The two companies will combine Knovel Engineering’s AI solution capabilities with Lablup’s Backend.AI platform to address GPU cost and utilisation challenges for enterprises in Singapore and the broader region.
SINGAPORE, March 4, 2026 – Knovel Engineering Pte. Ltd., a Singapore-based AI solutions company, and Lablup Inc., an AI infrastructure operating system company from Korea, signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly deliver AI infrastructure solutions to enterprises in Singapore and Southeast Asia.
Singapore has committed more than S$1 billion (approximately US$740 million) over the next five years to AI development under its National AI Strategy 2.0 (NAIS 2.0), establishing the city-state as a central hub for the Asia-Pacific AI ecosystem. Against that backdrop, enterprises in the region face a common set of challenges: high GPU costs and low utilisation rates that slow AI adoption.
The MOU covers three areas of collaboration:
- Joint go-to-market strategy development for the Singapore and Southeast Asian markets
- Pilot projects and proof-of-concept engagements to build industry and public-sector use cases
- Mutual support for market entry across Singapore and South Korea, including regulatory and compliance coordination
Customers engaging through this partnership can expect:
- Lower GPU infrastructure costs through container-level virtualisation and fine-grained resource sharing
- Faster AI project deployment with turnkey, industry-specific solution stacks
- Simplified compliance for Singapore’s public-sector AI deployments
Backend.AI is a software-defined AI infrastructure platform that manages accelerators from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and other vendors as a single resource pool, regardless of chip architecture. Its container-level GPU virtualisation allows organisations to partition physical GPUs at fine granularity, reducing both the upfront cost and operational complexity of enterprise AI deployments.
“Enterprises in Singapore consistently face GPU cost and utilisation challenges in their AI projects, and Backend.AI’s container-level GPU virtualisation directly addresses this,” said Seah Hee Chuan of Knovel Engineering. “Combined with Knovel Engineering’s solution-building capabilities, we can offer Southeast Asian customers turnkey, industry-specific AI solutions running on optimised infrastructure.”
“Singapore is a global business hub and a key node in the Asia-Pacific AI ecosystem,” said Jeongkyu Shin, CEO of Lablup. “Southeast Asia’s enterprises deserve the same infrastructure efficiency that leading AI labs rely on. This partnership is how we bring that capability to this market. Lablup and Knovel Engineering are beginning pilot engagements with enterprise customers in Singapore this quarter.”
About Knovel Engineering Pte. Ltd.
Knovel Engineering, founded in 2022 in Singapore, is an AI technology consulting and solutions company embodying the spirit of innovation. At its core, their passion is to craft novel AI and technology solutions that are tailored to drive innovation and transform businesses. With its commitment to pushing technology boundaries, they partner closely with their clients, guiding their transformation with agility, while applying a structured technology transformation process attuned to their unique challenges.
About Lablup Inc.
Lablup Inc., founded in 2015, builds Backend.AI, a software-defined AI infrastructure platform that orchestrates heterogeneous GPU and NPU clusters at hyperscale with secure multi-tenancy and multi-node workload management. Its container-level GPU virtualisation technology further maximises accelerator utilisation across training, inference, and deployment. Headquartered in Seoul with a U.S. subsidiary in San Jose, Lablup manages over 16,000 GPUs across 110+ sites worldwide, and Backend.AI is validated as NVIDIA DGX-Ready Software. Learn more at lablup.com.
