HTX signs deals with tech leaders to bolster AI and GenAI capabilities

Singapore’s Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Google Cloud on Tuesday to bolster the former’s capabilities across a wide range of artificial intelligence (AI) areas. 

The agreement comes a day after HTX inked deals with Mistral AI and Microsoft that would augment the agency’s capabilities to develop cutting-edge generative AI (GenAI) models and platforms to enhance Home Team operations. 

These collaborations were part of the government agency’s HTxAI push to apply cutting-edge developments in AI to public safety and security. 

In a statement, HTX said the deal with Google Cloud builds on the agency’s longtime partnership with the cloud services provider.

The aim was to explore cooperation in areas including AI security and cybersecurity research; AI model development; implementation of cloud platforms, infrastructure and services; AI-enabled software solutions; as well as AI governance and training.  

Since launching its HTxAI movement in June last year, the agency has been ramping up the hiring of AI talent as a part of its effort to be an “AI-first agency that empowers an AI-enabled Home Team”.  

Air-gapped cloud 

In the areas of cloud platform, infrastructure and services, HTX will adopt Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) Air-Gapped to meet the needs of Home Team agencies.  

To subscribe to the GovInsider bulletin, click here.

GDC Air-Gapped is a fully managed solution for organisations requiring complete isolation to meet stringent sovereignty and regulatory requirements.  

The agency will also work closely with Google Cloud to explore AI governance models and guardrails for public safety use cases related to explainable AI, robust AI and AI safety. 

As part of this collaboration, both sides will also explore the development of a GenAI Solution Accelerator for deployment in GDC Air-Gapped, and deploying Google’s AI models on Vertex AI for agentic AI, robotics and embodied AI. 

The solutions that HTX and Google Cloud collaborate on could eventually be adopted by public safety agencies around the world, thus helping save lives and making the world a safer place, the agency said. 

Focus on GenAI for public safety 

Under the contract signed with Mistral AI and Microsoft, the two will collaborate as the agency’s research partners. 

Microsoft will work with HTX to fine-tune Phi-4-multimodal, a small language model (SLM) for Home Team use cases. HTX will also work with Microsoft on integrating SLM training frameworks into HTX’s AI platform and infrastructure. 

Mistral AI, on its part, will work with HTX on fine-tuning Mistral AI’s Large Language Models (LLMs) for Home Team use and to build the Home Team’s series of LLMs, codenamed Phoenix. 

Mistral AI will provide its expertise in LLM training, and Microsoft will anchor the technology platform and infrastructure for these initiatives. 

Phoenix LLMs 

Phoenix is a family of locally optimised models that have been pre-trained on extensive corpora of knowledge specific and relevant to the Home Team and Singapore, as well as 10 major languages spoken in Singapore, including Mandarin, Bahasa Melayu, and Tamil.  

This would allow Home Team officers to get more accurate responses compared to other kinds of LLMs. 

According to HTX, Phoenix would be progressively deployed as an AI chatbot accessible to Home Team officers and as an API for AI developers to build operational applications.  

This innovation marks a significant step forward in establishing sovereign AI capabilities within the Home Team, said HTX. 

The contract will also involve the deployment of Mistral AI’s platform, which enables inference and fine-tuning of APIs, building custom models for Home Team Departments, and capability development for cutting-edge AI research techniques, said HTX. 

In addition, HTX will develop a single unified platform to host the LLMs and Vision Language Models (VLMs) it develops.  

Explaining the rationale, HTX said a single platform would democratise AI use across the Home Team by providing easier access to state-of-the-art AI models. 

Establishing HTX as a leader in AI 

Being able to train LLMs from scratch as well as to manage their deployment and orchestration would establish HTX as a leader in AI, the agency said. 

It added that only a few organisations in Singapore have managed to build their own LLM from the ground up. 

In a statement on the contract with Mistral AI and Microsoft, HTX Chief AI Officer and Assistant Chief Executive (Digital and Enterprise), Ang Chee Wee, said the agency recognised the potential for AI to “significantly improve the efficiency of certain operations, which in turn allows Home Team officers to focus on more critical roles related to enhancing the safety and security of Singapore”.  

“This collaboration with industry leaders Mistral AI and Microsoft will allow us to fast-track our progress to empower the Home Team with AI,” he added. 

In a separate statement, Ang added: “As HTX builds up our 500-strong AI workforce, we will work with partners to bring in best-in-class AI tools, platform and infrastructure.  

“We are confident that this collaboration with Google Cloud will propel HTX’s efforts to develop AI innovations for the Home Team to the next level, which would in turn bolster the safety of the public in Singapore.”