NCS expands Sunshine.AI with sector deals & hiring

NCS has expanded its Sunshine.AI suite and announced a series of sector partnerships and workforce training plans, extending its push to sell AI tools and services to organisations across Asia Pacific.

The expanded product set includes new software for building and running AI agents, a no-code application development tool, an AI assistant for workplace software, a robotics control platform, and a safety system for monitoring AI agents in production.

NCS also outlined partnerships across healthcare, education, transport, and cloud infrastructure, along with plans to hire more than 130 AI practitioners over three years through a workforce development partnership with Digital Industry Singapore.

The expansion is aimed at organisations that want to deploy AI within their own environments while keeping tighter control over data, governance, and security. NCS describes this approach as sovereign AI, a term that has become increasingly prominent among technology suppliers and public sector buyers in the region.

Within the Sunshine.AI range, Sunshine.core is a base platform for building and operating AI agents, while Sunshine.builder is aimed at business analysts who want to create software applications without writing code. Sunshine.chilliclaw is an AI assistant designed to sit within software already used by employees, and Sunshine.guardian is intended to monitor, test, and automatically remediate issues involving agentic AI systems.

NCS also introduced Sunshine.commanderAI, which links AI systems with robotics and acts as a control centre for fleets of robots from different vendors. Alongside the launch, it unveiled the Robot and AI in-Motion Programme, or RAMP, a sandbox developed with AWS Generative AI Innovation Centre, Dell Technologies, and NVIDIA for work in public safety, smart buildings, and physical operations.

Several existing tools have also been updated with agentic AI functions. According to NCS, Sunshine.coder has increased developer productivity and quality by 15%, Sunshine.operations has reduced IT incident escalations by 40%, and Sunshine.productivity saves employees more than two hours a week.

Sector focus

Healthcare is a major part of the latest partnership push. NCS signed a Memorandum of Understanding with IHH Healthcare to establish a Joint AI Centre of Excellence that will co-develop and deploy AI systems across IHH's multinational network. It is also working with NHG Health on pilot uses for agentic AI in biometric identification, digital pathology, and human resources.

In education, NCS is working with Ngee Ann Polytechnic on an AI Tutor intended to address individual learning gaps. The institution will also incorporate Sunshine.coder into its ICT curriculum as part of efforts to develop AI-related skills.

Transport is another focus. NCS is working with South Korea's Autonomous A2Z on an autonomous shuttle service for employees, combining the ROii vehicle with its RobotManager platform.

Beyond those sector-specific arrangements, NCS is partnering with Alibaba Cloud on enterprise AI deployments across the region. In physical AI and health technology, it named Fourier Rehab, Hypershell, iMedWay, and LinkDoc as partners in projects involving exoskeletons, healthcare IT, and AI-driven clinical trials.

NCS also pointed to a broader partner ecosystem that includes Mistral AI, VAST Data, AGIBOT, and Lian Xin.

Talent pipeline

NCS linked the commercial push to a broader effort to build AI skills among executives and technical specialists. For senior leaders, it is working with Singapore University of Technology and Design, NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education, Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Asia-Pacific Graduate Institute, and AI Singapore on applied AI masterclasses covering subjects such as AI economics and AI governance.

For specialist recruitment, its partnership with Digital Industry Singapore will support the hiring of more than 130 AI practitioners over three years. Those hires are expected to sit within its AI Central team as well as sector-focused teams for Singapore's connectivity sector.

Sam Liew, Chief Executive Officer, NCS, framed the strategy as a shift away from limited trial projects towards wider operational redesign. "The real opportunity isn't incremental improvement. It's redesigning core operations for exponential outcomes. To deploy AI at scale, organisations need the right partners: those who combine deep industry expertise with enterprise-grade, sovereign platforms built for real-world governance and security. They also need a strong ecosystem behind them. As an AI-led tech services company, this is exactly what we have built NCS to do. As Singapore advances its national AI agenda, we are committed to helping our clients turn that ambition into real, measurable outcomes," said Liew.

NCS also released an AI playbook based on more than 100 projects. It argues that companies should assess AI investments against customer value, employee value, and future value, and identifies five common reasons programmes fail: unclear costs, unchanged business processes, unready data, ungoverned agent development, and unknown security and safety risks.

The playbook also focuses on tighter token cost management, workflow redesign, reusable development blocks, and built-in assurance for AI systems. Internally, these initiatives sit alongside a reorganisation into 10 industry-specific operating groups, backed by two service organisations, Applications and Communications Engineering and Digital Resilience, with AI Central overseeing strategy and adoption across the business.