Bkav Founder Says AI Cut an Engineering Task’s Cost to Under 3 Million Vietnamese Dong
Bkav founder Nguyễn Tử Quảng said one engineer using AI completed the equivalent of 10 engineers’ eight months of work in one week, at a cost of under 3 million Vietnamese dong instead of more than 3 billion dong. He cited this as a case from within the company.
At a seminar on “Political Economy in the New Era,” Bkav founding chairman Nguyễn Tử Quảng used a company project to illustrate AI’s impact on efficiency and costs. He said one Bkav engineer using AI completed the equivalent of 10 engineers’ eight months of work in one week, at a cost of under 3 million Vietnamese dong, compared with more than 3 billion dong previously. These figures describe the Bkav case he presented.
Nguyễn Tử Quảng speaks at the seminar. Photo courtesy of Bkav.（VietVance）
Discussing industrial policy, Nguyễn Tử Quảng said Vietnam’s state-owned enterprises currently employ about 1 million people directly, while the private sector employs about 45 million. On that basis, he argued that institutional reforms should focus more on the private sector and proposed accelerating the conversion of state-owned enterprises outside security, national defense and social welfare into joint-stock companies, along with the divestment of state capital. The employment figures and his assessment of the reforms’ potential effects came from his remarks.
He also warned that the advantages of Vietnam’s demographic dividend could weaken in about a decade. He described the present as a critical period for reforms that would lay the groundwork for a double-digit growth target and national competitiveness in the AI era. At the seminar, he also presented views on a new mode of production and “digital rent.”
Nguyễn Tử Quảng and his colleagues began developing Bkav antivirus software while they were students. The software was introduced in 1995 and commercialized in 2005. Bkav later expanded into cybersecurity, software, smart devices and AI, and launched its first Bphone smartphone on May 26, 2015. In August 2026, he was elected vice chairman of the Vietnam Software and IT Services Association for the 2026–2031 term.
Nguyễn Tử Quảng attends the 2018 launch of Bphone 3.（VietVance）
Source: VietVance
