Vietnamese startups plan to grow with generative AI

AI Hay and Kompato AI have been selected for the AWS Global Generative AI Accelerator programme. The announcement was made on September 18 at the "AWS Cloud Day Vietnam: AI Edition” held in Hanoi.

The Generative AI Accelerator Programme is the first of its kind launched by a cloud provider, and the selection process is highly competitive, with only 2 per cent of applicants chosen. The programme aims at promoting and supporting startups worldwide in developing and innovating GenAI applications.

Among them, Southeast Asia has three startups on the list, with two from Vietnam. Through the programme, startups can gain access to mentorship, training programmes, and credits, all of which are incredibly valuable to startups.

Building big dream with generative AI

AI Hay is a social network designed in a Q&A format, helping to transform knowledge access by combining search, social networking, and AI in a way that surpasses traditional search solutions. The product of AI Hay applies large language models customised for Vietnamese culture.

Talking to VIR, Nguyen Tho Chuong, head of AI at AI Hay, said, “Regarding language expansion, our current focus is on Vietnamese. While we do have international ambitions, we’re not looking to enter highly competitive markets like English, where major players such as OpenAI and Google dominate. Instead, we plan to focus on languages with medium to low resources, particularly in Southeast Asia and neighbouring regions, where we can provide unique value and avoid direct competition with larger companies.”

Since its launch, AI Hay has processed about 10 million questions a month, ranging from highly specific data requests, like flood information, to everyday social queries. AI Hay is currently serving the needs of Vietnamese users but aims to expand to the international market in the future.

Similarly, Kompato AI offers consumer lending institutions a full-stack AI platform for account receivable management that delivers robust compliance, scalability, and efficiency.

"The AWS Generative AI Accelerator will help Kompato AI efficiently scale our solution across Asia and America," said Nguyen An Nguyen, CEO of Kompato AI. "Kompato AI is heartened to be a part of the programme and the chance for us to showcase how generative AI can create new ways to innovate in our industry. We look forward to the journey together with our fellow builders and industry experts."

Sharing the AI business journey, founded in 2022, Eklipse.gg is an AI-powered platform designed to help streamers and content creators turn their best moments into viral short-form clips. Eklipse is now growing rapidly with over half a million users from 80 countries in the world, with half of them in the US and Europe.

Quan Bui, the co-founder and CTO of Eklipse.gg said, “As for AI, with new models coming out frequently, we need to iterate quickly to find the best models for our use case, balancing performance and cost. AWS helps us accelerate development time and cut costs by about 40 per cent.”

According to Priya Lakshmi, head of AWS’s ASEAN startups business, these are pioneering startups in the new wave of business transformation, pushing the boundaries of AI to create potential solutions for the market and help address major global challenges.

Lakshmi compared startups to the lifeblood of innovation. "Startups are leading a wave of transformation, pushing the boundaries of AI and bringing new creative solutions to the market," she assessed.

According to PitchBook Data researchers, GenAI startups in Asia-Pacific have raised more than $2.5 billion in 2024, surpassing the total amount of the previous three years combined. Pitchbook’s data also notes there are currently 765 AI and machine learning (ML) companies in Vietnam that have raised over $47.3 million in investment as of 2024.

However, 35 per cent of generative AI companies globally have offices in countries other than their headquarters, indicating there are still many opportunities to support domestic businesses in expanding their international operations.

The key to success

According to startups, they are at a critical moment right now in Vietnam and globally with GenAI. In the past, many local teams might have started small, focusing on building something local before thinking globally. But with GenAI, things have changed. It’s now accessible to everyone, it’s more democratised and the world is more connected than ever.

That means, even for a startup, there’s no need to limit themselves to just one country, they can aim for global impact from the start. To put it in further context, there are 100 million people here in Vietnam, but there are over 8.2 billion in the world.

Chuong from AI Hay shared that building a culturally aware AI has definitely been a challenging journey for the startup, but there two critical components that have guided its success.

First is deep understanding of the culture. And the second component is having the resources to iterate. “We have experimented with many approaches, and only a handful have made it to production. But that’s part of the startup process;experimenting, learning, and iterating fast. We are proud that we’ve been able to overcome these challenges and deliver a platform that works,” said Chuong.

From AI Hay's operational experience, Chuong believes that experienced entities that support startups are needed to accompany them. “Through our journey, we have also learned that collaborating with experienced enablers is key to success. Our partnership with AWS has given us access to infrastructure, high-performance computing, GPUs, and Amazon Bedrock LLM inference framework, enabling us to train much larger models. For example, we’ve developed a reward model with eight billion parameters,a huge leap from the 100 million-parameter models we were previously able to build.”

For Eklipse.gg, it has key strengths. First, the company has a strong core AI capability that sets it apart. This technology enables it to deliver high-quality, effective solutions. And second, they are leveraging the rich talent pool in Vietnam. The country has a growing number of skilled AI professionals and students, which allows it to rapidly innovate and implement new ideas. This local talent pool not only supports its technological development but also enables it to move quickly and adapt to new opportunities.

“Advancements in AI technology have opened up many new opportunities, allowing startups to expand rapidly. While we currently have a strong presence in the US market, we are now exploring new ideas and potential applications of our technology in various sectors such as e-commerce and beyond. Our future targets include continuing to grow internationally and adapting our solutions to different markets and industries,” Quan Bui noted.

Vietnamese startups, particularly in the largest cities, are witnessing significant international investments, reflecting the country’s rising prominence and commitment to innovation.

Vietnam's tech ecosystem received total funding of $35.7 million in the first quarter of 2024, according to a report released by Tracxn Technologies on April 2.

Despite being in a fledgling state, more Vietnamese deep-tech startups are looking for Japanese funding and backing to scale up their operations.