Ukraine has announced plans to build what it describes as a sovereign artificial intelligence in a partnership with chipmaking firm Nvidia. The partnership will see Ukraine develop an artificial intelligence that would be controlled by the state using hardware sought from the manufacturer.
The joint initiative means Ukraine will tap Nvidia to build its artificial intelligence using the company’s know-how, the country’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, unveiled. “We are starting to work with Nvidia – the world leader in computing infrastructure for AI,” Fedorov announced this week.
Ukraine launches AI project with support from Nvidia
On Monday, Federov went on Telegram to emphasize that the partnership is a matter of national security and data protection. “Thanks to Nvidia’s expertise, Ukraine will gain access to the best technologies in the world to create a sustainable and independent AI infrastructure for the state and defense sectors,” he said. The initiative is expected to focus on several key areas.
Aside from creating a national AI system based on Nvidia’s AI infrastructure, Ukraine is expected to partner with the company to facilitate AI education to develop the talent pool in Ukraine in the artificial intelligence field. Nvidia and Kyiv intend to implement joint research and development (R&D) projects, too, and ensure support for the war-torn nation’s startup ecosystem.
Also quoted by one of the leading Russian-language crypto news outlets, Forklog, the digital minister noted this isn’t Kyiv’s only collaboration with the GPU giant. “We have already launched the AI Factory project, thanks to which a powerful state AI infrastructure from Nvidia will appear in Ukraine. Now we are starting a new joint initiative to build sovereign AI together,” he added.
Mykhailo Fedorov pointed out that the first joint project with Nvidia is the creation of a Diia AI LLM (large language model), and explained: “This is a sovereign language model trained on Ukrainian data, legislation, and public services. It will power all AI solutions in the Diia ecosystem, from the portal’s assistant to the future voice assistant in the application.”
Diia is the umbrella term encompassing a range of e-government services in Ukraine, including a mobile app and a web portal. The name is an acronym for “the state and me” in Ukrainian. As part of this project, Ukraine will gain access to Nvidia technologies and expertise, which will help it train models faster, optimize costs, and create AI solutions, Fedorov remarked.
