VEON Expands Sovereign AI Partnership and Projects 12M Ukraine Starlink Users
VEON and MeetKai signed a memorandum of understanding at MWC to launch sovereign AI infrastructure and in-country AI services across VEON’s markets, leveraging MeetKai Atlas playbooks to standardise secure, local deployments. VEON also forecasts Ukraine’s Starlink users to rise from 5 million to 12 million by year-end, boosting connectivity revenues.
1. Expansion of Sovereign AI Infrastructure Partnership
VEON Ltd and MeetKai Inc signed a memorandum of understanding at the Mobile World Congress to explore sovereign, locally-deployed AI infrastructure and in-country AI capabilities across VEON markets. The partnership combines VEON’s regional footprint, customer access and data-centre capabilities with MeetKai’s sovereign AI platform, local language models and Atlas deployment playbooks.
2. Deployment Efficiencies and Market Rollout
MeetKai’s platform employs post-training optimization and hardware-aware deployment to significantly lower AI development and inference costs, aiming to accelerate time-to-market and enhance unit economics. The collaboration plans rapid, standardized rollouts aligned with data residency requirements and local governance processes, with potential expansion into additional strategic markets.
3. Ukraine Starlink User Growth Forecast
VEON projects Ukrainian users connecting via Starlink will climb from 5 million to 12 million by year-end, driven by enhanced network integration and bundled service offerings. This expected surge is set to boost VEON’s connectivity revenues and strengthen its digital services portfolio in a key growth market.