Technology
Open Source AI Tools Singapore: Current AI's Language Infrastructure
Singapore-based nonprofit Current AI partners with governments to build affordable, accessible AI infrastructure for underserved languages without internet dependency.
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How we reported this
A nonprofit called Current AI is developing open public artificial intelligence infrastructure to address gaps in language representation and data control. The group focuses on tools that operate without internet access and respect community input on data use.
Current AI formed in February 2025 under founder Martin Tisne. Ayah Bdeir joined as chief executive in January after heading artificial intelligence strategy at Mozilla and previously creating the education company littleBits, which sold to Sphero in 2019. The organization positions itself as a public-private partnership that gathers governments, companies and philanthropies to support public-interest technology projects.
Early Projects Target Language Access
In February the group collaborated with Bhashini, the Indian government’s artificial intelligence language division, at the India AI Summit. Their work produced Suno Sutra, an offline pocket device that runs in 22 Indian languages. Bdeir noted in an interview that hundreds of languages and dialects in India currently lack representation in AI systems. The device is released as open source so developer communities can extend it.
Last month Current AI distributed 3.2 million dollars in grants to four organizations working in Kenya, Lebanon and the Brazilian Amazon. One effort builds datasets in more than 50 African languages for health, farming and education uses. Another digitizes Arab cultural records under community control. A third creates offline tools with Indigenous groups in the Amazon. The fourth develops audit methods for AI accountability across Africa. Last week the nonprofit released an open-source chatbot assembled in seven weeks with ten partner organizations at the AI for Good Summit in Geneva.
Funding and Data Control Goals
The French government provided an initial 100 million dollars, with additional commitments from the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, DeepMind and Salesforce bringing total pledged support to 400 million dollars. Bdeir described the backers as funders rather than investors. She stated that if AI will transform daily life then a public alternative must exist alongside commercial systems, modeled on the early World Wide Web. Bdeir also stressed that data ownership should remain with communities instead of distant companies, and that models and data should stay local with consent rules built into every step.
Current AI has also agreed with Sakana AI to develop a shared open-source stack that supports Japanese language and culture while extending to other overlooked regions. The nonprofit views these early grants and releases as starting points for broader community-led development rather than rapid global scale.