UEH Joins Plug and Play’s University Network as Ho Chi Minh City Readies Asia’s First Applied-AI Centre of Excellence

Ho Chi Minh City’s plan for what its partners call Asia’s first Applied AI Centre of Excellence (AI COE) moved a step forward on November 5, when representatives of the city’s Startup and Innovation Hub (SIHUB), the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City (UEH) and Plug and Play outlined their preparations at the Plug and Play Silicon Valley November Summit 2026 in California, VietNamNet reported. The session, witnessed by Vietnam’s Consul General in San Francisco Hoàng Anh Tuấn, Plug and Play founder and CEO Saeed Amidi and UEH president Associate Professor Bùi Quang Hùng, took place before more than 3,000 AI experts, founders, investors and academics.

At the summit UEH formally joined Plug and Play’s global network of partner universities, following the memorandum the three parties signed in Ho Chi Minh City on September 30. Under the model, SIHUB connects the city’s startup ecosystem, UEH contributes interdisciplinary research, training and talent development, and Plug and Play brings corporate connections, accelerator programmes and its network of global partners and investment funds. The goal is a chain running from identifying real business problems through research and testing to deployment, fundraising and market access.

The partners said the centre is meant to do more than add another research hub: it should help put AI solutions into production, business operations and urban management. In designing it, they studied cooperation in Upper Austria as well as university-linked applied AI centres in the United States such as San Jose State University and enterprise solutions from Atomic Canyon. Consulate representatives pointed to the city’s weight in the economy, about 20 per cent of national GDP, and Vietnam’s network of 17 free trade agreements.

What it means in practice

UEH Joins Plug and Play’s University Network as Ho Chi Minh City Readies Asia’s First Applied-AI Centre of Excellence — contextual photo

The update builds on the AI Centre of Excellence memorandum the city signed with Plug and Play and the city’s wider push to fund young companies, including its proposal for matching venture capital for Saigon AI Hub startups. Bùi Quang Hùng said UEH would commit its multidisciplinary resources to running the centre and make it as easy as possible for venture funds and international companies to launch projects in Vietnam.

Plug and Play’s leaders invited delegates, venture capital funds and technology companies to Ho Chi Minh City in March 2027 to turn the Silicon Valley connections into concrete projects and investment. What to watch is whether a formal operating agreement, a budget and a first cohort of corporate challenges are announced before that visit.