Features a new AI cloud infrastructure, partnerships with key industry leaders, ecosystem of solutions and services, tech incubation and acceleration programmes, talent development and sustainability initiatives
Singapore, 10 October 2024 – Singtel today announced the launch of RE:AI, its new Artificial Intelligence Cloud Service (AI Cloud) offering, aimed at democratising AI to make it widely available to organisations. This gives enterprises and public sector customers affordable access to AI technologies that can seamlessly transform their operations without needing to invest or maintain in-house infrastructure and supporting resources. The turnkey AI development and deployment platform will combine state-of-the-art AI compute infrastructure like, graphics processing units (GPUs) and storage, AI workspaces and tools, with diverse networks such as, 5G, fixed or quantum safe networks. These will be delivered through Singtel’s patented orchestration platform, ParagonTM. The offering will enable customers to deploy, manage and scale their AI applications without having to worry about the overheads of complex infrastructure, thereby allowing them to innovate and take their productivity to next level.
Singtel aims to democratise AI by working with strategic partners in five ways – through the creation of a research and development AI Cloud platform, facilitation of AI adoption for the advanced manufacturing sector, ecosystem development to accelerate the deployment of AI solutions, curation of tech incubation and acceleration programme for promising tech companies and AI skills training to empowering its workforce. Five Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) were signed with these partners in these areas, at the launch of RE:AI, which was officiated by Guest-of-Honour, Mr Gan Kim Yong, Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry. More details on these MOUs can be found in Annex 1.
"With the launch of RE:AI, we’re significantly reducing entry barriers, making AI easily accessible to enterprises, government agencies, research communities and academia – the more people have access to AI, the more innovation is bound to emerge, which in turn fuels growth. RE:AI will foster a dynamic ecosystem of partners with distinctive capabilities and platforms to accelerate AI adoption to drive innovation and growth in Singapore and the region, sustainably."
Bill Chang,
Chief Executive Officer,
Singtel Digital InfraCo
Mr Bill Chang, CEO of Singtel's Digital InfraCo, said, “Many enterprises and public sector customers have shown keen interest to bring AI into their operations. However, the high costs and long lead times for GPUs, the need for special environments to host them due to their intense energy utilisation, the complexity of AI technology and the lack of talent are key friction points in their respective journeys.”
“With the launch of RE:AI, we’re significantly reducing entry barriers, making AI easily accessible to enterprises, government agencies, research communities and academia – the more people have access to AI, the more innovation is bound to emerge, which in turn fuels growth. RE:AI will foster a dynamic ecosystem of partners with distinctive capabilities and platforms to accelerate AI adoption to drive innovation and growth in Singapore and the region, sustainably. As we build on this ecosystem, we will attract global AI tech companies here to expand into the region with our market access. This is key to positioning Singapore as a regional AI.”
Democratising AI
Singtel has been scaling its next-generation digital infrastructure and partnerships to support the growing demand for efficient, scalable and cost-effective AI solutions across industries. RE:AI will provide AI capabilities and tools through cloud-based platforms powered by Paragon. Enterprises can access ready-made solutions at their fingertips to develop customised AI environments and workspaces for any industry within minutes with a few clicks. Enterprises can deploy AI at scale and speed, with models, tools and applications orchestrated and delivered over 5G, fixed or even quantum-safe networks for a multitude of use cases.
The launch of RE:AI and partnerships are part of Singtel's strategy to accelerate digital transformation for enterprises, starting with digital infrastructure and scalable AI solutions. One of the early initiatives include the development of a new generation of sustainable, hyper-connected AI-ready data centres through its Nxera data centre arm. Nxera is on track to becoming one of the world’s largest independent data centre players with advanced liquid cooling capabilities and support for next-generation GPUs.
There have also been recent tie ups with global and local ecosystem partnerships such as Hitachi Group in Japan, the establishment of a GPU cloud alliance with Vultr and GMI Cloud in the US and Nscale in Europe as well as collaborations with Bridge Alliance, AIS, Telkom Group and Maxis to bring Singtel's AI Cloud offerings to enterprises in the region.
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ANNEX 1 – SINGTEL’S KEY INITIATIVES
Singtel will partner with leaders across areas such AI, computing, education, and manufacturing to enhance AI adoption, provide GPU access, and support talent attraction, development, and skills upgrading in Singapore, in support of Singapore’s National AI Strategy 2.0 framework.
1) AI-powered R&D platform for the Research & Academia communities
Singtel RE:AI in partnership with the National Supercomputing Centre Singapore will explore making a diversity of high-performance computing technologies available for the research community and collaborate on the Paragon platform to deliver seamless user experiences across different systems. With AI Singapore, RE:AI will develop a purpose-built AI-powered research and development platform and marketplace comprising AI tools, data products and applications, that will provide scalable, optimised solutions for the Singapore research community. It will serve as a repository for researchers to share their developed models, accessible to government and private sector users to accelerate their research outcomes.
AI Singapore's open-source SEA-LION large language model, with its associated datasets will also be hosted and further developed with advanced GPU cloud computing resources, to be used by researchers and academia globally.
2) Promoting AI adoption for the Advanced Manufacturing sector
RE:AI will collaborate with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore Manufacturing Federation (SMF), and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) to support and enable AI-related research and innovation that has the potential to create impactful outcomes for companies.
As part of this partnership, RE:AI will provide cloud infrastructure to support AI-related research and innovation. The A*STAR Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre (A*STAR ARTC) and A*STAR Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (A*STAR SIMTech) will engage manufacturing companies, providing them support in use case development, AI trials, experimentation and building industry knowledge.
Over the next three years, 150 companies from SMF’s network are expected to be involved in trials with students and academia from SIT with the goal of developing smart AI models and applications for this sector.
3) Ecosystem to accelerate the deployment of AI solutions and services
To establish Singapore as a regional AI hub, RE:AI will be partnering with leading AI applications, models and platform providers, AlphaSense, H2O.AI, Hippocratic.AI and Hive AI to launch AI software, applications, tools and models for customers, orchestrated through the Paragon platform and powered by its AI Cloud offering.
The partners will also leverage RE:AI’s GPU services to enhance their application response and improve performance.
4) Incubation and Acceleration Programme for promising AI tech companies
Singtel RE:AI and Digital Industry Singapore will launch an AI Accelerator Programme to help AI tech companies to establish, develop and scale up their operations, with the aim of attracting companies with AI capabilities to set up their regional headquarters and build a vibrant AI ecosystem in Singapore.
This programme is expected to bring in up to 15 technology companies in its first year, and support will be provided for projects that drive AI innovation.
5) AI Acceleration Academy for Singtel’s work force development and upskilling
Singtel will be collaborating with AI Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and the National University of Singapore to co-develop training programmes that will advance Singtel employees’ AI skills. Through online modules and practical workshops, more than 10,000 Singapore-based Singtel and NCS staff members will be trained in AI competencies, based on their job roles and business needs.
To further ensure a strong pipeline of AI talent, Singtel will also be working with Institutes of Higher Learning and these partners to offer 300 AI-related internships and 300 scholarship opportunities.
6) Advancing sustainability goals
In keeping with Singtel’s net zero 2045 goals, Digital InfraCo signed an MOU last week with GoNetZero, a global decarbonisation solution provider, to explore the integration of its platform comprising a suite of comprehensive end-to-end digital decarbonisation solutions with RE:AI’s offerings so its customers can buy and retire their Environmental Attributes Credits with ease.
ANNEX 2 - QUOTES FROM SINGTEL’S PARTNERS
MOU 1 – AI-powered R&D platform for research and academia communities
AI SINGAPORE
Prof Mohan Kankanhalli, Deputy Executive Chairman:
"AI Singapore is excited to embark on a transformative partnership with RE:AI, combining our expertise in AI Capability Development with pioneering Research & Development. Together, we will co-create innovative training programmes that empower individuals with essential AI skills and promote promising career pathways. Simultaneously, we will explore the development of advanced cloud solutions to boost operational efficiency. This dynamic collaboration aims to accelerate AI innovation, providing scalable, optimized solutions that benefit Singapore's workforce and research community, and beyond. By enhancing the educational landscape and advancing responsible AI practices across sectors, we envision a future where technology and human potential harmoniously align."
NATIONAL SUPERCOMPUTING CENTRE
Dr Terence Hung, Chief Executive:
"The collaboration between the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore and RE:AI is an important step and part of NSCC's strategy to diversify our high performance computing sources to support Singapore's research community, especially in accelerating AI innovations. We will be working with commercial cloud partners like RE:AI to provide our researchers with seamless access to additional GPU and CPU resources across multiple technology vendors, systems and sites."
MOU 2 – Promoting AI adoption for the Advanced Manufacturing sector
Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre (ARTC)
Dr David Low CEO, A*STAR ARTC:
"At A*STAR, we are committed to driving innovation in Singapore's manufacturing sector through the adoption of advanced AI technologies. By partnering with industry leaders and leveraging our expertise in remanufacturing and technology development, we aim to help companies enhance their productivity, competitiveness and unlock new growth opportunities. This collaboration will provide businesses with the resources and knowledge needed to experiment with AI solutions, ensuring they are well-equipped to deploy AI for the future of manufacturing."
SINGAPORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Professor Chua Kee Chaing, President:
"Our partnership with RE:AI, ARTC, SIMTech, and SMF to establish the AI Centre of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing is a collaborative effort to transform the advanced manufacturing industry through AI adoption. Through this partnership, SIT students will gain invaluable hands-on experience in addressing real-world AI applications as well as opportunities to hone their technical skills and build networks, working alongside experts at the Centre and companies. We hope that businesses can also benefit from the fresh perspectives and innovative solutions offered by our students to drive AI-led growth across the manufacturing sector.
SINGAPORE MANUFACTURING FEDERATION
Dennis Mark, CEO:
“This partnership reflects SMF’s steadfast commitment to championing manufacturing through innovation. By harnessing the potential of AI, we are equipping our sector with the critical tools needed to remain competitive and thrive in the digital age. SMF’s role in connecting 150 companies to this initiative highlights our focus on delivering tangible business outcomes. This collaboration will not only future-proof these companies but also reinforce Singapore’s position as a global leader in advanced manufacturing.”
MOU 3 – Ecosystem to accelerate the deployment of AI solutions and services
H20.AI
Sri Ambati, Founder and CEO:
“Every nation needs to be an AI nation. Public servants and ministries worldwide need their sovereign AI agencies to fulfil their missions with great outcomes. To address both local and continental needs, nations must find economical ways to take AI from pilots to production.
AI will transform the GDP of the world and every nation and community by amplifying and economic output of the population with AI agents. With the right AI infrastructure, nations of any size can leverage AI to create significant growth and transform their economies.
Public servants and all ministries worldwide need their own GPTs and sovereign AI to fulfill their missions with great outcomes and serve their people and communities.
Our partnership with RE:AI represents the future of Generative AI – purpose-led, SLMs on protected data, open source, secure, hybrid and ubiquitous on the edge at a fraction of the economic cost for training and inference.
H2O.ai is home to the world’s best AI talent with more Kaggle Grandmasters than any company or continent. With our open source community, partnership ecosystem and unique mindset of co-creation with customers we are transforming large banks, telcos and public sector by leveraging their data, upskilling their people, and building custom GenAI and Predictive AI for solving problems and bettering life of citizens globally.”
HIPPOCRATIC.AI
Munjal Shah, CEO and Co-founder:
“Hippocratic.AI is excited to be part of this movement to support the adoption of AI solutions to enable greater business innovation and growth.”
HIVE AI
Kevin Guo, CEO:
"Hive's mission is to enable companies and organizations globally in their adoption of enterprise grade AI models to solve pressing challenges. The Asia Pacific region is an important area of growth for Hive in the coming years, and we're thrilled to be partnering with RE:AI to make it easy for customers in the region to integrate Hive models."
MOU 4 – Incubation and Acceleration Programme for promising AI tech companies
DIGITAL INDUSTRY SINGAPORE (DISG)
Philbert Gomez, Executive Director & Head, Digital Industry Singapore:
“Developing a vibrant AI ecosystem requires collective industry effort. DISG’s collaboration with industry players like Singtel will help attract and anchor leading global AI companies' innovation capabilities in Singapore. We look forward to this collaboration which will further contribute to Singapore’s goal of becoming a global hub for AI innovation.”
MOU 5 – AI Acceleration Academy for Singtel’s work force development and upskilling
NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY
Prof Luke Ong, Vice President (AI & Digital Economy) and Dean, College of Computing and Data Science:
“As AI affects more facets of our lives, having AI skills will become a prerequisite for a job in the next decade. This collaboration, which leverages NTU’s strengths and resources in AI education and research, will help working professionals adapt to changes in their jobs brought about by AI through a variety of short-form courses and stackable learning pathways with industry relevance. The collaboration also aims to attract and engage NTU AI students through initiatives such as internships, book prizes and a management associate programme, contributing to Singapore’s goal to triple our pool of AI talent who create AI solutions that better society.”
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
Associate Professor Chai Kah Hin, Associate Provost (Masters' Programmes & Lifelong Education):
“This collaboration with RE:AI underscores NUS' commitment to elevating AI capabilities within Singapore's workforce, particularly among professionals in this sector. Beyond providing training programmes, NUS looks forward to partnering with RE:AI in driving innovation and reinforcing Singapore’s leadership in AI. Together, we aim to build a vibrant community of AI professionals, advancing industry expertise in this critical field.”
MOU 6 – Advancing sustainability goals
GONETZERO
Soon Sze Meng, CEO, GoNetZero™:
“GoNetZero™ is delighted to support Singtel in achieving its net-zero goals. By leveraging our expertise in decarbonisation solutions, GoNetZero™ would like to support RE:AI and its customers in actively managing and offsetting their carbon footprint, enabling meaningful progress towards their sustainability targets. This partnership underscores our shared vision to driving innovation in decarbonising the data centre ecosystem and accelerating the transition to net zero.”
ANNEX 3 - SPEECH BY BILL CHANG, CEO DIGITAL INFRACO, SINGTEL
Mr Gan Kim Yong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Industry
Ms Yong Ying-I, Singtel Board Member
Mr Kai Nagawala, Chairman of Nxera
Mr Yuen Kuan Moon, Group CEO of Singtel
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good morning and thank you for joining us today at our 8George Learning Academy to witness a key milestone in AI development for Singapore. 8George is an important facility where employees from the Singtel Group undergo their learning and development programs over the years. Let me start by thanking so many of our partners who travelled from overseas to join us here at this event.
“Public-private sector partnerships play a key role in turning impactful ideas into purposeful action. Singapore stands ready to work with both public and private sector partners to brainstorm bold ideas for change and experiment with possible solutions.” DPM Gan, that was a key takeaway from your recent speech at the Milken Institute Asia Summit, and it is a view that resonates strongly with us at Singtel.
As a leading digital enabler, we are always looking for ways to accelerate digital transformation for enterprises and government agencies – investing in next-generation digital infrastructure like 5G networks, sustainable AI-ready data centres and now, with state-of-the-art, Sovereign AI Cloud infrastructure.
Challenges for enterprises
In the months since the Singapore government announced its National AI Strategy 2.0 and intention to invest more than $1 billion over the next five years in AI compute, talent and industry development, many enterprises and organisations have shown keen interest to bring AI into their operations to drive productivity and create new value. However, the high costs and long lead times for GPUs, the need for special environments to host them due to their intense energy utilisation, the complexity of AI technology and the lack of AI talent are key friction points for most enterprises in their journeys. For AI adoption to pick up pace, public-private sector partnerships are certainly needed to address these challenges.
Singtel has already taken the first step of developing a new generation of sustainable, hyper connected AI-ready data centres through our Nxera data centre arm. Nxera is growing rapidly - from a total of 62MW in Singapore in June 2023 to more than 400MW in Southeast Asia within 1 year and it will be on track to deliver these next-generation of AI DCs from 1st Half of 2025 onwards. This rapid expansion will transform Nxera into one of the world’s largest independent data centre players capable of delivering up to 200MW (ie half of our overall capacity) with advanced liquid cooling capabilities that are highly efficient and can handle up to 150kW per rack for NVIDIA’s next-generation GB200 GPUs, compared to the traditional DC industry average of 10kW per rack densities.
It is said that rapid global AI adoption will bring about an energy crisis and pose a great challenge to the growing carbon footprint. At Singtel, we have factored this into our plans, focusing on building the most energy and water efficient Nxera data centres to host these AI workloads. Our Nxera DCs will use renewable energy for our own operations by 2028, and we are now working with our customers to assist with their needs. Last week, we announced a strategic partnership with GoNetZero, a global decarbonisation solution provider, to integrate its platform comprising a suite of comprehensive end-to-end digital decarbonisation solutions into our platform so our customers can buy and retire their Environmental Attributes Credits (EACs) with ease.
Democratising AI with our AI cloud platform
Beyond the rapid expansion of Nxera, the Singtel Digital InfraCo team has been hard at work building our AI Cloud since earlier this year, deepening our capabilities, building the platform and forging key partnerships to better harness the power of AI and accelerate business impact.
Today, we will be launching this new AI Cloud service, with the aim of democratising AI for the industry to enable wider adoption of AI to transform enterprises, drive productivity and accelerate growth. This platform and its brand reflect our belief that AI should be more open, simple, scalable and easily accessible for enterprises, government agencies, research and the academic communities.
Our patented Paragon orchestration platform forms the foundation for this vision within the Singtel AI Cloud. Paragon enables the seamless integration and management of AI software with infrastructure like GPUs, compute, storage and networks while ensuring AI workloads are delivered with the low latency service assurance, especially critical for AI inference use cases. Through Paragon, enterprises will have ready-made solutions at their fingertips so they can develop customised AI environments and workspaces for any industry, within minutes, with just a few clicks. AI services can then be deployed at speed and at scale, with the AI models, tools and applications orchestrated and delivered over our 5G, fixed or even Quantum safe networks for various AI use cases.
Empowering enterprises with our AI ecosystem
To achieve our stated ambition, we have developed strategic partnerships that cover five key areas – enhancing the collaboration among the research & scientific community, the promotion of AI adoption for the advanced manufacturing sector, the development of an ecosystem to accelerate the deployment of AI solutions, the curation of tech incubation and acceleration programmes for promising tech companies. And finally, investments in AI skills training and development for our workforce.
Let me give you some details on these strategic partnerships through the 5 sets of MOUs that we will be signing with our partners later.
Firstly, we are partnering the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) and AI SG to establish an “AI-powered R&D platform” for our researchers and the academic sector. With NSCC, we will co-innovate and improve AI infrastructure to make it more open, scalable and flexible for users. Leveraging our Paragon platform, together with AI Singapore’s software capabilities, we will deliver curated AI Services, so as to ensure repeatability and scalability of the use of AI within the sector to increase and accelerate R&D outcomes. Also, as we work with the Research & Academic sector, we hope to identify and support the local AI entrepreneurs and startups in this journey.
In our 2nd MOU, we are creating an “AI Centre of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing, in collaboration with Advanced Remanufacturing and Technology Centre (ARTC), SIMTech, Singapore Manufacturing Federation (SMF), and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). Our goal here is to support the transformation of 150 advanced manufacturing companies through AI adoption in the next three years.
With the industry expertise of ARTC, SIMTech and access to our AI Cloud Service, we will jointly develop an advanced manufacturing focused AI platform to accelerate the transformation of these global and local companies. SMF will be a key partner in promoting the AI outreach programs to their members in the advanced manufacturing sector. SIT will support these companies in their joint trials and developmental projects by contributing their applied research and learning pedagogies while at the same time giving their staff and students a deeper industry exposure as they work alongside these companies in their AI transformation journeys. This collaboration is expected to speed up the adoption of smart AI models and applications for the advanced manufacturing sector to make them more competitive.
In our 3rd MOU, we are partnering with innovative AI industry leaders like, Alpha-sense, H2O.AI, Hippocratic.AI and Hive.ai to build a rich AI eco-system here. These strategic partnerships will allow us to combine the power of their respective AI solutions with our cutting-edge AI Cloud services, orchestrated by our Paragon platform. We aim to establish even more of such partnerships to build a robust AI eco-system for the holistic needs of our industry, with solutions across various vertical industries and horizontal segments like AI tools, models and applications. With these combined capabilities, Singtel and our partners will jointly enable enterprises to adopt these innovative AI solutions with our sovereign GPUs, to power and transform their businesses at speed and at scale.
Fourthly, we will launch an AI Accelerator Programme in partnership with DISG for Singapore-based companies and also to attract global AI tech companies to set up their regional operations in Singapore. EDB will co-fund AI-related developments while Singtel will support them with our AI Cloud platform and more importantly, facilitate their business expansion with our market access within Singapore and across the region through our regional associates and partners. Together, we will support these AI tech companies to help establish, develop and scale up their operations to build an exciting AI ecosystem here and thus, positioning Singapore as a key AI hub of the region.
Our fifth MOU is about developing and empowering our workforce with the relevant AI skills and knowledge to ensure that they are ready for an AI future. We are launching an AI Acceleration Academy (“AAA”) in partnership with AI Singapore, NTU and NUS. We aim to train and develop more than our 10,000 employees across Singtel and NCS over the next few years so they can become more AI proficient, thereby increasing the overall productivity and competitiveness of our workforce. Thus, it is most apt that we are launching this program here at our 8 George Learning Academy. We hope our collaboration with these Institutes of Higher Learning will also encourage other businesses to follow suit with the curriculum that’s been developed in this partnership and be better positioned to take advantage of the AI revolution that is accelerating ahead of us.
Closing
In closing, as we were planning our AI Cloud strategy, establishing the platform, building the infrastructure and developing our partnership eco-system, the leaders of the Digital InfraCo business were also working on a new brand that we will unveil shortly. This brand has been designed with the aim of inspiring our employees and partners involved to continuously create the best platform with the mission to democratise AI for our customers and the industry.
As a digital industry leader, we play a key role in supporting the NAIS 2.0 masterplan, adding value to various industry sectors while empowering our workforce to be more AI ready. In democratising AI, we are enabling its adoption at scale - faster, easier and more efficiently. We believe that our AI Cloud service with our diverse partner ecosystem will serve as key catalysts and create a multiplier effect on our industries as they transform with AI.
Today marks an important milestone and the start of an exciting AI journey ahead for us at Singtel and our partner ecosystem. Let's re-imagine AI to create the art of the possible.
Let’s build the future together!
Thank you.