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.
