SGAI Studio was founded by Jay Qin — Carnegie Mellon, ex-Wall Street, 50+ AI projects shipped. Here is the story behind the studio.
Jay Qin
Founder · SGAI Studio Pte Ltd
Carnegie Mellon University · Business & Finance · 50+ AI projects shipped
Legal name: Jinghuang Qin · 秦经煌
// Jay Qin · Founder · Singapore
// Founder story · 5 chapters
I taught myself to code in two weeks. I was halfway through Carnegie Mellon — the school the world calls number one for AI — studying business and finance, and AI was about to swallow both. So I learned. Two weeks later I shipped my first product. Two weeks after that, I was on the local Pittsburgh newspaper.
I was busy fine-tuning button shadows, chasing the VC pitch, building UI nobody asked for. I wasn't building the work that moved the operating numbers. I was building the work that won design awards. The company burned. The lesson didn't.
I went to a major firm to learn how the big players did it. The lesson was the inverse of what I expected: the big players don't do it. In 2022, before ChatGPT existed, I built an automated daily-summary tool with OpenAI for our clients. It worked. It never shipped — not because of the tech, because of internal approvals. I got fired for trying to push it through.
I left and went travelling — Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines. No salary, no safety net. What kept me on the road was my own work: dozens of small AI projects, apps, tools, side-bets — each one earning enough to fund the next leg. The headline win was a small tailor shop in Vietnam. From basically zero online sales to about US$1,000 a day, in three months. That's when it clicked. Lean SMEs with willingness, leanness, and gung-ho-ness can outpace any conglomerate. They don't need an approval committee. They need a partner who ships.
Before founding SGAI Studio, I'd built more than 50 apps and projects with AI — for restaurants in Pittsburgh, for shops in Vietnam, for clients between. I came home to Singapore because Singapore SMEs are sitting on a goldmine: world-class government funding, the leanness of a small economy, and the energy that built this country in a generation. We just need to unlock it.
// Manifesto
“Singapore might be small, but we are lean and we mean business. SMEs that recognise the power of AI today will outpace conglomerates that can't even get an internal approval. I'm here as your partner. Let's build.”
— Jay Qin, Founder · SGAI Studio Pte Ltd
// Mission
Help Singapore businesses build economic muscle with AI — applied to the work that actually matters, funded by the country that's investing in it.
// The studio
SGAI Studio was registered in Singapore in 2026 (SGAI Studio Pte Ltd) to do two things at once: build bespoke AI solutions for Singapore businesses, and help those businesses unlock the S$37 billion the country is putting behind AI adoption through 2030. We use AI on the invisible parts of business — the workflows, the registrations, the documents, the internal tools. The work that doesn't go viral but does move numbers.
// What we stand for
Applied to invisible work, not gimmicks. Productivity over performance.
Local studio, local accountability, multilingual support. We pick up the phone.
We build the AI and unlock the grants in parallel — both sides of the table.
Every project judged on one thing: does it move the operating numbers.