Viettel’s 120-Billion-Parameter Vietnamese Model Anchors a Sovereign AI Push With VNPT and FPT
Viettel AI has built VT-Super-120B-A12B, a Vietnamese large language model with 120 billion parameters trained by Vietnamese engineers, VietnamPlus reported on October 21 in a look at how domestic technology groups are pursuing sovereign AI. Le Dang Ngoc, sales director of Viettel’s Data and AI Services Centre, said the model is meant to become core technology for public administration, business operations, customer care, data analysis and legal support for local organisations.
Ngoc defined sovereign AI as the ability of a country or company to develop and control its own infrastructure, data, models, applications, people and legal framework, across the full stack from data centres, cloud and chips to processing data under domestic law. VNPT, meanwhile, says that after about seven years of investment it has developed more than 100 specialised AI models that have handled over 2 billion requests, served around 40 million people and supported more than 200 businesses as well as many state agencies. The group wants VNPT AI to become a centre for developing and commercialising Vietnamese-owned AI products.
FPT Smart Cloud chief executive Le Hong Viet said sovereign technology infrastructure is essential for national digital capacity and proposed three foundations: sovereign AI infrastructure, data platforms and data use, and putting data and technology to work for citizens, businesses and government decisions. FPT signed a partnership with Korea’s NAVER Cloud on October 12 to take its AI Factory business to global markets.
What it means in practice
The new model extends work covered on this site, from Viettel’s legal AI agents built on Nemotron to FPT’s token factory and GPU cloud launches. Edge deployment is part of the picture too, as in VNPT’s expanded edge AI pact with Qualcomm.
The policy backdrop is ambitious. Politburo Resolution 57 aims to put Vietnam among the top three Southeast Asian countries in AI research and development by 2030, and the country passed an AI law in 2025. Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Hoang Minh said Vietnam now has 42 commercial data centres with about 372 MW of designed capacity. For businesses, a credible domestic model could reduce reliance on foreign platforms for sensitive government and legal work, though the article gave no benchmark comparisons with global models.
What to watch: whether Viettel publishes benchmarks or opens wider access to VT-Super-120B-A12B, which ministries and companies adopt it first, and how the FPT and NAVER Cloud partnership shapes regional demand for Vietnamese AI capacity.