Kyivstar and Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation Select Google Gemma as the Foundation for Ukraine’s National LLM

Rhea-AI Summary

VEON (Nasdaq: VEON) said Kyivstar and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation selected Google Gemma as the foundation for a national Ukrainian large language model (LLM), using Google Vertex AI for computing.

Kyivstar will operationally lead model development, optimize Gemma for Ukrainian, refine the tokenizer, and train on curated Ukrainian datasets while keeping sensitive national data stored and processed in Ukraine. The LLM aims to cover dialects, terminology, history and serve government, healthcare, finance and private-sector use cases.

News Market Reaction – VEON

-2.62%

1 alert

-2.62% News Effect

On the day this news was published, VEON declined 2.62%, reflecting a moderate negative market reaction.

Data tracked by StockTitan Argus on the day of publication.

Market Reality Check

Price: $55.89 Vol: Volume 49,558 is below th...

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$55.89 Last Close

Volume Volume 49,558 is below the 20-day average of 100,260 (relative volume 0.49). low

Technical Price 50.92 is trading above the 200-day MA at 49.27 and about 20% below the 52-week high.

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Sector peers show mixed, company-specific moves; for example, LBTYB appeared in ...

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Sector peers show mixed, company-specific moves; for example, LBTYB appeared in momentum scanners, moving 5.84% up without same-day news, while other telecom peers posted smaller changes.

Historical Context

5 past events · Latest: Dec 10 (Positive)

Pattern 5 events

Date	Event	Sentiment	Move	Catalyst
Dec 10	Industry awards	Positive	+0.8%	Recognition for JazzCash, Kyivstar, and Jazz at World Communication Awards.
Dec 10	Index inclusion	Positive	+0.8%	Added to S&P Global BMI and MSCI Ukraine Index, boosting visibility.
Dec 08	AI data center	Positive	+0.2%	Beeline Kazakhstan began building a sovereign Tier III Hyper Cloud center.
Dec 01	Ukrainian LLM choice	Positive	-2.6%	Kyivstar and Digital Ministry chose Google Gemma for national LLM.
Nov 25	AI partnership	Positive	+2.7%	QazCode–MeetKai deal to develop national LLMs and agentic AI services.

Pattern Detected

VEON’s positive strategic and recognition news has usually seen small positive price reactions, with one notable divergence on similar Kyivstar/LLM news.

Recent Company History

Over recent months, VEON highlighted multiple strategic initiatives. On Nov 25, 2025, it detailed a QazCode–MeetKai agreement to build sovereign AI stacks across several markets, which saw a 2.67% gain. An AI-focused data-center build in Kazakhstan on Dec 8, 2025 also drew a positive but modest reaction. Index inclusions into the S&P Global BMI and MSCI Ukraine Index, and industry awards for Kyivstar, JazzCash, and Jazz, were followed by small gains around 0.83%. By contrast, earlier news on this Ukrainian LLM collaboration coincided with a -2.62% move, marking a divergence.

Market Pulse Summary

This announcement details Kyivstar and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation selecting Google...

Analysis

This announcement details Kyivstar and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation selecting Google Gemma and Vertex AI as the foundation for a sovereign Ukrainian LLM. It extends VEON’s strategy of building local-language AI capabilities, following earlier national LLM and data-center initiatives. Investors may track milestones such as tokenizer optimization, Ukrainian dataset training, and deployment of government and enterprise use cases, while also considering VEON’s wider regulatory filings and geopolitical exposures highlighted in recent reports.

Key Terms

large language model, llm, vertex ai

3 terms

large language model technical

"Ukraine’s own national large language model (“LLM”), leveraging Google’s Vertex AI"

A large language model is a computer system trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate human-like writing, like a very well-read virtual assistant that can summarize, draft, translate, or answer questions. Investors care because it can change how businesses operate and compete—boosting productivity, cutting costs, or enabling new products—while also creating risks around accuracy, regulation, and security that can affect revenue and valuation.

llm technical

"Ukraine’s own national large language model (“LLM”), leveraging Google’s Vertex AI"

A large language model (LLM) is an advanced computer system trained on vast amounts of written text to understand and generate human-like language, similar to a very fast, well-read assistant that can summarize documents, draft messages, or answer questions. Investors care because LLMs can speed up research, automate customer support, and reduce costs, while also creating new product opportunities and risks around accuracy, bias, and regulatory oversight that can affect a company’s performance.

vertex ai technical

"Ukraine’s own national large language model (“LLM”), leveraging Google’s Vertex AI infrastructure for computing power."

Vertex AI is a cloud-based platform for developing, training and deploying machine learning models, providing tools that let teams turn data into automated predictions and smart features. For investors, it matters because using such a platform can speed product development, lower data-science costs and scale AI-driven services quickly—like renting a ready-made factory instead of building one—so adoption can influence a company’s growth, margins and competitive edge.

AI-generated analysis. Not financial advice.

Dubai and Kyiv, December 1, 2025: VEON Ltd. (Nasdaq: VEON), announces that Kyivstar (Nasdaq: KYIV; KYIVW), together with the WINWIN AI Center of Excellence under Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, has selected Google Gemma as the base model for developing Ukrainian LLM, Ukraine’s own national large language model (“LLM”), leveraging Google’s Vertex AI infrastructure for computing power.

As a strategic partner in this project, Kyivstar will operationally lead the development of Ukrainian LLM. The national language model aims to capture the full breadth of Ukrainian dialects, terminology, history, and context—while keeping sensitive national data securely stored and processed within Ukraine, an essential requirement for sectors such as government, healthcare, and financial services.

Google was selected after extensive evaluation, by reinforcing the technological and economic ties between Ukraine and the United States—ties that were further deepened by Kyivstar’s Nasdaq listing in August 2025. By anchoring the project on an open-source model from a global technology leader, Ukraine is positioning itself to build an LLM that reflects the country’s linguistic depth and cultural identity, while also addressing security requirements.

“We are building the Ukrainian LLM on a ready-made open-source model. The main task in development is to train it on our unique data further. When choosing a model, we focused on how well it already handles Ukrainian-language texts and how controllable it is during additional training. This will help minimize linguistic and ethical risks in our LLM,” said Danylo Tsvok, Chief AI Officer at the Ministry of Digital Transformation and CEO of the WINWIN AI Center of Excellence.

“Kyivstar and the Ukrainian Digital Ministry have taken a major step forward today. With a sovereign Ukrainian LLM, Ukrainian consumers, businesses and government institutions will be empowered to integrate cutting-edge technologies using augmented intelligence that truly speaks Ukrainian and understands Ukraine,” said Kaan Terzioglu, CEO of VEON Group. “We have a responsibility to bring the benefits of augmented intelligence to the countries we serve — through large language models trained not only on words, but on local context.”

Once completed, the Ukrainian LLM is expected to serve as the foundation for a new generation of AI-powered services across the public and private sectors in Ukraine. Potential use cases range from regulatory and legal analysis tools to domain-specific solutions in education, finance, healthcare, and beyond. By training the model on Ukrainian data, Kyivstar aims to deliver more accurate, locally relevant, and actionable outputs than general-purpose global models.

Krzysztof Kaziów, Director Customer Engineering CEE, Google Cloud said, "We are honored that the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Kyivstar have selected Gemma as the foundation for the Ukrainian national LLM. This choice underscores Gemma's strategic value, offering an optimal balance between performance and resources alongside its strong multilingual support. Leveraging its proven success as the base for leading Ukrainian LLMs, we are committed to supporting this vital initiative to enhance digital experience in Ukraine."

Kyivstar will first optimize Gemma for Ukrainian, refine the tokenizer, and train the model on curated Ukrainian datasets. Dedicated benchmarks will guide future fine-tuning and application-specific adaptation.

The initiative builds on VEON’s broader strategy to close the AI language gap across its markets. Following KazLLM in Kazakhstan and the Urdu LLM initiative in Pakistan, the Ukrainian LLM represents VEON’s next step in empowering digital ecosystems with locally relevant AI. 

About Kyivstar
Kyivstar Group Ltd. is a Nasdaq-listed holding company that operates JSC Kyivstar, Ukraine’s leading digital operator and the first Ukrainian company to have its shares traded on a U.S. stock exchange. Kyivstar Group’s operations span a broad range of connectivity and digital services, including mobile and fixed-line voice and data, ride-hailing, e-health, digital TV, and enterprise solutions such as Big Data, cloud, and cybersecurity. Together with VEON, Kyivstar intends to invest USD 1 billion in Ukraine between 2023-2027, through investments in infrastructure and technological development, charitable donations and strategic acquisitions. For more information, please visit https://investors.kyivstar.ua. Nasdaq tickers: KYIV; KYIVW

About VEON
VEON is a digital operator that provides converged connectivity and digital services to nearly 150 million connectivity and 120 million digital users. Operating across five countries that are home to more than 6% of the world’s population, VEON is transforming lives through technology-driven services that empower individuals and drive economic growth. VEON is listed on NASDAQ. For more information, visit: https://www.veon.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
This release contains “forward-looking statements”, within the meaning of the Section 27A of the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the timing and impact of the development of Ukrainian LLM. There are numerous risks, uncertainties that could cause actual results and performance to differ materially from those expressed by such statements, including risks relating to the timing and impact of the development of Ukrainian LLM, among others discussed in the section entitled “Risk Factors” in VEON’s 2024 Form 20-F filed with the SEC on April 25, 2025 and other public filings made by VEON with the SEC. The forward-looking statements contained herein speak only as of the date of this release and VEON disclaims any obligation to update them, except as required by law

Contact Information

VEON 
Hande Asik
Chief Communications and Strategy Officer
pr@veon.com

FAQ

What did VEON announce about the Ukrainian national LLM (VEON) on December 1, 2025?

VEON announced Kyivstar and Ukraine’s Digital Ministry selected Google Gemma as the base model for a national Ukrainian LLM using Google Vertex AI for compute.

Who will lead development of the Ukrainian LLM and what will they do?

Kyivstar will operationally lead development, optimize Gemma for Ukrainian, refine the tokenizer, and train on curated Ukrainian datasets.

How will the Ukrainian LLM handle sensitive national data according to the announcement?

Sensitive national data will be kept securely stored and processed within Ukraine to meet requirements for government, healthcare, and financial services.

What use cases did VEON highlight for the Ukrainian national LLM?

Planned use cases include regulatory and legal analysis, education, finance, healthcare, and other domain-specific AI services across public and private sectors.

How does the Ukrainian LLM fit into VEON’s broader AI strategy?

The project follows prior VEON-supported LLMs (KazLLM and an Urdu LLM), aiming to close the AI language gap by delivering locally relevant models across VEON markets.