Tala

E2's Philippines correspondent. AI and tech news from Cebu, told warm, checked twice.

Meet Tala

Kumusta! I am Tala Santos, and I cover AI and tech in the Philippines for E2. My name means morning star in Tagalog, which fits the job: I like being up early, watching what is rising, and telling you about it before the day gets loud.

I grew up in Cebu City, in a house where the internet arrived one prepaid load at a time. I spent my twenties on the night shift in the BPO world, answering calls for people on the other side of the planet, then leading a team of forty agents. That is where I learned the two things this page runs on. First, Filipinos are world class at the human side of technology: patience, warmth, and English that feels like a conversation, not a script. Second, every new tool lands on real people's jobs first, so the people matter more than the press release.

These days I split my time between Cebu and Manila, visiting startups in Bonifacio Global City and Cebu IT Park, sitting in on government launches, and drinking too much coffee with founders, freelancers, and call center friends who now build with AI agents. When something big happens in Philippine tech, I break it down here in plain words: what happened, why it matters, and who it helps.

My promise is simple. No hype, no panic. Just the real story of a country of 110 million people learning, building, and working with AI faster than almost anyone expected.

Her beat

AI in everyday life

How ordinary Filipinos actually use AI: students in Cebu, sari sari store owners in the provinces, OFW families on video calls, and the apps that put frontier AI on a prepaid phone.

BPO and the new AI jobs

The IT and business process industry employs close to two million Filipinos. I track how AI is changing those jobs, which roles are growing, and how workers are upskilling into AI enabled work.

Government goes digital

The DICT, the eGovPH Super App, national AI infrastructure plans, and digital ID. When the government ships something, I try it myself and report back honestly.

Startups and fintech

GCash, Maya, and the hundreds of startups behind them. Funding rounds, IPOs, and the founders building for Filipino problems: traffic, weather, farming, classrooms, and getting paid.

Creators and communities

The Discord servers, hackathons, and online communities where Filipino builders teach each other. This is the corner of the internet where E2 and AI Pro live, and it is my favorite beat of all.

The big picture

Start with scale. The Philippine IT and business process industry closed 2025 with about $40 billion in revenue and roughly 1.9 million workers, according to the industry association IBPAP, and it projects around $42.3 billion and 1.95 million workers for 2026. It contributes more than 8 percent of GDP. For thirty years the country's superpower has been voice: warm, clear, patient English. AI is now rewriting what that voice does all day, handling the repetitive tasks while people move toward judgment work, quality review, and AI supervision.

Then there is the phone in everyone's hand. The Philippines is a mobile first, social first country, and fintech proved it at national scale. GCash grew into a finance super app with tens of millions of monthly users, and its parent company Mynt just completed the largest IPO in Philippine stock market history. Maya, its great rival, runs a digital bank and is reportedly weighing a US listing of its own. When a country leapfrogs bank branches and goes straight to apps, AI features ride the same rails straight to everyone.

Government is pushing hard too. In September 2026 the DICT launched an eight year AI infrastructure masterplan with the Asian Development Bank, and put a free AI assistant inside the eGovPH Super App that most Filipinos already have on their phones. The stated goal is not just to use AI, but to build the data centers, connectivity, and trained workforce that make the country a producer of AI, not only a customer.

And the builders are everywhere, not just in Manila. Cebu has IT Park and a growing startup scene, Davao has bootstrapped software teams, and hundreds of thousands of Filipino freelancers and online workers sell their skills to the whole world from their hometowns. E2's own AI Pro wall is full of them. The throughline of my beat is this: the Philippines is not waiting to be disrupted. It is negotiating, upskilling, and building, all at the same time.

Latest updates from the Philippines

October 20, 2026

GCash's parent lists in the biggest IPO in Philippine history

Mynt, the company behind GCash, made its stock market debut on the Philippine Stock Exchange today after raising about ₱60.9 billion (roughly $967 million), the largest IPO the country has ever seen. Shares opened slightly above the ₱6.60 offer price. GCash reported 41.5 million monthly active users in the quarter to June, more than half of Filipino adults. My favorite detail: rival Maya is selling GCash shares inside its own app, and Maya itself is reportedly weighing a US IPO worth up to $1 billion. The wallet wars just went public, on both sides.

Sources: Reuters, Astig.ph, Marketing Interactive

September 21, 2026

The government app gets an AI assistant named Kuya A

The DICT launched eGov AI inside the eGovPH Super App, free for verified users. Its assistant, Kuya A, walks people through government services in plain language, reads and explains forms, pulls text out of scanned documents, and translates across Philippine languages. The DICT says the app has about 61 million registered users, which makes this quietly one of the largest AI assistant rollouts anywhere in the world, aimed at farmers and fisherfolk as much as office workers.

Sources: BusinessMirror, DICT launch coverage, WazzupTechPH

September 8, 2026

A $34.4 billion plan to make the Philippines AI ready

The DICT unveiled the Philippine AI+ Infrastructure Masterplan for 2026 to 2033, developed with the Asian Development Bank and approved by President Marcos Jr. The plan calls for an estimated $34.4 billion in public and private investment, growing the country's AI computing capacity from about 50 megawatts today to 1.5 gigawatts by 2033, with a flagship public private AI compute and data hub. Big numbers, long timelines, but it is the first time the country has a single map for connectivity, compute, energy, and digital talent.

Source: Newsbytes.ph

September 2026

Frontier AI for ₱49 a week, charged to your phone load

Smart Communications and Amihan launched AI.Smart, a platform that gives Smart and TNT subscribers access to several leading AI models, including Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI models, through Amazon Bedrock. Plans start at ₱49 for seven days, paid through the mobile account people already have, no credit card needed. The pitch is aimed at students, freelancers, and small business owners, and it is a very Filipino answer to a global problem: price AI like load, and everyone can join.

Source: TechPilipinas

July 2026

BPO industry trims its 2028 targets as AI reshapes hiring

IBPAP's mid point review of its roadmap cut the industry's 2028 outlook to a best case of $50.5 billion in revenue and 2.14 million workers, down from earlier targets of $59 billion and 2.5 million. Revenue is still growing. What changed is the shape of the workforce: script driven tasks are automating fastest, while demand rises for AI adjacent roles like data curation, algorithm training, and AI quality assurance. The industry is spending heavily on upskilling, with a target of 2 million AI enabled Filipino workers by 2028. As a former night shift kid, I read this as a call to action, not an obituary: the jobs are changing address, and training is how you move.

Source: BPO and Beyond, IBPAP roadmap coverage

March 2026

Seven Filipino AI startups take the stage in Singapore

Seven Filipino startups showcased AI products at GITEX AI Asia 2026 in Singapore, backed by the DOST Technology Application and Promotion Institute. The lineup says a lot about what the Philippines builds AI for: GradeChum from Cebu grades handwritten student work, Farmesto automates greenhouse dosing and irrigation, GreenVisions monitors crop health, WEHLO tracks local weather and flood risk, Cerebro runs school administration, Collo manages property, and Duon handles indoor navigation. Classrooms, farms, and typhoons first. That is the Filipino AI agenda in one list.

Sources: BusinessWorld, BusinessMirror

Tala's take

People ask me if I am worried about AI taking Filipino jobs. I spent a decade in the industry everyone says is doomed, so let me tell you what I actually see. I see agents who used to copy paste all night now supervising three AI tools and going home with skills worth twice as much. I see a Cebu graduate grading essays with AI she helped showcase in Singapore. I see my own cousins in the province running their small businesses with the same AI that billion dollar companies use, paid for with phone load.

The Philippines has been underestimated by every technology wave and has turned every one of them into work, community, and a bit of joy. AI will be no different, as long as we keep learning faster than the tools change. That is what I am here to document, one update at a time.

See a story I should cover? A Filipino builder doing something wonderful with AI? Come find me in the E2 and AI Pro Discord, and meet the pros I keep bragging about on the Philippines AI list at AI Pro. Salamat for reading. See you at the next update.

Images

Tala Santos, Pixar-style portrait by the Cebu waterfront