Bangladesh to launch sovereign AI within a year

Bangladesh plans to launch its sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure within the next 12 months and make it available to the private sector, startups, universities and students, said Rehan Asad, adviser to the prime minister on ICT and telecommunications.

The infrastructure will allow local developers to build large language models (LLMs) in Bangla and develop AI-based services, he added.

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“Most of the major global tech partnerships are already at a mature stage. We have secured the sourcing of computing chips,” Rehan said at the AI and Innovation Dialogue jointly organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Governance Innovation Unit of the Prime Minister’s Office at the foreign ministry in Dhaka yesterday.

“We will launch our sovereign AI infrastructure within the next 12 months and open it to the private sector, startups, universities and students to build future LLMs in Bangla and develop innovative services,” he said.

The government has opted for a small, modular facility instead of building a large AI centre from the outset, Rehan said.

If demand from the private sector is strong, locally owned companies could co-locate at the facility and use its computing infrastructure, he added.

The government is also working to secure high-end graphics processing units (GPUs), which are needed to train and run advanced AI models.

Rehan said Bangladesh would be able to secure the world’s best GPUs for government data centres and Bangladesh-owned private companies through ongoing government-to-government discussions.

Securing high-end GPUs can be difficult, as delivery times can stretch to several years even when buyers have sufficient funds, he said.

“We will not face challenges in securing GPUs very soon,” Rehan said, adding that work was underway to ensure access to advanced computing hardware.

The government is also working to secure memory chips and plans to hold discussions with major industry players, with the aim of ensuring adequate supplies of both computing and memory chips for the next decade.

POWER, WATER CONCERNS

Power and water availability will be major considerations in developing AI infrastructure, Rehan said.

A conventional Google search uses about 0.3 watt-hours of electricity, while an AI-generated response on current platforms can use around 2.9 watt-hours, he said. This means AI computing is much more power-intensive.

Although AI systems are expected to become more efficient as the technology advances, overall electricity demand will remain a concern, he added.

Water availability is also important because AI infrastructure requires significant cooling capacity.

The government is therefore considering both power and water availability when selecting locations for AI facilities, Rehan said.

He added that the facilities would have multiple power sources and their own power-generation capacity instead of relying entirely on the national grid, as uninterrupted power is essential for such operations.

Ashfaq Zaman, founder of Dhaka Forum, said Bangladesh already has the basic building blocks of a digital state, including biometric NIDs, mobile financial services, a national QR code standard, around 300 million archived Bangla documents and D-Nothi across 17,000 offices.

“The real constraint is not the lack of systems but their failure to connect. AI can help bridge this gap. A single Bangla large language model for the government, trained on public-sector documents and hosted domestically, could help officials review drafts instead of starting from scratch,” said Ashfaq, who delivered a keynote at the event.

If each officer saves 20 minutes a day, 250,000 officers could save about 10,400 working years each year, he said.

Such gains should be measured through public-service targets covering time, cost and the number of interactions required, turning AI into a measurable governance reform, Ashfaq said.

He added that this would allow AI adoption to be assessed based on measurable improvements in public services rather than simply treating it as an information technology project.

Md Ismail Zabihullah, adviser to the prime minister on public administration affairs, said AI is no longer just a policy ambition but is becoming a practical tool for transforming public administration.

AI-enabled recruitment and postings, along with a unified digital identity and wallet, can make government services faster, more transparent and more citizen-focused, he said.

At the same time, strong data protection and cybersecurity must remain a priority.

Bangladesh should also move beyond being a technology consumer and build the capacity to develop, own and export high-value technology products and AI-based services, he added.

Humaiun Kobir, state minister-1 at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Shama Obaed Islam, state minister-2, also spoke.