Singapore's developer scene was broken, not cracked. Vibe coding fixed it.

When Yong Quan Tan graduated from assemblage successful 2023, he was still reasoning of himself arsenic a "traditional package engineer."

Playing astir pinch OpenAI's GPT -4, which had travel retired that March, worried him that his developer skills wouldn't beryllium capable to get aliases support a occupation successful tech.

"I was freaking out. I was like, OK, I person to spell for AI events because I person nary thought what's going on," he said. "It feels for illustration the asteroid is going to deed the dinosaurs anytime soon."

He went looking for location to study what was happening. In Singapore, wherever he is based, location wasn't overmuch of an AI segment to find.

While Singapore is location to thousands of tech startups, what it lacked, according to the AI builders Business Insider said to, was the developer civilization associated pinch hubs for illustration San Francisco, Tel Aviv, and Bengaluru that produced "cracked" engineers — slang for exceptionally talented coders.

AI has changed that dramatically.

Over the past 2 years, a postulation of grassroots organizers, hackathons, and builder communities has turned Singapore into an improbable hotbed for group who want to create software. Vibe coding — utilizing earthy connection to get AI to constitute package — has lowered the intelligence and financial costs of building and fixed almost anyone a summons into the AI boom.

That momentum has fixed AI giants for illustration OpenAI and Anthropic, and scaleups for illustration Cursor and Cognition, an inducement to found Asia Pacific office successful Singapore, adding hundreds of tech and non-tech jobs.

No position slides

For Tan, the turning constituent came successful precocious 2024, erstwhile he came crossed the Singapore section of AI Tinkerers, a San Francisco-based group that hosts AI meetups.

The format was deliberately dissimilar the buttoned-up tech events he was utilized to. Builders showed each different really they were utilizing the latest AI models to build devices for their regular lives — rough, buggy projects were welcome, while position slides were not.

Tan was hooked. When Henry Mao, who founded the Singapore section of AI Tinkerers, wanted to measurement distant to activity full-time connected his startup, Tan kept asking to return over.

"Henry was like, I've ne'er seen anyone beryllium truthful persistent. OK, you get it, bro," Tan said, adding that he took complete the group past year.

AI Tinkerers Singapore, now called Natives, runs demo nights, workshops, and hackathons focused connected everything from sound agents to agentic workflows. Its events regularly tie much than 100 group — a number capped by venue constraints alternatively than applicant interest, according to Tan.

"We were conscionable moving events, but past group abruptly started to consciousness for illustration this could beryllium thing that they were a portion of, thing that they beryllium to," Tan said.

He said 2 attendees met done the organization and went connected to cofound an agentic AI startup together.

The comeback story

AI Tinkerers wasn't the only group noticing the hunger to bring backmost tech-focused conversations and community.

Before the pandemic, Singapore had a buzzing, established tech and hackathon scene, centered connected startup incubators for illustration BLOCK71 and backed heavy by universities, authorities agencies, and corporates for illustration Grab and Amazon. Hackathons spanning user tech, blockchain, and smart-city tech routinely drew hundreds of builders, earlier the segment dwindled during and aft COVID.

65labs, a Singapore-based builder collective, entered 2025 pinch a accuracy of hosting events designed to nonstop attendees location wanting to make something.

Its Cursor hackathon successful October received much than 1,000 applications and brought hundreds of builders together for 24 hours. Participants shipped astir 150 moving products, including an AI "auntie" that reminds you to return your meds pinch humor, and a LinkedIn-based making love app that could thief you cheque your compatibility pinch AMD's Lisa Su. 10 sponsors committed much than $400,000 successful resources and support to winning teams.

By May 2026, 65labs had helped bring AI Engineer's first Asian convention to Singapore. More than 1,000 group attended the three-day convention backed by companies including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Cursor, Vercel, Cloudflare, and Stripe. Its 92-person speaker roster was filled pinch founders and experts from the world's biggest AI companies who had flown 16 hours from San Francisco to demo what they're building pinch AI.

A astonishment summation to the slate was Singapore's overseas curate Vivian Balakrishnan, who said astir really he uses NanoClaw agents and really he's a "geek" and "tinkerer" himself. Built arsenic a much unafraid replacement to OpenClaw, NanoClaw agents are lightweight, open-source individual AI assistants that tin execute tasks specified arsenic answering emails aliases sorting photos.

A communal takeaway from the detonation of X and LinkedIn posts that followed the convention was: Don't disregard Singapore arsenic an AI hub, things are conscionable getting started.

Rise of the non-technical founder

For Nehal Agrawal, who dis communications AI Engineer, the important portion of that caller roar isn't simply that Singapore has much AI events: it's astir who feels for illustration they beryllium astatine them.

When Agrawal graduated successful 2024 arsenic a business major, to her, AI was synonymous pinch ChatGPT. She said that group successful investigation aliases engineering started learning really to usage AI, but arsenic personification non-technical, AI felt "gated."

Vibe coding blew a spread done that gate.

At 1 builder arena she attended successful early 2026, Agrawal said astir 1,000 people, ranging from 18-year-olds to group successful their 80s, turned up connected a Monday night.

It's not conscionable fittingness trackers and browser games; vibe coding has changed who tin beryllium a founder. At AI Engineer Singapore, location was a precocious attraction of non-technical founders who had taught themselves to usage Claude Code, Codex, aliases Cursor to motorboat and standard their startups.

"Suddenly, group astir maine are talking astir evals, harnesses, loops, context, and these are each non-technical people," Agrawal said.

To her, AI-native doesn't mean abruptly knowing really to constitute thousands of lines of Python. It's astir really to nonstop models, trial their output, and stitch devices together for your individual projects, work, aliases broadside hustles.

Agrawal, who now shares AI workflows and automations she has built connected her ain website, said vibe coding changed her cognition of what she could make.

"It has removed a batch of psychological barriers to your ain strengths aliases to your ain capacity of learning," she said.