AI Singapore Collaborates with Dell Technologies to Help Democratise Access to AI in Southeast Asia

Story highlights

• AI Singapore and Dell Technologies are bringing the SEA-LION model to AI PCs and edge devices
• The collaboration enhances Southeast Asian language models for efficient performance on lightweight infrastructure
• Running models locally empowers organisations with offline capabilities, enhanced privacy and lower costs
• Optimised infrastructure democratises access to culturally relevant AI innovation across the region

SINGAPORE, Jan. 13, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- AI Singapore (AISG) is working with Dell Technologies to enhance its SEA-LION (Southeast Asian Languages in One Network) family of open-source large language models (LLMs). The organisations are testing and validating SEA-LION models across various Dell AI PCs and edge infrastructure, supporting AISG's efforts towards building models that are resource-efficient and deployable on lightweight setups.

Why it matters

Global language models often prioritise English, leaving gaps in their ability to address the linguistic and cultural nuances of Southeast Asia. SEA-LION bridges this gap by training open-source models on a vast, high-quality corpus of region-specific data. This approach embeds local linguistic characteristics, enabling hyper-local multilingualism and fostering innovation tailored to the region. As an open-source initiative, SEA-LION also democratises AI by reducing the high costs associated with foundational model training. Its permissive licensing encourages community contributions, supports regional control and provides an accessible alternative to proprietary systems.

Dell leverages its specialised expertise in infrastructure optimisation to help AISG ensure quantised models, like SEA-LION, can be deployed on edge devices. Dell's powerful, resource-efficient AI PCs deliver seamless performance even in resource-constrained environments.

Demonstrating real-world applications

AISG's Voice Transcriber for Southeast Asian Languages is integrated with OpenAI's Whisper automatic speech recognition (ASR) system, powered by the SEA-LION model and deployed on Dell AI PCs. This Voice Transcriber provides real-time transcription of Southeast Asian languages for chatbots, reporting apps and multilingual communication tools, addressing growing demand. The technology enables customers to run LLMs directly on their devices, operating fully offline to ensure privacy, speed and reliability for enterprise applications. 

Future aspirations

AISG aims to continue advancing SEA-LION by expanding its modalities to include robust audio and speech understanding, improving its linguistic accuracy and enhancing resource efficiency for deployment on a wider range of infrastructure. The work also lays a foundation to support the development of agentic AI capabilities, enabling advanced AI agents to perform complex, cross-sector tasks across Southeast Asian languages and contexts.

Perspectives

"SEA-LION's transformative understanding of 11 Southeast Asian languages and cultural nuances requires practical application," said Andy Sim, vice president and managing director, Singapore, Dell Technologies. "This collaboration demonstrates that this sophisticated, culturally intelligent AI can run efficiently on laptops and edge devices. Together, we are democratising AI in Southeast Asia and are fostering a future where advanced AI is accessible to all."

"This collaboration is a key step in realising our vision for SEA-LION – models that are not only local and culturally relevant but also resource-efficient enough to be deployed on the edge," said Dr. Leslie Teo, senior director, AI Products, AI Singapore. "By running fully featured LLMs directly on Dell devices, we provide enterprises with privacy and lower cost alternatives while remaining responsive and reliable."

About Dell Technologies
Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) helps organisations and individuals build their digital future and transform how they work, live and play. The company provides customers with the industry's broadest and most innovative technology and services portfolio for the AI era.

About AI Singapore
AI Singapore (AISG) is a national programme launched by the National Research Foundation (NRF), Singapore, to catalyse, synergise and boost Singapore's artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to power our future digital economy. AISG will bring together all Singapore-based research institutions and the vibrant ecosystem of AI start-ups and companies developing AI products, to perform use-inspired research, grow the knowledge, create the tools, and develop the talent to power Singapore's AI efforts. AISG is driven by a government-wide partnership comprising NRF, Smart Nation Group (SNG), Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), Economic Development Board (EDB), Enterprise Singapore (EnterpriseSG), amongst others.
For more information on AI Singapore, please visit https://www.aisingapore.org.

About SEA-LION
SEA-LION is one of two national LLMs under Singapore's S$70M National Multimodal Large Language Model Programme (NMLP), supported by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and National Research Foundation (NRF), Singapore. More information on SEA-LION is available here: https://sea-lion.ai/

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SOURCE Dell Technologies