At the World of Workato 2026 conference, Workato marked the one-year anniversary of its AI Lab in Singapore. Established in 2025, the facility has spent its first year accelerating enterprise AI product development, cultivating local engineering talent, and establishing inclusive career pathways. The milestone highlights Singapore's growing role in shaping global enterprise software, particularly through the development of Workato's core AI technologies.

Accelerating Global Innovation: The Road to Workato AIRO™

Since its establishment in 2025, the Singapore AI Lab has worked in close alignment with Workato's global product organization. The primary fruit of this collaboration is Workato AIRO™, a multi-agent system that the company made generally available worldwide in July 2026.

Engineers at the Singapore facility played a critical role in accelerating the development and experimentation phases of AIRO. Specifically, the Lab's resources were instrumental in building:

  • The MCP Gateway, which allows enterprises to securely connect their own models and tools.
  • The Control Plane, which unifies the governance of an organization's AI operations in a single location.

Working alongside teams in the United States, the Singapore-based engineers helped bring these complex systems to market. Bhagat Nainani, Chief Product Officer at Workato, emphasized the unique value brought by the local team: "What Singapore AI engineers brought to our product innovation was a different kind of rigor, especially in how we tested the system's reasoning under real customer conditions. This is early proof of the Lab's premise that translational AI research done in Singapore can shape innovative products used by enterprises around the world. That is exactly the kind of contribution we need more of as the Singapore AI Lab enters its second year."

A New Paradigm for Cultivating AI Talent

Beyond product development, the Lab has focused on expanding Singapore's AI talent pool. Rather than relying solely on external recruitment, the Lab has implemented a talent development model that pairs early-career engineers and researchers with real-world, high-stakes projects.

By placing new hires directly into customer-facing initiatives with genuine deadlines, the company has fostered rapid iteration and practical problem-solving skills. Ee Shan Sim, Head of Workato's AI Lab Singapore, explained the philosophy: "We believe in growing our AI team, not just purely hiring our way into a strong one. We made a deliberate decision to invest in engineers and researchers by providing them with real stakes from day one. A year in, I am proud to see their achievements."

This approach aligns with broader national efforts to build deep technical capabilities within the region. Jinyong Low, Senior Vice President and Co-Head of Digital Industry Singapore, noted the importance of such initiatives: "To grow Singapore's AI talent pool, we need to pair strong technical capabilities with opportunities to apply them to real-world business problems. Workato's AI Lab is a good example of how companies can help build these capabilities by investing in talent and product development here. Over the past year, Singapore-based engineers have contributed to products used by enterprises globally. We look forward to working with more companies to create similar opportunities for Singaporeans to build deep AI capabilities and contribute to global products."

Fostering Inclusivity: Partnering for Diverse AI Pathways

As part of its commitment to building an inclusive workforce, Workato has launched a hiring partnership with SG Enable and the Autism Resource Centre (Singapore). Through this initiative, the company is welcoming two new colleagues with autism into roles designed specifically around their individual strengths.

These new team members will join the department responsible for the quality of data that drives Workato's corporate strategy and decision-making processes. This partnership represents a shift away from traditional hiring models, focusing instead on matching specific skills to critical business needs.

Edward Chew, Senior Director of Employment and Lifelong Learning at SG Enable, highlighted the significance of this model: "This partnership shows what is possible when companies design roles around strengths and skills required instead of expecting people to fit a predefined mould.“ He added that ”meaningful careers in fast-growing fields such as AI and automation may have felt out of reach. Workato's willingness and flexibility is what turns good intentions to lasting careers, and will be a useful model for companies to create sustainable, fruitful opportunities for persons with disabilities."

Enterprise AI Governance and the Execution Layer

The achievements of the Singapore AI Lab support Workato's broader mission as a Control and Execution Platform for Enterprise AI. The company provides a neutral platform designed to help enterprises put AI to work by unifying data, applications, and processes into a single operational layer.

This unified architecture allows AI to orchestrate business processes in production at an enterprise scale. Workato's platform is built on more than a decade of experience running mission-critical processes for over half the Fortune 500, including major corporations such as:

  • Nasdaq
  • Cisco
  • Vodafone
  • Atlassian
  • Lucid Motors

By turning over 17,000 enterprise systems into a single governed execution layer, Workato enables AI to act reliably across diverse corporate environments. The ongoing work at the Singapore AI Lab remains central to this vision as the company enters its second year of operations in the region.