Home Team Science and Technology Agency (HTX) and Google Cloud have signed a strategic collaboration agreement to bolster the Singapore agency’s capabilities across a wide range of artificial intelligence (AI) areas.

The duo said in a statement on Tuesday that this strategic collaboration agreement builds on HTX and Google Cloud’s longtime partnership, and aims to explore scientific and technological cooperation in areas including AI security and cybersecurity research; AI model development; implementation of cloud platform, infrastructure and services; AI-enabled software solutions; as well as AI governance and training.

Since launching its HTxAI movement on 1 June 2024, HTX has been focused on ramping up the hiring of AI talent as an AI-first agency that empowers an AI-enabled Home Team.

Among the AI innovations HTX has already created include Phoenix, a series of large language models (LLMs) trained on Home Team data that would improve the accuracy and efficiency of a wide range of tasks, including data analysis and information processing.

In the area of cloud platform, infrastructure and services, HTX will adopt Google Distributed Cloud (GDC) Air-Gapped in 2025 to meet the needs of Home Team agencies.

GDC Air-Gapped is a fully managed solution for organizations requiring complete isolation to meet stringent sovereignty and regulatory requirements.

The agency will also work closely with Google Cloud to explore AI governance models and guardrails for public safety use cases related to Explainable AI, Robust AI and AI safety.

“AI is poised to become a cornerstone of public sector operations, transforming how government agencies serve their constituents and make decisions,

“Our expanded partnership with HTX sees us working together to develop and deploy advanced AI and cloud solutions in the public safety domain in Singapore, and can serve as a model for governments around the world,” said Karan Bajwa, President, Asia Pacific, Google Cloud.

As part of this collaboration, both sides will also explore the development of a GenAI Solution Accelerator for deployment in GDC Air-Gapped, and the deployment of Google’s AI models on Vertex AI for agentic AI, robotics and embodied AI.

These solutions that HTX and Google Cloud collaborate on can eventually be adopted by public safety agencies around the world, thus helping save lives and make the world a safer place.

Regarding cooperation in the area of AI model development, Google Cloud will work with HTX to train and finetune Google’s industry-leading AI models to advance HTX’s mission and operations.

“AI has the potential to transform our work in ensuring the safety and security of Singaporeans,

“The challenges we face in the realm of public safety are constantly changing, and we must stay ahead of the curve by leveraging the latest in AI technologies if we are to tackle them effectively,” said Ang Chee Wee, HTX’s Chief AI Officer and Assistant Chief Executive (Digital and Enterprise).

“As HTX builds up our 500-strong AI workforce, we will work with partners to bring in best-in-class AI tools, platform and infrastructure,

“We are confident that this collaboration with Google Cloud will propel HTX’s efforts to develop AI innovations for the Home Team to the next level, which would in turn bolster the safety of the public in Singapore,” he added.

Singapore’s Whale secures $60M to expand enterprise AI suite globally