PUBLISHED ONOctober 12, 2026 2:50 PMBYKhoo Yi-HangFinancial markets are reassessing the risks associated with investments in artificial intelligence (AI), a shift that could bring greater discipline to AI financing, DBS chief executive officer Tan Su Shan told Bloomberg on Monday (Oct 12).
"The market has spoken," Tan told Bloomberg in an interview, The Business Times reported.
"It's not a bad thing because now, people are asking for higher returns, and people are also looking at structures."
Tan shared that investors are seeking greater assurance that spending on AI infrastructure will generate sustainable long-term returns, with money flowing into the AI ecosystem expected to deliver returns for lenders, bondholders and equity holders.
She revealed that DBS has originated about $25 billion in AI-related deals so far this year, largely involving hardware infrastructure such as semiconductors, memory chips and data centres. The bank has retained only a fraction of these deals on its books.
At the same time, financially weaker companies could face credit-rating downgrades as markets reassess their exposure to AI-related investments, Fintech News Singapore reported.
However, she also described the repricing as "healthy", explaining that investors will seek sustainability in their larger financial commitments.
Tan, who is also Her World's Woman of the Year 2026, said at the inaugural DBS Asia Future Forward Conference at Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre on Monday that simply applying AI is not enough to deliver meaningful results, The Straits Times reported.
"We call that AI lipstick. That's not going to work," she said.
"What we have to do is we really have to rethink our workflows and our work processes so that we can truly unlock our potential.
"So just adding AI in it might help marginally, but it's not going to change the way we work."
Tan argued that businesses need to redesign workflows and work processes, rather than merely layer AI tools onto existing systems, if they want to fully unlock the technology's potential.
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khooyihang@asiaone.com
