Philippine Government and Sutherland Launch AI Academy to Equip Filipinos with Future-Ready Skills
The AI Academy will offer practical, industry-aligned training designed to equip Filipino professionals with skills to integrate artificial intelligence into their work. It aims to strengthen the country's talent pool by developing capabilities that are increasingly in demand across sectors, whether as AI specialists, prompt engineers, or cybersecurity professionals. The program will prepare participants to harness AI in driving productivity, advancing innovation, and pursuing high-value opportunities across industries.
'This initiative is a vital step toward our goal of building a digitally resilient and inclusive workforce, said President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. 'By expanding access to training in future-ready skills, we are empowering our countrymen to take part in – and benefit from – an economy increasingly shaped by AI.'
Dilip Vellodi, Chairman & CEO, Sutherland, said, 'This initiative represents a powerful partnership rooted in a shared goal: getting the Philippines' workforce ready for the future of work. Sutherland and the Government of the Philippines are working together to build a lasting ecosystem for digital skills and innovation—one that will support industries, uplift communities, and boost the economy.'
Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Henry Rhoel Aguda likewise underscored the importance of the partnership, emphasizing its role in advancing the country's digital transformation agenda and ensuring that Filipinos are well-positioned to lead in an increasingly AI-driven global economy.
'AI and automation are going to transform jobs in every industry over the next decade. That's why our partnership with Sutherland is all about giving Filipinos the skills, knowledge, and confidence to stay competitive. Together, we're building a stronger foundation for a future where AI fluency isn't just an advantage—it's a necessity for 85% of jobs,' Secretary Aguda said.
A National Blueprint for AI-Driven Growth
Sutherland will offer hands-on training for critical sectors like fintech, healthcare, and emerging digital industries, leveraging Sutherland's deep expertise in AI, analytics, automation, and cloud technologies.
The AI Academy is supported by the Philippine Government, local educational institutions, and provincial governments such as Camsur and Tarlac. Its mission is to make AI skills accessible to all, encourage strong public-private collaboration, and drive long-term economic growth by building a future-ready workforce.
This partnership is envisioned to strengthen the Philippines' position as a leader in AI-driven workforce development, while reinforcing Sutherland's commitment to delivering Digital Outcomes that transform industries, strengthen economies, and improve lives.
About Sutherland
Artificial Intelligence. Automation. Cloud Engineering. Advanced Analytics.
For Enterprises, these are key factors of success. For us, they're our core expertise.
We work with global iconic brands. We bring them a unique value proposition through market-leading technologies and business process excellence. At the heart of it all is Digital Engineering – the foundation that powers rapid innovation and scalable business transformation.
We've created over 200 unique inventions under several patents across AI and other emerging technologies. Leveraging our advanced products and platforms, we drive digital transformation at scale, optimize critical business operations, reinvent experiences, and pioneer new solutions, all provided through a seamless 'as-a-service' model.
For each company, we provide new keys for their businesses, the people they work with, and the customers they serve. With proven strategies and agile execution, we don't just enable change – we engineer digital outcomes.
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They like using Bedrock to try out new models — and to run existing models from Meta, DeepSeek, Amazon itself and so on. And yet, Nandi told me, ''You're missing OpenAI' — that's what they would say.' Now that gap has been addressed. AWS, OpenAI And Microsoft So what does this mean for Microsoft? The company is doing pretty well, to the tune of $101 billion in profit for the fiscal year that ended on June 30. As part of that success, AI has helped drive Azure revenue to $75 billion in the past year. (AWS is above $100 billion annually.) Azure also provides a range of OpenAI models — including hot-off-the-presses GPT-5 variants — that goes well beyond the two open-weight models AWS just launched. That said, Microsoft's long-running relationship with OpenAI is complex, and at times it has been vexed. I don't want to read too much into the availability of a couple of slick new open-weight models via the biggest CSP AI platform in the world. Yet the lock-in that Microsoft enjoyed until last week for all things OpenAI was the first angle that popped into my head when I heard the AWS news. At the moment — and surely for some years to come — there is plenty of AI business to go around. As Nandi pointed out during our conversation, 'Agentic is super-early.' More than that, for all the enterprises building focused agents for different use cases, 'They're not looking for one general-purpose model for agents.' Rather, they want to find different models that supply the right price/performance for each use case. While they can do that with a single AI service provider — AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle, IBM — they probably won't find it with a single AI model provider. AWS will of course be adding features to support the new open-weight OpenAI models in the weeks and months to come. And there's no question these are nice additions to the AWS toolbox. Maybe six months or a year from now, Microsoft's loss of exclusivity with OpenAI in this instance won't seem like a big deal. But I do wonder whether there could be a scenario where we look back on this as the first chink in the Microsoft–OpenAI armor.
