Malaysia-based YTL Power International Bhd, has on Tuesday unveiled ILMU, the country’s first homegrown large language model (LLM).

The firm said in a statement that developed by its subsidary YTL AI Labs, in collaboration with Universiti Malaya, ILMU marks a major leap in the nation’s artificial intelligence (AI) aspirations – combining local intelligence and languages with best-in-class performance.

Ilmu – short for Intelek Luhur Malaysia Untukmu – is a multimodal AI model that can process and generate text, voice and images, and is ready to support real-world applications across sectors.

“The Ministry of Digital welcome ILMU, a groundbreaking Malaysian innovation by YTL AI Labs that reflects our national vision for a future driven by technology, inclusivity, and cultural relevance,” said Gobind Singh Deo, Minister of Digital of Malaysia.

“Built by Malaysians for Malaysians, ILMU showcases our ability to create world-class Al infrastructure while preserving our linguistic and cultural identity,

“This is more than just technology it is a step toward empowering our people, our businesses, and our nation in the digital era,” he added.

According to the statement, what sets ILMU apart is its culturally attuned; secure, national capability; built on national infrastructure; global-standard performance.

Fluent in Bahasa Melayu, Manglish and local dialects like Kelate – ILMU understands the way Malaysians speak, interact and ask, helping to bridge the digital divide.

It is developed with national interests, safety and data governance in mind-enabling trusted Al adoption across sectors.

Hosted on the YTL AI Cloud, it is delivering enterprise-grade performance, scalability and local data residency.

ILMU also performs on par with leading global models like GPT-4, DeepSeek, and Llama across major benchmarks.

Across global benchmarks, ILMU performs on par with state-of-the-art models like GPT-40 and Llama 3.1. ILMU achieves the highest score among all frontier models in Bahasa Melayu language understanding (MalayMMLU – a test of multi-domain knowledge in Malay), demonstrates stronger performance on real-world prompts than Llama 3.1 (Arena Hard Auto – an interactive evaluation of practical problem-solving), and matches GPT-40’s results on complex instruction-following tasks (FEval – a measure of how accurately Al follows nuanced, multi-step instructions).

“ILMU represents YTL’S commitment to innovation, rooted in Malaysia’s diverse cultural and intellectual heritage,” said Yeoh Seok Hong, Managing Director of YTL Power International Berhad.

“As we introduce this advanced Al model, we aim to empower every Malaysian with accessible, reliable and culturally relevant knowledge,

“ILMU is not just a technological leap, but a national capability that can power smarter systems, drive productivity and create progress that includes everyone – government, businesses and most importantly, the rakyat (the people),” he added.

To catalyse adoption and innovation, YTL Al Labs also announced the ILMU AI Accelerator Program in partnership with Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).

The program is open to Malaysian startups, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMES) and global solution providers seeking to utilized ILMU to build Al products and services that are rooted in local needs and ready to be scale globally.

Eligible companies will receive:
• Malaysia Digital (MD) Status and its associated benefits
• Facilitation of talent passes, work permits and visas
• MYR 5 million ($1.18 million) in free ILMU APl credits

“From virtual assistants to education and healthcare, ILMU is a flexible engine for digital transformation,

“It performs on par with global models and is already powering real solutions across industries,” said Foong Chee Mun, Chief Executive Officer of YTL AI Labs.

“When it comes to Bahasa Melayu, we are the best- performing LLM in the world,

“With APl access now available, ILMU is ready for business and we welcome developers, start-ups and enterprises to build with us and shape Malaysia’s Al future together,” he added.

At the time of launch, YTL AI Labs’ lineup of partners included Aco Tech, Ryt Bank, Astro, Media Prima, Yes, Carsome, Swipey, Vision Machina, Vistel, TeeniAl, TrustAl and Mesolitica, demonstrating early industry confidence in ILMU’s capabilities and relevance across diverse sectors.

APl access to ILMU tokens is now available for all businesses while ILMUchat (Al Chatbot) for consumers, will be available for early access on September 16.

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