VEON and MeetKai Expand Collaboration to Explore Sovereign AI Infrastructure Partnerships

Rhea-AI Summary

VEON (Nasdaq: VEON) expanded its partnership with MeetKai on March 3, 2026, signing a memorandum of understanding to explore sovereign, in‑country AI infrastructure across VEON markets. The collaboration targets standardized, secure local deployments aligned with data residency and governance to accelerate AI services for consumers and enterprises.

The partnership aims to apply MeetKai’s efficient LLM and deployment techniques to optimize unit economics, reduce development and inference costs, and speed time‑to‑market while scaling sovereign AI offerings across multiple countries.

Market Reality Check

Price: $56.04 Vol: Volume 93,900 vs 20-day a...

normal vol

$56.04 Last Close

Volume Volume 93,900 vs 20-day average 68,467 (relative volume 1.37x) ahead of AI partnership news. normal

Technical Price at 56.04 trades above 200-day MA of 51.89, reflecting a pre-existing upward trend.

Peers on Argus

VEON’s move of 0.27% came with mixed peer action: LBTYA +0.87%, LBTYB +2.10%, PH...

VEON’s move of 0.27% came with mixed peer action: LBTYA +0.87%, LBTYB +2.10%, PHI -1.18%, LBTYK -0.40%, TDS +0.77%, suggesting stock-specific drivers.

Previous AI Reports

5 past events · Latest: Dec 08 (Positive)

Same Type Pattern 5 events

Date	Event	Sentiment	Move	Catalyst
Dec 08	AI data center plan	Positive	+0.2%	Beeline Kazakhstan began building a Tier III hyper cloud data center.
Jun 17	National LLM project	Positive	+0.0%	Kyivstar partnered with Ukraine’s ministry to build a national LLM.
Jun 03	AI tutor launch	Positive	-5.9%	Beeline Kazakhstan launched an AI Tutor powered by KazLLM.
May 07	AI B2B partnership	Positive	+0.9%	QazCode signed MoU with Seekr to develop AI-powered B2B solutions.
Mar 04	Network AI deployment	Positive	-2.2%	Beeline Uzbekistan adopted predictive AI for network automation.

Pattern Detected

Past AI announcements often produced modest or even negative next-day moves despite broadly positive strategic tone.

Recent Company History

Over the past year, VEON has repeatedly highlighted AI initiatives, including sovereign cloud and LLM projects in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, AI-powered education tools, and AI-driven network automation. These AI updates saw mixed price reactions, with several small gains and some notable declines. Against this backdrop, the new MeetKai collaboration continues VEON’s strategy of local, sovereign AI capabilities across its markets, extending prior work with QazCode and national language models into broader infrastructure and deployment partnerships.

Historical Comparison

-1.4% avg move · Past AI-related announcements for VEON saw an average next-day move of -1.39%, indicating that AI ne...

AI

-1.4%

Average Historical Move AI

Past AI-related announcements for VEON saw an average next-day move of -1.39%, indicating that AI news has not consistently driven strong positive price reactions.

AI efforts progressed from network automation and customer experience, to national and local LLMs, to sovereign cloud data centers, with the new MeetKai deal extending into standardized sovereign AI infrastructure across multiple VEON markets.

Market Pulse Summary

This announcement extends VEON’s strategy of building sovereign, locally deployed AI infrastructure ...

Analysis

This announcement extends VEON’s strategy of building sovereign, locally deployed AI infrastructure by deepening its collaboration with MeetKai. It reinforces earlier initiatives with QazCode and national language models, aiming to standardize secure, in-country AI deployments across VEON markets. Investors may track how quickly deployments scale, adoption of AI services in consumer and enterprise segments, and how these projects interact with VEON’s ongoing digital investments and regional regulatory requirements.

Key Terms

sovereign ai, large language models, data residency requirements

3 terms

sovereign ai technical

"sovereign, locally-deployed AI infrastructure and in-country AI capabilities"

An AI system described as "sovereign" is built, hosted, or operated under a country’s legal and technical control so that data, code, and decision-making stay within that jurisdiction. For investors, sovereign AI matters because it affects which vendors can sell to governments or regulated industries, imposes compliance and infrastructure costs, and can create protected local markets—similar to a factory that must follow a nation’s building codes and can only sell to certain buyers.

large language models technical

"MeetKai’s platform is designed to deliver high quality LLMs at significantly lower"

Large language models are advanced AI systems trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate human-like writing, like a very fast reader and writer that learns patterns in words and sentences. They matter to investors because they can change how companies operate—automating customer service, speeding analysis, cutting costs, creating new products—and they introduce risks around accuracy, security and regulation that can affect a firm’s revenue and reputation.

data residency requirements regulatory

"deployment of secure compute environments, aligned with data residency requirements"

Data residency requirements are laws or rules that force companies to store or process certain types of data within a specific country or geographic region rather than moving it abroad. For investors, these rules can change a business’s costs, how fast it can expand, and its legal risk — like a company being required to keep cash in local banks instead of using a single global account, which can affect profitability and operational flexibility.

AI-generated analysis. Not financial advice.

Barcelona, Dubai, New York and Los Angeles, March 3, 2026: VEON Ltd. (Nasdaq: VEON), a global digital operator (“VEON”), today announced the expansion of its partnership with MeetKai Inc. (“MeetKai”) to explore launching sovereign, locally-deployed AI infrastructure and in-country AI capabilities across VEON markets, with the intent to expand into further strategic partners over time.

A memorandum of understanding (“MoU”) was signed to mark the expansion of the partnership in Barcelona, where the Mobile World Congress (MWC) is currently under way.

The expanded partnership will accelerate rapid, standardized deployment of secure compute environments, aligned with data residency requirements and local governance processes, supporting development of AI-based services that meet market-specific needs.

The partnership brings together VEON’s regional footprint, customer access, user experience design experience and data center capabilities, and MeetKai’s sovereign AI platform, local language models, and AI application layer, supported by the expertise of MeetKai Atlas, a MeetKai subsidiary, in deployment standards and infrastructure playbooks that enable repeatable, secure rollouts of infrastructure solutions.

MeetKai’s platform is designed to deliver high quality LLMs at significantly lower development cost and lower inference cost through efficient post training, targeted optimization, and hardware aware deployment. The parties intend to apply these efficiencies across VEON deployments, aiming to optimize  unit economics, accelerate time-to-market, and support faster returns on  R&D investment while expanding AI services across consumer and enterprise use cases.

“VEON is building a sovereign, locally rooted augmented intelligence ecosystem that can be deployed in country and scaled responsibly across each of our markets,” said Kaan Terzioğlu, Group Chief Executive Officer of VEON. “With this partnership, we look forward to  developing end-to-end sovereign AI capabilities  delivering a complete, secure, and culturally-relevant sovereign AI value proposition to the communities we proudly serve.”

“MeetKai was built to deliver sovereign AI stacks that run inside sovereign borders, tuned to local languages, aligned with local policy, and designed to monetize across consumer and enterprise channels,” said James Kaplan, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of MeetKai. “With VEON, we will apply our model and inference efficiency to help roll out AI services faster, at lower cost, and at operator scale across multiple markets and beyond.”

This initiative underscores VEON’s broader commitment to drive inclusive digital growth through augmented intelligence solutions that address local needs in emerging markets. It follows an earlier collaboration initiated in November 2025 between MeetKai and VEON’s Kazakhstan-based AI and software company QazCode to develop and train next-generation large language models.

VEON and MeetKai intend to roll out the partnership across VEON operating markets, while also exploring expansion further where strategic partnerships and regulatory frameworks support sovereign deployments.

About VEON

VEON is a digital operator that provides connectivity and digital services to nearly 150 million connectivity and over 140 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.

About MeetKai

Founded in Los Angeles in 2018, MeetKai is a Sovereign AI company specializing in post training optimization, local language reasoning models, and national AI platforms. Its flagship MKA1 Platform enables governments, enterprises, and consumers to build and operate fully sovereign AI ecosystems with data control, localization, and long term value creation. Learn more at www.meetkai.com.

Forward-Looking Statements Disclaimer
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, statements relating to VEON’s commercial and infrastructure partnerships. 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 uncertainty over VEON’s commercial and infrastructure partnerships, 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 Strategy and Communications Officer
pr@veon.com

Attachment

• Signing

FAQ

What did VEON (VEON) and MeetKai announce on March 3, 2026 at MWC?

They signed a memorandum of understanding to expand a partnership for sovereign, locally deployed AI infrastructure across VEON markets. According to VEON, the MoU aims to standardize secure, in‑country AI deployments aligned with data residency and local governance requirements.

How will the VEON and MeetKai partnership affect AI deployment costs for VEON (VEON)?

The partnership intends to lower development and inference costs through MeetKai’s model and hardware optimizations. According to VEON, these efficiencies are expected to improve unit economics and accelerate return on R&D investment across VEON operating markets.

Which capabilities will VEON (VEON) and MeetKai combine under the MoU?

They will combine VEON’s regional footprint, customer access, UX design and data center capabilities with MeetKai’s sovereign AI platform and local language models. According to VEON, MeetKai Atlas will support deployment standards and infrastructure playbooks for repeatable rollouts.

Will VEON (VEON) deploy the sovereign AI infrastructure in all markets immediately?

VEON and MeetKai plan phased rollouts across VEON operating markets while assessing regulatory and strategic fit before expanding further. According to VEON, deployments will proceed where local regulatory frameworks and partnerships support sovereign in‑country solutions.

What types of services will the VEON (VEON) and MeetKai collaboration target?

The collaboration targets consumer and enterprise AI services tailored to local languages and needs, delivered via in‑country compute environments. According to VEON, the goal is culturally relevant augmented intelligence offerings that meet market‑specific requirements.

How does this announcement relate to prior VEON and MeetKai work in 2025?

This expansion follows an earlier November 2025 collaboration between MeetKai and VEON’s Kazakhstan AI company QazCode to develop next‑generation large language models. According to VEON, the new MoU builds on that work to scale sovereign deployments.