Bringing together global technology leaders, policymakers, researchers, and business executives, GStar Summit 2026 highlighted Vietnam’s growing role in advancing human-centered artificial intelligence across the Asia-Pacific region.

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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