The Rafflesian’s Singapore AI Dream: Agnes AI Surpasses 2 Million Users to Date

Singapore, October 30, 2025 — Agnes AI, a collaboration platform that is AI-native and was founded in Singapore in July, has experienced remarkable adoption, eclipsing 2 million registered users globally. The platform’s expanding regional footprint and appeal are evident in the fact that daily active users (DAU) have surpassed 150,000, with approximately half of them hailing from Southeast Asia.

Founded by Bruce Yang, a Raffles Institution alumnus and AI PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Agnes AI brings together research, content creation, design, and collaboration into a single, seamless workspace.The platform enables users to move effortlessly from AI-driven research to slides and content creation, while shared workspaces allow teams to edit, annotate, and refine outputs collaboratively. Early users have praised its speed, ease of use, and ability to enhance productivity.

“Agnes allows teams to focus on creativity and impact rather than switching between multiple apps,” said a beta user. “The speed and quality of complex tasks like slide generation, combined with collaborative tools, have improved our workflow several-fold.” At the heart of Agnes AI is its proprietary 7-billion-parameter model, Agnes-R1, developed entirely in Singapore by a team drawn from NUS, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and international institutions including MIT, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. Agnes-R1 has achieved state-of-the-art performance in real-world commercial applications, outperforming comparable systems on complex multi-hop reasoning benchmarks while maintaining stable and efficient training.

Agnes has developed its architecture entirely from the ground up, in contrast to numerous AI platforms that significantly depend on open-source models from overseas. This local approach enables the team to retain complete control over the development, training, and deployment of the model. The company’s dedication to developing AI that is both globally competitive and locally grounded will be reflected in the local training of the next-generation model, which will be conducted with the assistance of strategic GPU partners, Singaporean AI talent, and user-generated data.

Bruce’s voyage serves as an illustration of Singapore’s expanding AI talent ecosystem. Bruce worked at Microsoft and LinkedIn before co-founding a Silicon Valley startup that garnered millions of downloads. He graduated early from UC Berkeley with dual degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science. He swiftly assembled a team of top-tier local and international researchers to build Agnes AI upon his return to Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic to pursue a PhD in AI at NUS.

“Our mission is to build AI that originates in Singapore, serves Southeast Asia, and competes on the global stage,” said Bruce. “We want to show that high-caliber AI solutions can be developed locally, leveraging Singapore’s talent and infrastructure, and deliver tangible value to users worldwide.”

In addition to the Agnes-R1 model, the team has advanced research in multi-agent AI systems, including frameworks for token-efficient collaboration, agentic workspaces for productivity, and theory-driven AI-generated marketing content. These innovations bridge academic research and industrial applications, highlighting the platform’s dual focus on practical productivity and research-driven AI development.

Next Step: Scaling Locally and Globally

Building on its rapid user growth and research breakthroughs, Agnes AI is preparing to scale its next-generation model with NUS and NTU locally. The company is also completing a multi-million-dollar funding round to support model expansion and international growth.

Agnes AI’s early success positions it as a notable example of Singapore’s emerging AI ecosystem, demonstrating how locally built technology can combine talent, research, and infrastructure to compete globally, while potentially serving as a cornerstone for future Singapore-grown AI capabilities.