Cambodia
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
Firms moved factory and office work here for its labor cost: assembly lines, garments, call centers and IT services sold abroad. AI and robots can increasingly do that work.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
Production is relatively manufacturing-intensive. Near-term effects depend on machinery, robotics, supply chains, energy and firms’ capacity to reorganize production, as well as on language models.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where Cambodia starts
Cambodia is a reform climber: an economy growing steadily from a low base while its institutions slowly improve. The scores show both the momentum and the limits. Catch-up headroom is 4 out of 5, and physical build speed is 4.2, thanks to a decade of Chinese-backed construction — Sihanoukville's port and special economic zone, the Phnom Penh–Sihanoukville expressway, and the new Techo airport near the capital. Ten-year trend growth of 5.6% a year reflects that drive. But the constraints are real. Compute and energy access scores 1.1, geopolitical positioning 1, and language inclusion 1.1, because Khmer is a low-resource language for AI. At about $2,872 per person, Cambodia is lower-middle-income, and its growth still runs through the garment and footwear factories that make up most of its exports.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline; the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays a normal technology. Cambodia would grow 5.7% a year, 14th of 157 — a high rank, because its trend and catch-up room beat most countries in a world where no one accelerates. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would climb over two decades and reach 7% a year once AGI matures around 2045. That doubles the economy in about ten years, but ranks only 98th, because faster-moving economies pull ahead. Under Fast takeoff, growth would reach 6% a year from the early 2030s, a doubling in roughly twelve years, and Cambodia would slip to 109th. A fast world rewards the compute and geopolitical access Cambodia lacks, so it would grow less than under Gradual. Politics could slow or redirect any path. How Cambodians and their government respond to transformative AI is a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The scenarios look almost the same until about 2030. Watch leading indicators, not GDP, and watch them live. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies — the United States and China above all — breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Double-digit growth there within a couple of years of 2030 would signal a fast world; a point or two above trend by the mid-2030s, a gradual one; a fade back to trend, a modest one. Cambodia's own signals would arrive sooner than GDP: garment and footwear order books, foreign investment flowing into its special economic zones, financial close on new power generation and grid links, and how fast government services move online.
If growth goes explosive
For Cambodia, it would not. Its rates are modest by world standards. Under Gradual takeoff the economy would grow 7% a year while the frontier compounds at nearly 20% and the region's median reaches 10%. Under Fast takeoff Cambodia would manage 6% while the frontier runs near 40%. So even in the AGI scenarios it would fall behind both the leaders and its own neighbors. Seven percent still doubles the economy in about ten years, so a child born today would enter the workforce in a country twice as rich. A young population and rising labor demand would lift wages at home, easing the pressure to migrate to Thailand for work. The honest downside is geopolitical. Cambodia sits deep inside China's investment orbit, and its geopolitical score of 1 is the lowest here. If chip and model access split into rival blocs, Cambodia could be shut out of American technology or exposed to sanctions. The hedge is to keep capital markets and trusted-partner frameworks open. Even a steady climb would test Electricité du Cambodge, the permitting offices and the courts.
What Cambodia can do now
Three levers follow from the scores. The first is AI diffusion, at 2. Digital skills, deployment-permissive rules and online government services carry weight even in the skeptic's world, so building them is a no-regret move that pays off whether or not AGI arrives. A cautious government can start today and lose nothing. The second is geopolitical positioning, the lowest score at 1. Keeping access to capital markets and joining trusted-partner frameworks protects Cambodia's investment lifeline under every scenario, so it too is largely no-regret. The third lever is the bet. Compute and energy access, at 1.1, carries the most weight of all and barely moves growth if AI stays ordinary, but becomes Cambodia's biggest lever under a fast takeoff. Closing it means fast grid connections, new generation and power-and-land packages, built on the physical build speed Cambodia already has at 4.2 — a strength to protect, not a gap. Rwanda, a fellow reform climber, published a national AI policy and set up a Fourth Industrial Revolution centre to guide adoption; Cambodia could adapt that playbook. Open the atlas's policy editor to test how moving these scores reshapes each path.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change Cambodia’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for Cambodia: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.