What the 2025-26 Budget set aside for AI in Hong Kong — the HK$1 billion AI R&D Institute and related measures — and what it does and does not do for SMEs.
dgm is an independent osFoundry integration partner — not affiliated with osFoundry’s maker (OS LLC), and dgm has no completed client integrations yet.
Hong Kong’s 2025-26 Budget made several AI commitments. The headline HK$1 billion is for an R&D institute — useful to understand, but not a cheque for SME AI adoption.
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Headline measure | HK$1 billion to establish an AI R&D Institute |
| Purpose | Upstream R&D and downstream AI transformation |
| Related | Cyberport AI Supercomputing Centre + AI Subsidy Scheme |
| For SMEs | Adoption routes are Cyberport, HKSTP, BUD, NIFS |
What the Budget committed
The 2025-26 Budget set aside HK$1 billion for an AI R&D Institute to drive upstream research and downstream transformation, alongside continued support for the Cyberport AI Supercomputing Centre and the AI Subsidy Scheme for compute.
What it means for a business
The HK$1 billion is for research infrastructure, not direct SME grants. For a business wanting to adopt AI, the practical routes remain Cyberport programmes, HKSTP incubation, the BUD Fund and NIFS, plus the AI Subsidy Scheme if you need supercomputer compute. Note that the Technology Voucher Programme (TVP), Hong Kong’s best-known SME tech-adoption funding, stopped accepting new applications after 31 December 2024 — so it is not an active route for a new AI project, despite many older blogs still listing it.
How to think about it
Read the Budget AI measures as a signal of Hong Kong’s direction, and choose your actual funding route from the adoption-oriented programmes. Support levels, caps, eligibility and round status change — confirm the current details on the official programme page before relying on them. Important: these are programmes a business applies for directly with the relevant Hong Kong authority. dgm is an independent AI-integration agency — it is not a registered or approved vendor of any of these schemes (none of them operates a vendor registry), so nothing here implies dgm can secure or deliver a grant-funded engagement. dgm can help scope and build the AI project; eligibility, approval and any claim rest with you and the agency.
Where dgm fits
dgm is an independent integration partner that helps Hong Kong businesses adopt osFoundry — scoping a first use case, handling the build, and connecting AI to the systems you already run. dgm is independent of osFoundry’s maker (OS LLC) and has no completed client integrations yet, so everything described here is a service offered, not a past result. If you want to scope a practical first project, dgm can help you map it out.