Veon-owned Ukrainian telco Kyivstar announced on Tuesday that it has signed a cooperation memorandum with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation to develop the country’s first national large language model (LLM) trained on Ukrainian-language data.
Kyivstar said it will develop the LLM in collaboration with the ministry and the WINWIN AI Centre of Excellence using open-source architectures and trained exclusively on Ukrainian data sources, capturing the full range of Ukrainian dialects, terminology, history and cultural context.
The LLM is intended to serve as the foundation for AI-powered products and services, including legal and regulatory analysis tools, as well as specialized AI applications across both public and private sectors including education, finance, and health. Training the LLM on Ukrainian data is expected to deliver more accurate, relevant, and actionable insights for Ukrainian users than general-purpose global models.
The project is also designed to ensure that sensitive national data is securely stored and processed within Ukraine, which is a critical requirement for sectors such as government, defense, healthcare, and financial services, Kyivstar said.
“Ukrainian LLM will empower users to access augmented intelligence tools with the full cultural context and depth of their native language and national resources,” said VEON Group CEO Kaan Terzioglu in a statement.
Terzioglu added that the cooperation memorandum with the Digital Transformation MInistry builds on Veon’s and Kyivstar’s pledge to invest US$1 billion to rebuild Ukraine’s digital infrastructure between 2023 and 2027.
It’s also the latest iteration of Veon’s recent move to position itself as a service delivery company across its various digital operators in developing markets with localised LLMs at the core of its AI strategy.
In December last year, QazCode – the software development unit of Veon’s Beeline Kazakhstan – launched KazLLM along with Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence at Nazarbayev University (ISSAI NU) and Astana Hub. KazLLM currently powers the “AI Tutor” on the Janymda super app.
That launch came a month after Jazz, Veon’s digital operator In Pakistan, announced it was collaborating with the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) and the National Information Technology Board (NITB) to develop a local LLM in the Urdu language.
