VEON notes launch of open-source Kazakh-language large language model

VEON (VEON) noted the launch of an open-source Kazakh-language large language model, developed by a consortium coordinated by the Ministry of Digital, Innovations, and Aerospace Industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The development of Kaz-LLM was led by the Institute of Smart Systems and Artificial Intelligence at the Nazarbayev University of Kazakhstan, in partnership with VEON’s QazCode, Beeline Kazakhstan and the Astana Hub. With over 150 billion tokens collected, curated, synthesized and translated, the Kaz-LLM is capable of interacting in Kazakh language as well as in Turkish, English and Russian. With an 8 billion and a 70 billion parameter versions, the Kaz-LLM, developed in Kazakhstan, will help accelerate the creation and adoption of AI-powered products and services in the country. The model has been published on the Hugging Face platform for developers, ahead of its full launch. The initiative, in which VEON’s QazCode is the only private sector partner, aligns closely with VEON’s mission to provide speakers of low-resource languages with augmented intelligence tools to enhance their daily lives, starting with Kazakhstan, VEON’s most advanced market in terms of augmented intelligence capabilities.