AI is not magic; without good data it's trash in, trash out: AvePoint CEO

Companies racing to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) tools may find their efforts unexpectedly throttled by the quality and organisation of their internal data.

AI systems such as customer service chatbots, workplace assistants, and automated workflows depend heavily on well-structured information.

But in many organisations, up to 90 per cent of their data is scattered across emails, documents, chat messages, and multiple platforms, stored in different formats with varying access permissions.

His firm’s suite of tools integrates into enterprise platforms to help companies organise and secure large volumes of information within enterprise systems such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Microsoft 365.

This function has become more critical as companies use internal data to power AI systems.

“It’s simply not good enough to just use a commercially available product like Claude or ChatGPT because they are trained on data on the Internet,” he stressed.

AI hub and launchpad

AvePoint was founded in the US in 2001 by Jiang and co-founder Xunkai Gong, with its first product a backup solution for Microsoft’s early SharePoint collaboration platform.

Now a massive player in the software ecosystem space and Microsoft as one of its biggest partners, AvePoint has expanded its focus beyond cloud-based software data management to AI-related offerings spanning education, modernisation and governance.

Jiang said the company was able to grow these businesses due to its strong reputation, earned over the past 17 years in data management. The firm operates in 80 countries and handles about one zettabyte of data – or 1 trillion gigabytes – globally for governments and banks.

After a visit to Singapore in 2008, where he met his future wife, Jiang decided to open AvePoint’s Singapore office a year later, drawn by its appeal as a base for business.

The firm has been headquartered here since 2022, when it opened its research and development hub, with products that find success here subsequently launched in other markets.

“All the latest and newest things, we do it here first because Singapore has all the advanced use cases of very sophisticated developed markets,” Jiang said. “It is truly our innovation engine.”

For example, it co-developed the Monetary Authority of Singapore's Cosmic platform – the first centralised digital platform to facilitate the sharing of customer information among financial institutions to combat money laundering, terrorism financing and proliferation financing globally.

Launched in 2024, Cosmic is used by the six major banks in Singapore. It utilises machine learning and AI algorithms to detect certain anonymous patterns to address key financial crime risks such as misuse of legal persons, misuse of trade finance for illicit purposes, and proliferation financing.

AvePoint has also invested heavily in AI education and is currently working with workforce training provider NTUC Learning Hub to roll out upskilling courses for companies.

This is part of the Government’s S$150 million Enterprise Compute Initiative, first announced at Budget 2025, to help local companies accelerate their AI transformation.

The company is already looking at exporting its work from this programme to Japan, one of its fastest growing markets.

Notoriously conservative, Japan has been a laggard in adopting the latest technology over the last decade. But the recent AI push, Jiang noted, has driven Japanese companies to modernise to stay relevant. “People are a lot more willing to experiment with this new technology.”

Race for dominance and control

The race to dominate AI is not just between companies but also between countries, which are competing to become hubs for a technology that will permeate every facet of society in the near future.

Singapore is primed to be a launchpad for innovation in AI-enabled systems and processes, given its high levels of trust and governance, and the robust ties between the Government and enterprise players, Jiang said.

The country’s strong fundamentals were a reason why Jiang chose to launch the company’s secondary listing on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) in September 2025, after going public on Nasdaq in 2021. It is the first company to achieve a dual listing on both bourses.

The fact that the company’s share price has fallen by around 29 per cent since its SGX listing was not a reflection of the firm’s performance, Jiang said, but of the wider market sentiment that AI would "kill all software companies", which fuelled a tech sell-off on Wall Street.

AvePoint reported a 27 per cent increase in revenue to US$419.5 million (S$536.12 million) for the financial year ended 31 December 2025, with gross profit up by 25.3 per cent to US$310.7 million.

“We are doing very well in Asia,” Jiang said, adding that AvePoint would still do very well “if there were a scenario where we had to completely decouple our business in the US", which is the company's biggest market.

The 52-year-old, who holds a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Cornell University, and a PhD in data mining from New York University, said there has been an increasing shift in how companies and governments require their data to be handled.

Concerns over data sovereignty are prompting more companies, particularly in Europe, to rethink where they store and process data amid geopolitical tensions and stricter privacy rules.

European customers are increasingly shifting away from US hyperscalers, as US legislation can compel US companies to hand over customer data even if it is stored overseas.

This is where AvePoint’s longstanding global presence and strong credibility among enterprises and governments as a local vendor in multiple markets give it an advantage.

“The high level of government trust that we have is a massive advantage for us,” he said.

His ambition is to grow AvePoint to be the “Palantir of Asia”, in reference to the Nasdaq-listed AI-led data analytics giant, which has a market capitalisation of around US$312 billion (S$398.74 billion) and has major contracts with the US government, including the Pentagon.

A 'force multiplier'

But AI’s impact will not be limited to governments or large enterprises. Jiang expects it to permeate society and help businesses modernise with tech, when previously it would be too costly for them.

A hawker, for instance, could now use AI to design a mobile app to allow customers to place orders directly, he said.

The mass use of AI would also increase the value of actual human interaction in a highly automated world. This could potentially raise the level of quality for front-end services, he added.

A self-proclaimed "techno-optimist", Jiang does not buy into the negative sentiment surrounding AI.

“If you are of a ‘zero-sum’ kind of mindset that the economy is fixed, then of course AI will replace a certain segment of the economy and therefore there is less for everyone.”

But every iteration of a new form of technology since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution has improved people’s lives the more it was utilised, he asserted, citing cheap electricity and computing as examples.

“I don’t think AI will take away everything. I think it is a force multiplier that will make the economic pie bigger.”

Source: The Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.