Naver will make its entry into Thailand’s artificial intelligence (AI) market, signing a memorandum of understanding for a sovereign AI business with a local AI and cloud platform firm, a move stemming from the Korean IT firm’s cooperation with Nvidia. Naver Cloud said Friday it signed the agreement with Thai tech company SIAM.AI Cloud for their joint development of a Thai large language model and a tourism-specific AI agent. SIAM.AI is a leading local tech company driving Thailand’s AI transformation. It plans to use the partnership as a springboard to accelerate the expansion of sovereign AI across the Southeast Asian market. Sovereign AI refers to models tailored to specific national contexts and data sovereignty. Under the partnership, Naver Cloud will contribute its experience in building and operating proprietary LLMs, while SIAM.AI will provide extensive Thai-language data and graphics processing unit infrastructure. They will establish a Thai-language model applicable to actual services by the end of this year, and will release a tourism-specific AI agent to meet strong local demand. The two companies plan to expand their partnerships into various AI-driven industries such as health care, public services and academia by developing language models in different sizes. Naver Cloud said it will share its technologies and expertise throughout the process to help Thailand build the capability to independently develop and operate its own AI models and applications. The agreement is the latest achievement in Naver’s efforts to tap into overseas markets by meeting various countries’ ambitions to secure their AI sovereignty. Naver set up its Middle East headquarters in Saudi Arabia to assist Riyadh’s efforts to build sovereign AI by building an Arabic LLM. The latest agreement will mark an important step into the Southeast Asian sovereign AI market. Naver has been stressing the importance of sovereign AI, warning that the global expansion of generative AIs powered by LLMs developed by tech giants in the U.S. and China could threaten the technological sovereignty of other countries. In line with this perspective, Naver has been promoting its own Korean-based model, HyperCLOVA X, as a key example of maintaining technological autonomy. The agreement was signed during the Nvidia Cloud Partner Summit held in Taiwan, with Naver Cloud and SIAM.AI were each the only participating partner from their home country. “We have been working closely with Nvidia since last year to realize the two companies’ shared vision for sovereign AI into actual business models,” a Naver Cloud official said. “And the partnership with SIAM.AI is an outcome of such efforts.” Naver Chairman and founder Lee Hae-jin, Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon and Naver Cloud CEO Kim Yu-won met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at Nvidia’s Taiwan office on Thursday. Naver did not disclose details of the meeting, but the discussions are believed to have centered on a sovereign AI business model. In June, Naver founder Lee met Huang at Nvidia’s headquarters in the U.S. and discussed ways to establish sovereign AI models that reflect various cultures and values of individual countries. The two companies’ partnership came as Nvidia highly evaluated Naver’s unique experience of building LLMs based on languages other than English and Chinese. The two sides believe that Naver’s experience will create synergy with Nvidia’s capabilities in providing hardware infrastructure for countries seeking sovereign AI. Along with Nvidia, Naver said its leaders also met various partners, including Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom, to discuss Naver’s global expansion. “The latest partnership goes beyond building an LLM, and aims to help Thailand gain the technological capabilities to develop and operate AI models domestically,” Naver Cloud CEO Kim said. “This could serve as a new model for other countries aiming to build their own independent AI ecosystems.”       (ICE SEOUL)

Fonte notizia: The Korea Times