Learn What? | Grid Synergy

'Learn What?'

How The Most Common Question Asked By Singaporeans Shaped Grid Synergy's Own AI Transformation

Written by Philip Wu, CEO, Grid Synergy Pte Ltd
5 Aug 2026

5 August 2026 - It is official today. Grid Synergy ceases to exist as a purely creative media company. Over the past seven years, we have leveraged our media and technology competencies and transformed into an “Applied AI Studio”. We exist to Engage People and Deliver Outcomes with AI and have changed our ACRA description of business as well as re-skilled our entire team.

Looking back over the past fourteen years, our company transformation did not come with just breakthrough technology. We transformed because someone asked a question that changed the way we viewed the world.

For Grid Synergy, that question came from Lifelong Learning Singapore (LLSG). It was simple, almost ordinary, yet it shaped the direction of our company. Let me come back to that later.

Origin - When Jesseline and I founded Grid Synergy in 2012, we didn't set out to build an AI company. Our mission was to Simply Engage to help people learn.

We worked with organisations such as NTU, NUS, MINDEF, MOE, HPB, Brother International, UOB, DBS, OCBC and many private sector clients, creating digital learning experiences that helped people understand, engage and apply knowledge.

We believed that learning was never about delivering more information. It was about helping people make better decisions.

Around 2018, I became convinced that artificial intelligence would fundamentally reshape the future of learning and work. This was years before ChatGPT and long before Generative AI entered everyday conversations.

The technology was still immature, but I believed that if AI was going to change the world, we needed to start learning before everyone else. Rather than waiting for the market to mature, we chose to invest our own resources into research, experimentation and building our own capabilities.

Those early years became our laboratory. We took a licence from China’s top computer vision AI company, Sensetime, and deployed that with UOB bank and others. Internally, we tried many things, and many experiments failed, but every project taught us something valuable.

Looking back, we weren't simply building technology.

We were building experience.

One of our earliest prototypes became GS2, our proprietary computer vision platform. We believed AI should not only understand language, but also how people naturally interact with the physical world. Over time, GS2 found its way into projects with SMRT, where we analysed commuter engagement with digital kiosks, City Gate Mall, where AI transformed visitor experiences, and the National Arts Council's Smile to Vote campaign, where computer vision created a fun and intuitive way for the public to participate.

Heineken used GS2 as part of its Orchard Road Anniversary Activation, creating an AI-powered street experience enjoyed by thousands of visitors.

Proof of Concept - I was invited to a Family Office Alliance event in Sweden in 2021 and there, I met Jaan Tallin, founder of Skype and early investor of DeepMind AI before Google took it over. He pointed me in the right direction - to begin to use the emerging generative AI and language models for good.

Thus, as OpenAI hit the general public’s awareness in Nov 2022, my colleagues, or more aptly, comrades, Marlon Bartonico and Parvin Banu, were ready. We launched our Customer Service Avatar in early 2023.

Between 2023 to 2024, we offered to carry out low cost Proof-of-Concept projects and also responded to Gebiz tenders. These came from the Health Promotion Board, for whom we developed GWen and Brody, AI companions that support parents in helping their children build healthier lifestyles. For MINDEF, we created SafeGen, making safety knowledge easier to access and apply in operational environments. We also won a tender with the Ministry of Education where we built and trained Inba, an AI companion that helps Primary 3 students learn Tamil through conversation.

Although each project served a different audience, they all reinforced the same belief: technology should quietly support people rather than become the centre of attention.

Looking back today, I realise all these projects were preparing us for something much bigger. GS2 gave AI the ability to understand the physical world. Our conversational AI platforms taught us how to engage people naturally. What we were still searching for was a problem important enough to bring these technologies together.

Private-Public Partnership - Lifelong Learning Singapore was also a company we got to know during this period. One of the things I admire most about LLSG is its drive to innovate within the discipline of good public governance.

Everything we did together followed proper procurement processes, rigorous evaluation and transparent decision-making. Innovation was never about bypassing governance. It was about using governance to build solutions that genuinely served Singaporeans.

In the same vein as the others, we embarked on Proof of Concept with LLSG. There was no big commercial project at that stage - just learning. The objective was simply to explore how artificial intelligence might improve career guidance and lifelong learning if we first understood the real problems people faced.

I sought out and spoke to LLSG’s Career & Skills Advisors and observed their excellent frontline work. Instead of discussing technology in meeting rooms, I watched Singaporeans walk into the centre seeking help. I listened to their conversations, their anxieties and their hopes for the future.

Some visitors wanted to change careers but had families to support. Others wanted to upgrade their skills but simply had no time. Some were unsure where to begin. Others found the sheer number of available courses overwhelming. Regardless of their different backgrounds, many of them were searching for the same thing—clarity.

2023 First AI in Public during
SkillsFuture Festival

The various POCs culminated in a project ro showcase ELLA,

a Virtual Learning Advocate at the SkillsFuture Festival in 2023.

"Philip, do you know what is the most common question our Career & Skills Advisors hear every day?"
I honestly didn't know. He smiled and replied, "Learn what?"

Those two words stayed with me long after the encounter ended.

Values, Interest, Personality and Skills Gap

It was at the SkillsFuture Festival when Mr. Andrew Ho, Director, Lifelong Learning SG turned to me and asked,

It became clear to me that the adult Singaporean learner did not have a shortage of course options. We live in one of the strongest lifelong learning ecosystems in the world. The real challenge was helping each individual understand what was right for them. Before recommending courses, we first needed to understand the person - their Values, Interests, Personality, and Skills, or what we would later call their VIPS profile.

We put together a competitive proposal - with Computer Vision AI as the eyes of the platform. Our conversational AI evolved into Synergy-Bot, an agentic platform where specialised AI agents collaborate, remember context, and support visitors throughout their journey.

Rather than proposing another chatbot, we proposed an AI-powered companion that would help every visitor answer one very human question—"What should I learn next?”

That insight became the foundation of our thinking. Instead of asking whether AI could answer more questions, we began asking whether AI could help understand people more deeply. Could AI quietly observe a visitor's journey, remember their conversations, understand their interests and help Career & Skills Advisors begin every consultation with richer insights? We believed it could.

When LLSG released the tender in 2024 to build Singapore's new Skills and Career Advisory Centre (SCAC), we immediately recognised the opportunity. Years of research suddenly had a purpose.

Skills & Career Advisory Centre - We proceeded to propose, compete for and win the project to provide the AI system for the centre. We have been working on it since and it will be launched in Sep 2026.

Looking back today, I realise our AI transformation did not begin with Sensetime or ChatGPT or a breakthrough in technology. It began by standing quietly on the frontline, listening to Singaporeans and understanding the uncertainty behind a simple question - Learn What.

For me, that remains the greatest lesson of this journey. Artificial intelligence is not about building smarter machines. It is about understanding people better, and transforming ourselves to serve them better - to help them make better decisions.