The Arabic LLM, a 100 billion parameter model based on Huawei’s self-developed Pangu, has been trained with local data to ensure “understanding of the local culture, history, knowledge customs and more of the Arab world”, the company’s cloud unit said in a statement on Tuesday.
Trained in modern standard Arabic, the LLM can enable enterprises to build their own AI model catering to different local languages in the Arabic speaking world, and for various industries such as banking and education, William Dong, president of Huawei Cloud’s marketing, said on the sidelines of the company’s Cloud Summit in Cairo.
Huawei said its LLM’s automatic speech recognition capability has an accuracy rate of 96 per cent, enabling it to cover over 20 Arabic-speaking countries. The model was also trained on industry data sets that covered digital power, oil and gas, and finance to support various sectors.
“We believe that every country should have AI capabilities to preserve [their] local culture and that AI models should be developed and trained with local languages, enabling vertical industries to become more efficient,” said Jacqueline Shi, president of global marketing and sales services at Huawei Cloud.
The Arabic LLM will be supported by the company’s new data centre launched on the same day in Cairo, which makes Huawei the first in the world to provide a public cloud service in Egypt, according to the company.
The new Cairo region, which will provide cloud services to 28 African countries including Egypt, Ethiopia and Algeria, will mark Huawei’s 33rd cloud region globally.
Huawei’s launch of the Arabic LLM and the cloud service in Egypt comes amid ongoing efforts by the US-sanctioned firm to attract overseas industrial clients, banking on their growing demand for generative AI.
Last July, Huawei unveiled version 3.0 of Pangu. The firm has pushed for the adoption of its own LLM in sectors such as coal mining and railways.
While its Arabic LLM is new to Egypt, Huawei’s Pangu model has already been adopted in real-life use cases in China and other regions, such as assisting judges in analysing court recordings and helping doctors verify their prescriptions, said Colin Hu, president of enterprise and cloud business at Huawei Northern Africa.
Huawei’s expansion in cloud computing is part of its ongoing efforts to forge deeper ties with traditional industries and corporations as it seeks to diversify revenue streams. Citing national security risks, the US has slapped multiple sanctions on the company since May 2019, when Huawei was added to Washington’s Entity List. That move cut off Huawei’s access to critical American technologies and all but killed its lucrative global smartphone business.
Huawei’s cloud computing business was one of the strongest growth sectors for the company, expanding 21.9 per cent last year to 55.29 billion yuan (US$7.6 billion), according to its 2023 annual report.
The company is the second-largest cloud services provider in China, according to research firm Canalys, and it has been steadily expanding its global footprint. Last year it opened new data centres in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
In Egypt, Huawei previously announced plans to invest US$300 million over the next five years to build its public cloud service in the region, which includes US$200 million to support 200 local software partners.
