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ProgrammeGovernmentFrontierSingaporeConfirmed

Singapore funds S$70m programme to scale the SEA-LION regional language model

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Source: Infocomm Media Development AuthorityAlso reported by The Straits Times via Asia News Network

IMDA, AI Singapore and A*STAR announced the National Multimodal LLM Programme on 4 December 2023, funded with S$70 million from the National Research Foundation over two years. It will grow AI Singapore’s open-source SEA-LION (Southeast Asian Languages in One Network) model to 30 to 50 billion parameters and add speech. SEA-LION was trained on 11 regional languages, including Indonesian, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese.

Why it matters

Builders serving Southeast Asian users got a state-funded open model trained on regional languages, with funding to scale it and add speech.

When
4 Dec 2023
ID
WTA-N-2023-0149
Who
IMDA, AI Singapore, A*STAR, National Research Foundation Singapore

Summary by wheresthe.ai, from Infocomm Media Development Authority and the reporting credited above. Checked against the source on 9 Oct 2026.

Read the original at Infocomm Media Development Authority

Source copy: download the page text as saved on 18 Oct 2026 (PDF). Also held by the Internet Archive.

Next stop on this Storyline: What happened nextSingapore Budget 2024 sets aside over S$1 billion for AI over five years

Cite this story

WTA-N-2023-0149: “Singapore funds S$70m programme to scale the SEA-LION regional language model.” wheresthe.ai, 4 Dec 2023. https://wheresthe.ai/d/sg-national-multimodal-llm-programme-sea-lion-2023-12/ (source: Infocomm Media Development Authority).

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