About 805,000 students finished college in 2023-2024, according to the Commission on Higher Education, and some have spent the past year looking for work. Vaibhav Vora, chief technology officer of Ascendion, said at its Makati office that companies have increased technology spending by about 8 percent a year since 2022, while productivity has grown by only 2 percent, citing McKinsey’s US figures, and Vora said the pattern extends to Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, including the Philippines. Vora explained that most companies leave AI trapped in pilot projects, and Ascendion’s platform AAVA runs AI agents across the full software development cycle. He pointed to a US bank overhaul delivered at one-third the cost. Ascendion has operated in the Philippines since 2013 and has worked with more than 80 local clients. On jobs, Vora said, “For us, it is not about replacement of jobs,” citing a customer service operation where the average call fell from 20 minutes to two or three minutes with AI tools, and headcount did not decline. He said entry-level roles undergo “remodeling,” requiring prompt and context engineering skills and data science capabilities. Dr. Paul Roehrig, Ascendion’s chief strategy and marketing officer, said people can see that the same work may require fewer hands, “And that may be true.”