VEON and MeetKai Expand Collaboration to Explore Sovereign AI Infrastructure Partnerships

BARCELONA, Spain and DUBAI and NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES, March 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- VEON Ltd. (Nasdaq: VEON), a global digital operator ("VEON"), today announced the expansion of its partnership with MeetKai Inc. ("MeetKai") to explore launching sovereign, locally-deployed AI infrastructure and in-country AI capabilities across VEON markets, with the intent to expand into further strategic partners over time.

A memorandum of understanding ("MoU") was signed to mark the expansion of the partnership in Barcelona, where the Mobile World Congress (MWC) is currently under way. 

The expanded partnership will accelerate rapid, standardized deployment of secure compute environments, aligned with data residency requirements and local governance processes, supporting development of AI-based services that meet market-specific needs.

The partnership brings together VEON's regional footprint, customer access, user experience design experience and data center capabilities, and MeetKai's sovereign AI platform, local language models, and AI application layer, supported by the expertise of MeetKai Atlas, a MeetKai subsidiary, in deployment standards and infrastructure playbooks that enable repeatable, secure rollouts of infrastructure solutions.

MeetKai's platform is designed to deliver high quality LLMs at significantly lower development cost and lower inference cost through efficient post training, targeted optimization, and hardware aware deployment. The parties intend to apply these efficiencies across VEON deployments, aiming to optimize unit economics, accelerate time-to-market, and support faster returns on R&D investment while expanding AI services across consumer and enterprise use cases.

"VEON is building a sovereign, locally rooted augmented intelligence ecosystem that can be deployed in country and scaled responsibly across each of our markets," said Kaan Terzioğlu, Group Chief Executive Officer of VEON. "With this partnership, we look forward to developing end-to-end sovereign AI capabilities delivering a complete, secure, and culturally-relevant sovereign AI value proposition to the communities we proudly serve."

"MeetKai was built to deliver sovereign AI stacks that run inside sovereign borders, tuned to local languages, aligned with local policy, and designed to monetize across consumer and enterprise channels," said James Kaplan, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of MeetKai. "With VEON, we will apply our model and inference efficiency to help roll out AI services faster, at lower cost, and at operator scale across multiple markets and beyond."

This initiative underscores VEON's broader commitment to drive inclusive digital growth through augmented intelligence solutions that address local needs in emerging markets. It follows an earlier collaboration initiated in November 2025 between MeetKai and VEON's Kazakhstan-based AI and software company QazCode to develop and train next-generation large language models.

VEON and MeetKai intend to roll out the partnership across VEON operating markets, while also exploring expansion further where strategic partnerships and regulatory frameworks support sovereign deployments.

About VEON

VEON is a digital operator that provides connectivity and digital services to nearly 150 million connectivity and over 140 million digital users. Operating across five countries that are home to more than 6% of the world's population, VEON is transforming lives through technology-driven services that empower individuals and drive economic growth. VEON is listed on NASDAQ. For more information, visit: https://www.veon.com.

About MeetKai

Founded in Los Angeles in 2018, MeetKai is a Sovereign AI company specializing in post training optimization, local language reasoning models, and national AI platforms. Its flagship MKA1 Platform enables governments, enterprises, and consumers to build and operate fully sovereign AI ecosystems with data control, localization, and long term value creation. Learn more at www.meetkai.com.

Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer

This release contains "forward-looking statements", within the meaning of the Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements relating to VEON's commercial and infrastructure partnerships. There are numerous risks, uncertainties that could cause actual results and performance to differ materially from those expressed by such statements, including risks relating to uncertainty over VEON's commercial and infrastructure partnerships, among others discussed in the section entitled "Risk Factors" in VEON's 2024 Form 20-F filed with the SEC on April 25, 2025 and other public filings made by VEON with the SEC. The forward-looking statements contained herein speak only as of the date of this release and VEON disclaims any obligation to update them, except as required by law.

SOURCE MeetKai