GStar Summit 2026: AI & Humanity, held on May 29, 2026, at the Sheraton Saigon Grand Opera Hotel, marked a strategic shift in the Asia-Pacific AI conversation, from a focus on technical capability alone to broader questions of human purpose. Co-organized by the New Turing Institute (NTI) and Pacific Gateway Partners (PGP), alongside strategic partners Google and FPT, the full-day summit also received strong support from Vietnam Airlines, Grab, LIFE AI, Calif, Galaxy Holdings, and VNG.
The summit attracted more than 1,000 participants from over 160 companies and institutions to Ho Chi Minh City, bringing together a senior, technology-focused audience, with 28 per cent holding leadership positions and 77 per cent representing technology and digital-first organizations. Powered by 20 world-class speakers and supported by 15 sponsors and partners, the event also welcomed more than 30 media outlets.
The gathering featured representatives from global technology leaders including Google, Naver, Meta, SK Group, Hyundai, and NVIDIA; Vietnam’s leading technology, fintech, and corporate players such as FPT, VNG, MoMo, Grab, Vietnam Airlines, and FINOS; as well as senior public- and private-sector representatives from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ho Chi Minh City administration, the US State Department, the Milken Institute, and VinaCapital.
Morning Sessions: AI Foundations – Models, Agents, and Real-World Impact
Opening the event, Dr. Thang Luong, Principal Scientist and Director of Research at Google DeepMind and Co-founder of NTI, alongside Ms. Wendy Nguyen, Co-founder and Partner at PGP and Board Member of NTI, delivered welcoming remarks focused on the era of human-centered AI and Asia’s potential to emerge as a global AI leader.
Following the opening address, Mr. Bui Hoang Phuong, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Science and Technology, highlighted the country’s strategy centered on innovation, digital transformation, and AI-driven development. Mr. Le Quoc Minh, Editor-in-Chief of Nhan Dan Newspaper and Chairman of the Vietnam Journalists Association, then delivered a keynote examining the intersection of public engagement, media, and advanced technology.
Dr. Ed H. Chi, Vice President of Research at Google DeepMind, followed with a keynote presentation, “The Future of Personalized Universal Agents,” exploring how multimodal foundation models are transforming AI from narrow-purpose tools into comprehensive personal systems capable of understanding context, reasoning, and assisting users across multiple modalities. Professor Preslav Nakov, Department Chair and Professor of Natural Language Processing at MBZUAI, presented a spotlight talk on developing open, language-specific, safe, factual, and specialized large language models.
Turning to enterprise implementation, Dr. Phong Nguyen, Chief Technology Officer of FPT Corporation, outlined an operational framework to help organizations transition from fragmented AI experimentation to sustainable, long-term AI capabilities.
The morning technical program concluded with two lightning talks. Dr. Myungsub Choi, Head of Research at Tynapse, shared an engineer’s journey from camera autofocus limitations to the emerging safety risks of agentic AI. Dr. Noriyuki Kojima, Chief Executive Officer of Kotoba Technologies, then showcased advances in speech-generative AI and simultaneous translation models designed for East Asian languages.
The morning session closed with a panel discussion titled ‘The Rise and Future of Agentic AI.’ Moderated by Dr. Thang Luong, the panel featured Dr. Ed H. Chi, Prof. Preslav Nakov, Dr. Hung Bui, Vice President of Technology at Qualcomm AI Research, and Dr. Yi Tay, Research Scientist at Google DeepMind, who debated the future boundaries of machine reasoning and AI safety.
Afternoon Sessions: Bridging AI and Humanity – From Breakthroughs to Human Progress
The afternoon program opened with a presentation by Ms. Jean Desombre, Founder and Partner at PGP, who revisited the role of human values and leadership in an increasingly automated world. Her remarks were complemented by a keynote from Professor Po-Shen Loh, Professor of Mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University.
In his presentation, ‘Thought Full: Cultivating Humanity in the Age of AI,’ Professor Loh outlined an alternative roadmap for education in the AI era, advocating greater emphasis on critical thinking, problem-solving, and emotional intelligence to sustain human progress across generations.
A series of spotlight talks highlighted AI’s growing impact across industries. Mr. Jay Kim, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Boryung, presented a vision for combining space infrastructure, biotechnology, and AI to develop next-generation medicines in low-Earth orbit. Mr. Marc Woo, Managing Director of Google Vietnam and Asia Pacific, outlined Google’s efforts to unlock billions of dollars in local economic value through practical AI applications, workforce upskilling initiatives, and the newly established Applied AI Lab.
Returning to the stage, Dr. Thang Luong detailed the evolution of Google DeepMind’s achievements in mathematics toward advanced AI agents capable of accelerating scientific discovery. His presentation was complemented by remarks from Professor Laurent El Ghaoui, Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science and Vice Provost at VinUniversity, who emphasized the importance of applying global standards in convex optimization to Vietnam’s academic and commercial research ecosystem.
Addressing cybersecurity and financial resilience, Mr. Tuong Nguyen, Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of MoMo, examined the growing importance of digital trust, noting that AI is simultaneously becoming one of the most effective tools for fraud detection and one of the key enablers of increasingly sophisticated financial scams.
Closing the afternoon presentations, Mr. Tuoc Huynh, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Holdings, shared private-sector perspectives on Vietnam’s emerging international financial center and its potential to expand access to capital and create new commercial opportunities.
The summit concluded with a panel discussion titled ‘Bridging AI & Humanity: Turning Technical Breakthroughs into Trust and Human Progress.’ Moderated by Ms. Jean Desombre, the session brought together Dr. Thang Luong, Ms. Wendy Nguyen, Mr. Jay Kim, Dr. Tuan Cao, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of LIFE AI, and Mr. Curtis S. Chin, Chair of Senior Fellows for Global Markets at the Milken Institute.
Panelists agreed that long-term technological success will belong to organizations capable of balancing machine intelligence with human empathy, judgment, and wisdom.
“The success of GStar Summit 2026 marks a massive turning point for the Asia-Pacific AI landscape, clearly demonstrating that human sovereignty must drive technological progress. Through the strategic connections and direction established by world-class experts, Vietnam and the region now possess the concrete potential to accelerate their AI capabilities to stand fully equal with international standards,” Dr. Thang Luong emphasized.
GStar Summit 2026 builds on NTI’s track record of hosting leading technology forums since 2018, including AI Day 2023, which attracted more than 1,300 participants and featured OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and Stanford University Professor Christopher Manning, and GenAI Summit 2024, which welcomed more than 800 attendees and featured Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean.
By bringing together 20 distinguished speakers and a diverse audience of local innovators and global researchers, the summit reinforced Vietnam’s growing role in shaping the next chapter of human-centered artificial intelligence.
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Chairman of the Editorial Board:
Dr. Chu Van Lam
Editor-in-Chief:
Chu Thi Hanh
General Managing Editor:
Mr. Dao Quang Binh
LICENCE No. 272/GP-BTTTT DATED JUNE 26, 2020 BY THE MINISTRY OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
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