DBS CEO Tan Su Shan says the market is repricing AI financing risks
Southeast Asia's largest bank sees investors demanding better returns and tighter deal structures from AI borrowers
The AI spending boom has a new chaperone at the party: the people writing the checks.
DBS Group Holdings CEO Tan Su Shan said in a Bloomberg Television interview on October 11, 2026 that the market is repricing the risks tied to artificial intelligence capital expenditures. She framed the shift as a healthy one, even if it may sting for some borrowers.
That matters because DBS is not watching from the sidelines. The Singapore lender has arranged approximately S$25 billion (around US$20 billion) in AI-related deals this year, which gives Tan a front-row seat to how lenders and investors are sizing up the sector.
What Tan is seeing
The core of Tan’s message is that financiers are no longer treating every AI project as a sure thing. Investors are now pushing for higher returns on investment before committing capital.
They are also paying closer attention to how deals are structured. The aim, as Tan described it, is to make sure these arrangements hold up over the long run rather than just looking good at signing.
Tan said this is a positive development. More discipline on returns and structure, in her view, makes for a sturdier market.
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Tan flagged concerns that weaker players in the AI ecosystem could face possible credit rating downgrades as investors grow pickier.
Where DBS has placed its bets
DBS’s AI financing work this year has centered on hardware. The bank’s deals have focused primarily on semiconductors, memory chips and data centers.
Notably, DBS has not loaded these loans onto its own books. The bank has syndicated most of the financing, meaning it arranged the deals and then distributed much of the lending to other investors.
The result is minimal balance sheet exposure for DBS itself.
A bank that also builds with AI
Tan took the helm at DBS in March 2025. Since then, the bank has leaned heavily into AI on the operational side, not just as a lender to the sector.
DBS runs somewhere in the range of 1,500 to 2,000 AI models internally, spread across hundreds of use cases. The bank says these generate approximately S$1 billion in annual economic value.
Tan has described the goal as becoming an “AI-enabled bank with a heart”, a phrase meant to pair technology adoption with a commitment to its workforce and operational integrity.