Grab co-founder Anthony Tan says ‘humans who don’t embrace AI will be replaced by AI’

Grab’s co-founder and CEO Anthony Tan is pushing full steam ahead with incorporating artificial intelligence into his business and personal life, as he told CNBC those who don’t embrace it will eventually be left behind.

“Humans who don’t embrace AI in a company will be replaced by humans who embrace AI,” the Malaysian businessman said to CNBC’s Christine Tan at Converge Live in Singapore on Tuesday. “The same will apply to companies and I really believe that if you were to embrace it, it not only makes you superhuman, it makes your company superhuman.”

Tan, who co-founded in 2012 what is now Southeast Asia’s dominant ride-hailing app, said that the company is taking the mission of implementing AI into various facets of work-life very seriously.

This includes its educational platform for drivers, Grab Academy, which comes with a built-in AI assistant that helps drivers get more jobs with other companies and reduces waiting times for riders, the co-founder explained.

“AI shouldn’t be feared. AI should be embraced, helping all our workers, all our everyday entrepreneurs become superhuman,” Tan added.

Grab’s everything app not only offers ride-hailing but a variety of services from food and grocery deliveries, and financial services such as payments, lending, and digital banking. It brought in $2.8 billion in revenue in 2024, a 19% jump compared to the previous year.

As many as 40% of employers are planning on downsizing their workforce due to AI, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs Report. Half of the employers surveyed in the report said they plan to re-orient their business in response to AI with 86% of employers expecting the technology and information processing to transform their business by 2030.

Tan, who has his own AI coding assistant, recommends using AI for “personal experimentation.”

“I can’t code myself, but I use it to build my own projects, for research, for Grab,” he said. “It can totally change how you spend time and how productive you can be. That’s what has helped me.”

The chief executive said he was keen to expand the efficiencies he gained from using AI to the broader company.

“Now moving forward with the company, what we did was we said ‘look, me being superhuman is insufficient. I need to think about all 7,000 plus of us becoming superhuman,'” Tan said.

This included stopping all business as usual across Grab and doing a “generative AI sprint” for nine weeks. “People thought I was crazy, maybe I am, but it really moved the needle.”

During that time, the company created an AI-powered Merchant Menu Assistant for its vendors. The tool extracts information from a picture of a physical menu and then automatically uploads it to the app.

“So think about a single mother making food in a home in Jakarta. Now she has an assistant that helps her as a sous chef, as a packaging assistant, as a chief revenue officer, all in one. That helps business, but also helps drive that vision of empowering everyday entrepreneurs all at the same time,” Tan said.