Companies do not stall because they lack a course. They stall because nobody has said which of seven routes fits their business, who needs AI skills, or what the training should achieve — and because, for AI, the course you need usually does not exist yet. It has to be built for your outcome. That is the conversation we have: we work out what you want to achieve and write the requirement; an accredited provider creates and runs the course for it. We never sell or deliver training ourselves.
Normal training consultancy runs one way: the provider has a catalogue, you pick a course off it, and your people fit in around it. AI training consultancy runs the other way round. We start from what you want to achieve, and the course is created for it.
We start with what you want to achieve: the task that should take less time, the mistake that should stop, the work you want to keep in-house. From that we write the requirement — who attends, what they must be able to do at the end, what has to be measured — and an accredited provider builds and runs that course for your company.
The provider's catalogue decides the content, your people fit in where it is scheduled, and often nobody checks afterwards whether anything changed. It is cheaper and faster, and for a general skill it is the right answer. For AI in your business it usually is not — the course was never written for your work.
Starts from: the provider's catalogue.
Decides the content: the provider.
Delivers it: the provider.
You end up with: attendance, a certificate, a bill per head.
Measured after: usually nothing.
Starts from: what you want to achieve, and how it will be measured.
Decides the content: the requirement we write with you; the provider builds the course to it.
Delivers it: the provider — we never deliver or sell training.
You end up with: a written requirement, the course built to it, a provider fee.
Measured after: the two numbers agreed before anyone was trained.
Both are legitimate, and the free check will tell you which you need. If a course already on the shelf covers what your people must be able to do, we say so and point you at it — that is the cheaper answer, and we have no course to sell you.
Most companies are already on one of these without having named it. The value is in naming it early, because two of them are expensive mistakes when taken first.
Fix the process first, and use no AI at all.
Take it when: nobody can name the decision that AI would improve, or the same work goes through three people because the process has no owner. First step: write the process down; AI on a broken process just makes the mess arrive faster.
One tool, two trained people, ground rules for everyone else.
Take it when: you have a task that repeats weekly and somebody who owns it. First step: pick the task, measure how long it takes now, and pick the tool only after that.
Standardise one assistant and put the rules in writing, referred back to your PDPA notice.
Take it when: staff already use free chatbots with customer data, or five people use five different tools and nobody can say where the information went. First step: one page naming the approved tool and what never goes into it.
Take one repeating process end to end — quoting, intake, reporting, scheduling.
Take it when: the task has a fixed shape, happens dozens of times a month, and a person is the bottleneck. First step: count the volume honestly first; automation of a task that happens twice a month pays for nothing.
Build your own capability: data, integrations, a technical hire or a partner.
Take it when: you have already proved routes 2 to 4 and something in-house must maintain the result. First step: name the person who will still maintain it in twelve months. If there is no name, do not take this route.
Prove governance: how you control AI, so a customer, auditor or tender will accept it.
Take it when: a client asks how you manage AI risk, or your own tender pre-qualification is starting to include it. First step: a gap review against the AI management system standard, ISO/IEC 42001 — the same way we prepare ISO 9001, with the same rule that a third party audits and we never certify.
Use the training and funding already allocated to your company, on the people who will use it.
Take it when: budget is the blocker, or the credit is sitting unused. First step: check the expiry first — the current S$10,000 credit runs out on 30 November 2026.
Read them yourself. They are the whole assessment, and the answers usually name the route before the meeting ends.
Two routes started together means neither is measured, and the company learns nothing except that it spent money. Sequence beats ambition.
If staff already paste customer data into a free chatbot, that gets fixed before any new tool is bought. The PDPA obligation does not change because the software is new.
Time per task, and how often it comes back wrong. Two numbers, same tasks, before and after. We will not quote you a percentage saving in advance, because nobody can.
We take nothing from tool vendors, training providers or certification bodies. The fee is the same whichever route we name — including the route that says "not yet".
Before anything is bought, we write down what would make you stop. An experiment with no stop condition is a subscription.
If your customers or your tender pack will ask how you control AI, that answer is designed in from the start rather than retrofitted after an incident.
Route 7 is the one most Singapore companies leave on the table. Figures read off the government pages on 20 September 2026; sources at the bottom.
Eligible employers hold a S$10,000 credit offsetting up to 90% of out-of-pocket costs on supported courses and workforce transformation programmes. The current credit expires 30 November 2026: the last day of training must be on or before that date and any unused balance is forfeited. A fresh S$10,000 follows from 1 December 2026 under the redesigned scheme.
No application — it sits in your Corppass wallet if you qualify
Enhanced Training Support for SMEs funds up to 90% of the course fee when an SME sponsors an employee on a SkillsFuture Singapore-supported course. SME means registered in Singapore with no more than 200 employees or turnover up to S$100 million; the trainee must be a Singapore Citizen or PR and the employer pays the fee in full.
Applied by the training provider when you enrol
Every Singapore Citizen aged 40 and above holds S$4,000 of SkillsFuture Credit (Mid-Career) that never expires, stackable on top of the employer funding. Citizens 25 and above hold the base-tier credit. It is often why a course's payable fee shows as zero.
Course-fee funding covers the course; Absentee Payroll covers part of the employee's pay while they attend, claimed by the employer. For citizens aged 40 and above on long-form training, the Mid-Career Training Allowance pays 50% of average income, between S$300 and S$3,000 a month, for up to 24 months.
These are your company's and your staff's own entitlements, claimed through Corppass or the training provider — never through a consultancy, and we take no cut. Anyone offering to "claim the grant for you" is describing a scheme that does not work that way.
Fixed fees, published before you call. The whole engagement is priced per company, not per person — from the first conversation about what you want to achieve to the 90-day check on whether it did.
| What | How | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| AI route check | 30 minutes, then a written answer | Free The route we would take, the one we would reject, and what happens first |
| AI training consultancy beginning to end |
From the first conversation to the measured result: the requirement we write for the provider, provider screening and briefing, the syllabus review before you sign, the funding route and dates, the measurement, and the 90-day check | from S$3,520 Founding-client rate · standard S$5,120 Per company, not per person |
The training itself is not ours to sell and is not in this fee: where the route is training, an accredited provider builds and runs the course and bills you directly. We do not provide courses, we do not deliver accredited or funded training, and we are not an SSG-registered training provider. If your route includes training, we write what it has to achieve, screen the providers against it and read what they propose before you sign. If the honest answer is route 1 — fix the process first — the free check tells you that and there is nothing to buy.
We are the consultancy on AI training, not the training provider — the same way we prepare a company for ISO and never certify it. This is the advice itself, and it is the part most companies get wrong: they send everybody, or they send nobody.
| Who | Level | What they need to be able to do | Kind of course that fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everyone in the company | Ground rules · 1–2 hours | Know what must never be pasted into a chatbot, that a human checks anything leaving the company, and who owns a mistake. | A short national awareness course — we tell you which one fits |
| Owner or director | Decide | Where AI changes cost per job in your business, which process to touch first, and what to measure. | Not a course. This is the route plan. |
| Sales and marketing | Fluency | Proposals, content drafts, reviewing competitor and customer material, following up leads. | An applied course at a polytechnic or CET centre on the national directory |
| Admin, HR and accounts | Fluency | Minutes, letters, first drafts, spreadsheet formulas, tidying data. | Same directory-funded applied course — or the tool maker's free training if you have standardised on their tool |
| Operations, site and service teams | Fluency | Standard procedures, incident reports, checklists, photo and document capture on site. | A provider course first, then your own procedures rewritten by your own people |
| Whoever handles the computers | Control | Accounts and permissions, which tools are approved, where data goes, and the records your PDPA obligations require. | Vendor administrator training for the tool, plus your own PDPA documentation — that part is our work, not a course |
| A technical person, if you have one | Build | Automations and small internal tools — only worth it after routes 2 to 4 have been measured. | AI Singapore's technical tracks, or polytechnic and ITE specialist courses |
Most Singapore companies need one or two levels, not five. A company-wide technical programme for a 40-person business is solving a problem it does not have yet.
Four kinds, in the order we would look at them. We name no commercial provider we have not screened — and any course on this list is booked by you with the provider, never through us.
AI Singapore's own catalogue — AI for Everyone, literacy and foundation courses, responsible AI — the cheapest way to get a whole company to the same basic understanding.
Catalogue: learn.aisingapore.org
Polytechnics, ITEs and SkillsFuture-appointed CET centres run short applied courses. Worked example read off the directory on 20 September 2026: a Ngee Ann Polytechnic Gen AI course, 3 to 5 days, full fee S$600.00, minus a S$420.00 SkillsFuture subsidy, minus S$180.00 SkillsFuture Credit — payable from S$0.00 for a learner who holds the credit.
Search the directory: courses.myskillsfuture.gov.sg
There are many, and the directory listing looks identical for a lecture and for a workshop you actually practise in. Two checks separate them: the provider is SkillsFuture Singapore-registered for funded courses, and the trainer holds the adult-education qualification (ACLP). Ask for both in writing.
Free and competent — Google, Microsoft and the rest teach their own products well. Honest limit: it teaches the tool, never your industry, your customers or your paperwork, and it will not tell you who in your company should be in the room.
We do not deliver any of this. Ark Private provides no courses and no accredited or funded training, and we are not an SSG-registered training provider. We tell you which level, which people and which funded course fits; you book it with the provider and claim the funding yourself. Where the route calls for governance rather than training, that work is ours — and a third party still audits it.
No. We do not provide courses, do not deliver accredited or funded training, and we sell no software and no licences. We name the route and write down what it takes. If the route is AI training, we say which of your people need what, and you book the course with a registered provider.
No — ours is AI training consultancy specifically. We advise on AI capability, AI courses and AI funding only. We do not run a training-needs analysis across your general HR requirements, we do not source non-AI courses, and we do not sell or deliver training. If your question turns out not to be about AI, the free check says so and points you elsewhere.
By asking about the work rather than the technology — the ten questions on this page. The route follows from the answers. Two routes are almost always wrong first: buying several tools at once, and building something technical before the process behind it works.
Then that is what the free check says, in writing, and there is nothing further to buy. Route 1 exists because a surprising number of companies are on it and should be. We would rather tell you that than sell a plan you cannot use.
No commission and no referral fee from any tool vendor, training provider or certification body. That is exactly why the recommendation can be "buy nothing this quarter" — the fee does not change with the answer.
One session of about 90 minutes with the few people who own the work, a couple of short follow-ups, and the written plan within five working days. Your management signs it; nothing goes anywhere else.
Not for the assessment. The routes that pay back first in a Singapore company are about written work, quoting and finding things in your own documents. A technical hire only becomes a question at route 5, and only after the earlier routes have been measured.
Read live on 20 September 2026. If a figure here cannot be checked by you, it should not be on this page.
Funding figures on this page checked 20 September 2026. Government schemes change and the page dates its figures so you can see how old they are before you act on them.
Thirty minutes on the phone with the questions above, then a written answer: the route we would take, the one we would reject and why, and what happens first. No course to buy, no tool to license, no obligation.