The Cheap AI War - Thailand's Golden Opportunity

October 16, 2025 · 4 min read

CEO @ iApp Technology

By Dr. Kobkrit Viriyayudhakorn

The artificial intelligence industry is facing a massive price war that will reshape the industry and significantly impact Thailand.

Prices Down Over 90%

OpenAI announced the expansion of ChatGPT Go to 16 countries in Asia. In Thailand, it's priced at 259 baht per month with access to the latest GPT-5 model and full features. Google countered with AI Plus at 189 baht per month (promotional price of 95 baht for the first 6 months) featuring Gemini 2.5 Pro with 200 GB of storage. This represents a major shift from prices in the thousands to hundreds of baht. (TechCrunch, Tom's Guide)

But the most shocking development came from China. DeepSeek created the R1 model with just 10 million baht, compared to GPT-4's 3.5 billion baht budget. It took only two months and used 8 times fewer chips than Meta, yet outperformed GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet 3.5 in many aspects. This news caused the U.S. tech stock market to drop 1 trillion dollars in a single day. (CNBC, CNN Business)

The price war is intensifying. OpenAI reduced its o3 API pricing by 80%. Anthropic, despite being 7 times more expensive, holds 32% of the enterprise market share due to superior quality, though it's expected to lose 3 billion dollars this year. (Monetizely, VentureBeat)

2.6 Trillion Baht Waiting for Thailand

Thailand has over 3.2 million SMEs, accounting for 90% of all businesses. They employ half of the country's workforce and contribute 35% to Thailand's GDP.

The reduction in AI costs from tens of thousands to hundreds of baht per month is a golden opportunity for small businesses to access world-class technology.

Access Partnership predicts that AI will generate 2.6 trillion baht in value for Thailand by 2030, representing 15% of total ASEAN opportunities. (Access Partnership) If SMEs seriously adopt AI, it could increase GDP by 2%. Thailand's AI market is projected to grow at 28.55% annually, reaching 114 billion baht by 2030. (Bangkok Biznews)

The government has allocated 25 billion baht to develop AI infrastructure and support SMEs. (Bangkok Biznews) The goal is to train 10 million Thais to use AI, train 90,000 experts, and develop 50,000 developers within 2 years.

The main obstacles are financial constraints, lack of people who understand both AI and business, and insufficient data quality.

AI Across All Industries

Banks use AI for risk assessment and fraud detection. E-commerce personalizes content for each customer. Factories implement predictive maintenance. Hospitals analyze medical images. Transportation optimizes routes. Law firms search information and draft legal contracts.

The Next 2-3 Years

AI prices will drop another 30-50%. The capabilities of cheap AI will approach premium models. Specialized AI (legal, medical, education) will emerge at affordable prices. By 2027-2028, AI will become a utility like the internet, with pay-per-use models. On-device AI will compete with cloud services, and Thai language support will improve significantly.

However, be cautious: intense competition may eliminate smaller players, data quality and security may deteriorate, and the gap between AI-proficient and non-proficient users will widen dramatically.

What Should We Do?

We should start with tasks AI excels at immediately, such as customer service chatbots. Train employees at all levels to use AI for document work, not just the IT team. Create clear strategies linked to business goals. Use a hybrid approach combining cheap AI from major companies with customized AI for specific tasks. Partner with local providers who understand the Thai context.

Importantly, in this era, not everyone needs to be an AI engineer, but everyone needs to be a smart AI user. Understand its strengths and weaknesses, know how to choose the right tools, and evaluate the quality of AI-generated outputs.

Thailand has talented people, a large market, and a government starting to prioritize this. The opportunity is here now. If we don't act now, we'll miss this golden opportunity forever.

Dr. Kobkrit Viriyayudhakorn CEO & Founder, iApp Technology