portable X-ray machines and laptop-based AI. Breast cancer can also be screened, he said.

Regulation remains a constraint. Mahajan said a major obstacle in emerging markets is uncertainty over software as a medical device, a category covering software used for medical purposes. He said CARPL wants regulators to streamline device approval for tools already shown to be safe and effective elsewhere, including in developed countries.

Adeola Adewede, founder and chief executive of Krediete, a financial-technology company, said small and medium-sized companies in emerging markets face delays and high costs in cross-border payments and remittances. He said Krediete uses AI agents, software tools that can perform tasks for users, tailored to local language, context and cost structures.

Adewede said the largest opportunity is in lower-cost AI agents able to transact payments across borders for merchants. Veerbhan Kheterpal, co-founder and chief executive of semiconductor intellectual-property licensing company Quadric, said embedding AI directly into devices such as laptops and cars could make business use more productive, including by helping create personalised software in real time.

Source: Bangkok Post article by Molpasorn Shoowong, Oct. 16, 2026