Indosat & GoTo launch multilingual AI model for Indonesia
Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison and GoTo Group have launched Sahabat-AI, a 70-billion-parameter large language model (LLM) and multilingual chat service, to advance Indonesia's sovereign artificial intelligence capabilities.
The newly released Sahabat-AI model is configured to operate across five local Indonesian languages: Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese, Sundanese, Balinese, and Bataknese. This multilingual capacity aims to increase accessibility for millions of Indonesians, enabling broader integration of AI into workflows by users ranging from startups and university research labs to government institutions.
The expanded capabilities of Sahabat-AI have also allowed for the deployment of a new chat service, accessible via sahabat-ai.com or under "Popular Services" within the GoPay app. The chat solution provides natural-language responses and reasoning capacities for users, leveraging the extensive training underpinning the model.
The Sahabat-AI launch, described by GoTo Group and Indosat as a key development in Indonesia's open-source AI ecosystem, builds on efforts initiated at Indosat's Indonesia AI Day in 2024. This initiative aims to reinforce the country's digital sovereignty and aligns with the Indonesian government's objectives related to technology development and national data protection.
Patrick Walujo, Chief Executive Officer of GoTo Group, said, "With the launch of our 70 billion parameter model and the new chat service, Sahabat-AI takes a major leap forward in building a uniquely Indonesian AI ecosystem. Its multilingual capability, combined with enhanced accuracy, enables Sahabat-AI to better serve the diverse needs of people and businesses across the country. It reflects our commitment to digital sovereignty and supports President Prabowo's vision for locally developed, locally hosted technology."
He added, "By building this model in partnership with Indosat and a broad range of partners, we've created a platform that is smarter, faster, and more affordable. We're also making the Sahabat-AI chat service available through the GoPay app, which is used by millions, ensuring people across the country can easily benefit from this uniquely Indonesian LLM."
"Sahabat-AI is already making a significant impact on customers across the GoTo ecosystem, lowering costs, improving service quality, and deepening engagement. More than a technological breakthrough, Sahabat-AI is a strategic advantage for us, and a powerful engine of growth for Indonesia's digital economy."
Vikram Sinha, President Director and Chief Executive Officer of Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison, said, "Indosat is proud to lead the development of Indonesia's sovereign AI capabilities. Through GPU Merdeka, our sovereign AI cloud, we're laying the digital foundation to ensure that AI innovation is not only advanced but also nationally secured, culturally relevant, and equitably accessible. Sahabat-AI is more than a model — it's a national asset powered by collaboration and built for all Indonesians."
An essential component of Sahabat-AI's infrastructure is GPU Merdeka, described by Indosat as a sovereign AI cloud. This system is operated locally and serves as the primary computing environment for model training and deployment, ensuring Indonesian data residency and compliance with national regulations. The localised infrastructure is also proposed as a supporting factor for the public sector's adoption of AI solutions and for facilitating enterprise innovation.
To ensure local cultural and contextual optimisation, Sahabat-AI's development has involved collaborative efforts spanning universities, research institutions, media organisations, and government bodies. Collaborating universities include the University of Indonesia, Gadjah Mada University, Bandung Institute of Technology, IPB University, University of Udayana, and University of Sumatera Utara. Media partners have consisted of Kompas Group, Republika, Tempo, and Hukumonline.
The policy alignment and national focus of the project were reinforced by Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Chairman of the National Economic Council, who said, "Data sovereignty isn't just a technical matter, it's a matter of national independence in the digital era. I applaud GoTo and Indosat for pioneering the ecosystem of Sahabat-AI, and fostering technological innovation rooted in our national identity. By developing AI solutions that understand and cater to our unique yet diverse linguistic and cultural landscape, we are taking a significant step towards ensuring digital transformation benefits all Indonesians."
The Sahabat-AI project also incorporates a talent development aspect aimed at nurturing Indonesia's next generation of AI engineers and researchers. A structured internship scheme enables university students to engage directly in developing the AI model, providing them with practical exposure to data preparation, architectural design, and AI deployment processes.
Komang Ayu, an intern from the University of Udayana, shared, "This experience deepened my understanding of the end-to-end development of large language models. I learned how to collect and preprocess datasets, explored model architectures, and gained practical insights into how data is prepared and used to train AI models."
Sahabat-AI also supports open access to its technology base, with earlier versions of the model downloaded 35,000 times from Hugging Face. The current large language model is similarly available to developers for experimentation and implementation, underscoring an intent to foster ecosystem-wide collaboration on Indonesian AI applications.
All data and GPU infrastructure supporting the Sahabat-AI LLM are located within Indonesia or on users' own servers, which is designed to guarantee compliance with Indonesian data regulations and open possibilities for secure, sovereign, AI-enabled public sector services. The solution's technical design reportedly allows it to run efficiently on as few as two H100 GPUs, making it more accessible for organisations and research groups with limited resources.
