• SV Academy is an AI school in Bangkok, Thailand, where students build real software with AI, mentored in person by working Silicon Valley engineers.
• It was co-founded by Prom Parndejpong, March Mairin and Charlie Pisuraj.
• It began as a joint venture between Lertlah School, a Bangkok school founded in 1994, and SV & Co., a network of Silicon Valley engineers.
• Its first class, ten students aged 10 to 15, ran from 13 June to 11 July 2026 and ended with a live Demo Day in Bangkok.
• It runs two tracks, SV Academy Junior for ages 10 to 15 and an intensive course for entrepreneurs and business owners.
• SV Academy is the education brand of Silicon Valley Innovation Co., Ltd., company registration 0105569146015.

SV Academy is an AI school in Bangkok where children and business owners learn to build real, working software with AI, taught in the room by engineers who have spent their careers at Silicon Valley companies. It was founded by three people from two very different worlds: an educator from a family of Thai school founders, and two senior software engineers who built systems at some of the largest technology companies in the United States.

This is how it started.

A school built like a second home

The first half of the story begins in 1994, when the Parndejpong family founded Lertlah School on a small three-rai plot in Bangkok. Their founding belief was that a school should feel like a second home: character first, with academics right beside it. Thirty years on, Lertlah has three campuses and a bilingual programme.

When COVID moved classes onto screens, Prom Parndejpong, a second-generation educator in the family, sat down with teachers who had twenty years in the classroom and brought them up to speed one tool at a time: Canva, then video, then ChatGPT. The teachers came out of the shift more capable than they went in. That raised a question Prom kept coming back to. If the right tool could make a veteran teacher far more capable in a few weeks, what could it do in the hands of a twelve-year-old?

Prom started trying to build an app that would teach children AI, and kept hitting the same wall. Anything shipped was out of date within months, because the tools moved faster than the app could.

Silicon Valley watches AI change the work

The second half began on the other side of the world. March Mairin, a senior software engineer in Silicon Valley who grew up in Chiang Mai, watched AI change how software gets built. March's team shipped a complex product from scratch in two months, and designers and product managers started contributing code.

The same tools also make mistakes while sounding completely certain. Without experienced engineers steering them, March concluded, AI cannot build production software that scales safely to millions of users.

March took the idea to Charlie Pisuraj, a close friend for ten years and the pragmatic sceptic of the pair, who saw the risk of "AI slop". Charlie's view was that AI is an extraordinary tool, but it needs deep system-design judgement to stay on the rails. Together they founded SV & Co., a network of Silicon Valley engineers with one mission: close the gap between Silicon Valley and Thailand.

One dinner, and a different product

March and Prom were not strangers, but not old friends either. For years they had moved in the same circles and known each other only in passing. When March finally called, it was to describe, from the opposite side of the planet, the exact problem Prom had been stuck on.

Over dinner, it clicked. Prom had been trying to build a product. What they needed to build was people: children who could build anything they could imagine, the way real engineers do, with whatever tools existed that year. SV & Co. brought the engineering and the way Silicon Valley teams ship. Lertlah brought the classroom, the students and thirty years of knowing how to teach a child.

The founders sum it up on SV Academy's own story page:

Put those two halves on one table and you don't get an app. You get an academy.

From a first cohort to two tracks

SV Academy's first class, Junior Cohort 1, ran on five Saturdays from 13 June to 11 July 2026. Ten students aged 10 to 15, with no coding experience required, each designed, built and shipped their own AI-powered web app. They then presented it live on stage at Demo Day in Bangkok, in front of family, mentors and a spokesperson from Thailand's Ministry of Education. All ten apps are still online, in the school's portfolio and on Loop, its free learning site.

The course follows the six stages a Silicon Valley product team uses to ship: idea, product requirements, design, code, ship, and a live demo.

Junior Cohort 2 followed in October 2026, with 15 seats and five weekday sessions (5, 7, 9, 14 and 16 October) at Lertlah School Kanchanapisek Road.

A second track, for entrepreneurs and business owners, ran its first cohort from 12 September to 11 October 2026. It is a three-day intensive, taught in Thai by the founders, in which each person builds software for their own business with AI. Flooding in Bangkok moved its second day and its Demo Day from late September to 10 and 11 October. The next entrepreneur cohort runs in spring 2027. That track puts its apps live on SV Cloud, a hosting platform built by the same team.

SV Academy has been covered by Thairath, Thai Post and Techsauce. It is the education brand of Silicon Valley Innovation, a Bangkok software and AI company, where the engineers who teach also build software and AI products for businesses.

The founders

Prom Parndejpong, co-founder, creative and operations

Prom is a designer and a second-generation educator, with a BA in Graphic Communication and Design from the University of Sunderland in the UK. Prom is Assistant Director of Development and Innovation at Lertlah School. At SV Academy, Prom leads creative direction, application design and in-class design coaching, and is the bridge between the engineers and Thai families.

"A great app isn't just code. It's how it looks, how it feels, how people experience it."

March Mairin, co-founder, curriculum and technical lead

March grew up in Chiang Mai, studied engineering at Chulalongkorn University and earned a master's degree at Johns Hopkins University. Over a decade as a software engineer, March built and scaled production systems at Amazon, Databricks, Uniswap Labs and Magic Eden. March now works full time on SV Academy, leads its curriculum and is on site for every session.

"Our mission is to close the gap between Silicon Valley and Thailand, until there's no gap."

Charlie Pisuraj, co-founder, engineering

Charlie studied Computer Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, then spent a career on backend systems and infrastructure at very large scale: infrastructure at Meta, autonomous delivery at Wing, which came out of Google X, and Robinhood. At SV Academy, Charlie leads technical architecture and Demo Day coaching, is in the room for every session on both tracks, and builds SV Cloud.

"Real success is what you can deliver in an age when knowledge is cheap. Anyone can do it with the right tools."

• AWS opened its Asia Pacific (Thailand) Region on 7 January 2025 with three Availability Zones and plans to invest more than $5 billion in Thailand.
• Google Cloud opened its Bangkok region on 21 January 2026 as part of a $1 billion commitment announced in September 2024.
• Microsoft said it will invest more than $1 billion in Thai cloud and AI infrastructure from 2026 to 2028, and its Thai cloud region had not launched when it announced the plan.
• The Board of Investment approved projects worth THB 1.87 trillion in 2025, of which THB 746 billion was planned data centre investment, the largest share of any industry.
• In a release dated 6 May 2026 the BOI said it approved a THB 842 billion expansion by TikTok System (Thailand), the largest of three data centre projects worth THB 913 billion.

Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft have each now committed more than $1 billion to Thailand, and the government's investment board has approved data centre projects worth far more than that. Two of the three cloud regions were open by January 2026. Microsoft's was still being built when it announced its plan in March.

Two regions open, one to come

AWS was first. Its Asia Pacific (Thailand) Region became generally available on 7 January 2025, with three Availability Zones, which are separate facilities inside a region, each with its own power and cooling. AWS says it plans to invest more than $5 billion in Thailand and gives no period for that figure. By its own estimate, its planned investments over the next 15 years add about $10 billion to Thai GDP and support an average of 11,000 full-time-equivalent jobs a year in local businesses. Named early customers include the payments firm 2C2P and Ascend Money, which cut compute costs by 70%.

Google followed. Google Cloud launched its Bangkok region on 21 January 2026, with three zones, bringing its total to 43 regions. It is part of the $1 billion Google announced in September 2024. Google projects THB 1.4 trillion in economic value over five years and an average of 130,000 jobs a year. Those are Google's own estimates. KASIKORN Business-Technology Group and True Digital Group are early users, and Google's launch notes cite compliance with the Personal Data Protection Act as a reason for keeping data in the country.

Microsoft is third. DatacenterDynamics reported that vice chair and president Brad Smith committed more than $1 billion over two years on 31 March 2026, after meeting Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul. Its Thai cloud region had not launched at that point. A later report from TechDay dates the spending to 2026 to 2028 and names partners Gulf Development, Advanced Info Service, Charoen Pokphand Group, True Corporation and True Internet Data Centre. Microsoft also plans to upskill and certify 150,000 workers. It had earlier committed $2.85 billion in 2023, with no timeline.

What the investment board approved

The Board of Investment (BOI) numbers are bigger and measure something different: approved plans, not money spent. Law firm Tilleke & Gibbins reports that the BOI approved projects worth THB 1.87 trillion in 2025, of which THB 746 billion was planned data centre investment, the largest share for any single industry.

In the first half of 2025 the BOI reported 28 data centre projects worth THB 521.2 billion, according to W.Media. Six approvals in May and June, worth THB 115.4 billion and about 740 MW of IT load, included Digital Edge DC at THB 24.52 billion in Chonburi and Stratus Technology at 203 MW in Rayong.

For applications filed from 1 July 2025, new rules split tax breaks by energy efficiency. A data centre that meets power usage effectiveness standards gets an eight-year corporate income tax exemption. Others get five years.

In a release dated 6 May 2026, the BOI said it approved six projects worth THB 958 billion, three of them data centres worth THB 913 billion:

• TikTok System (Thailand): THB 842 billion, adding servers and storage in Bangkok, Samut Prakan and Chachoengsao
• Skyline Data Center and Cloud Services, part of DAMAC Group: THB 46 billion, 200 MW in Chachoengsao
• Bridge Data Centres: THB 24.6 billion, 134 MW in Chonburi

Power is the constraint

The BOI's own release is blunt about the limit. At the same meeting, the board discussed urgent power supply needs in the Eastern region with the Ministry of Energy and the Energy Regulatory Commission, and asked for a faster Power Development Plan. BOI Secretary General Narit Therdsteerasukdi said speed, power readiness, clean energy access and skilled talent will be decisive for the new investment cycle.

For a Thai company choosing where to run workloads, the change is practical. Two major clouds now offer a Thai region, which lets regulated firms keep data in the country. The BOI figures are intentions. The thing to watch is how much of the approved capacity gets built and connected to the grid, and when Microsoft's region goes live.

Sources

• AWS News Blog: Announcing the new AWS Asia Pacific (Thailand) Region
• Amazon: AWS launches infrastructure region in Thailand
• Google Cloud: Google Cloud launches new cloud region in Thailand
• DatacenterDynamics: Google launches cloud region in Bangkok, Thailand
• Google Cloud: Google announces plans to invest US$1 billion in Thailand, 30 September 2024
• DatacenterDynamics: Microsoft commits $1bn to cloud and AI infrastructure in Thailand
• TechDay: Microsoft pledges USD 1 billion for Thailand AI hub
• Tilleke & Gibbins: Data Center Investments under Thailand's Updated Incentive Criteria
• W.Media: Thailand data center investments hit US$16.1 billion from 28 projects in 1H 2025
• Thailand Board of Investment via Newsfile: Thailand approves $29 billion investment wave

• LINE MAN Wongnai postponed a Stock Exchange of Thailand listing and said in February 2026 that it was weighing an IPO in Hong Kong or New York.
• Thai IPOs raised THB 13 billion in 2025, the lowest since 2010, and the SET Index fell 10% that year, according to a Bloomberg report carried by Kaohoon International.
• LINE MAN Wongnai achieved profitability in 2025 and is targeting a 2027 listing, according to an LY Corporation interview conducted on 23 April 2026.
• Thai companies raised nearly $5 billion in IPOs in 2020 and $408 million in 2025, according to Asia Tech Review.
• LINE MAN Wongnai says it has more than 10 million users, more than 500,000 merchant partners and about 250,000 riders.

LINE MAN Wongnai, Thailand's best-known delivery and restaurant platform, has set aside a plan to list in Bangkok and is looking at Hong Kong and the United States instead. Bloomberg reported the shift in February 2026, and Kaohoon International carried the details. The reason is the state of the Thai market, not the company's own numbers.

Why the Bangkok plan stopped

In 2025 the company hired banks for a sale of shares on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), then suspended those arrangements to reassess. Chief executive Yod Chinsupakul said a weak economy and unstable politics made a domestic listing less attractive, and, as Kaohoon relays it, that a more active foreign market would serve shareholders better. At the time, he expected a venue decision by the end of June.

The market data backs him up. According to the Bloomberg report, Thai IPOs raised THB 13 billion in 2025, the lowest since 2010, and the SET Index fell 10%. Asia Tech Review puts the same collapse in dollars: Thai companies raised nearly $5 billion through IPOs in 2020, second in Asia only to China, and $408 million in 2025. The SET fell to a five-year low in June 2025, and more than $3 billion in foreign money left the market that year.

Listed names have not rewarded buyers. Central Retail raised nearly $2.5 billion in February 2020, and its shares are down 54% from the listing price. Betagro, PTT and Thai Life Insurance also trade below their IPO prices, Asia Tech Review reports.

The company in 2026

LINE MAN Wongnai was valued at over $1 billion and is backed by Singapore's GIC and Line Corp, according to Asia Tech Review. An interview with Yod by LY Corporation, conducted on 23 April and published on 2 June 2026, says the company achieved profitability in 2025.

By its own count it has more than 10 million users, more than 500,000 merchant partners, about 250,000 riders and about 1,300 employees. Thailand has about 700,000 restaurants, and over 500,000 are on its platform. It plans to invest THB 10 billion in AI. It says AI now handles 40% of customer service inquiries.

The listing target is now 2027. By April, the company named the SET, Singapore, Hong Kong and NASDAQ as options and said it would decide on market conditions. Yod's own words on risk were "hope for the best, but prepare for the worst." None of the sources reviewed for this story report a final venue.

Others are weighing the same exit

LINE MAN is not alone. Bloomberg reported in November 2025 that Bitkub, Thailand's largest crypto exchange, was exploring a Hong Kong IPO to raise about $200 million. Finnomena, a fintech with more than 300,000 accredited investor accounts, has also said it wants to list, per Asia Tech Review. Amity, the Thai-founded AI company that raised $100 million in March 2026, says it is preparing an IPO in 2027 without naming a market.

Kris Supavatanakul, Finnomena's strategy lead and a former SCB 10X venture investor, wrote on LinkedIn that venture investors have "largely given up on Thai tech exits." Asia Tech Review adds that few regional funds keep a Thai presence, and early-stage accelerator programmes have shrunk from nearly a dozen to a handful.

There is a counterweight. Asia Tech Review cites Bloomberg in saying that Thailand eased IPO rules in 2025, and that a peaceful election kept the political status quo.

For founders, the question is where the exit door is. Asia Tech Review notes that tech companies are rare on the SET, and a LINE MAN listing abroad would leave it with one fewer. The next signal is LINE MAN's venue decision, and whether it is announced ahead of the 2027 target.

Sources

• Kaohoon International: Line Man Wongnai considers overseas IPO amid domestic volatility
• Asia Tech Review: Thailand's top startups forced to look overseas for IPOs
• LY Corporation: LINE MAN Wongnai story, published 2 June 2026
• Amity Solutions: Thai tech company Amity announces US$100 million Series D

• Roojai, a Thai digital insurer, closed a $60 million Series C on 26 November 2025, co-led by Apis Partners and Asia Partners.
• DealStreetAsia counted $60.3 million of equity funding across two Thai deals in November 2025, so Roojai's round made up almost all of it, and it recorded none for Thailand in December 2025.
• Amity, a Thai-founded AI company, announced a $100 million Series D led by EDBI on 25 March 2026 and said it is preparing for an IPO in 2027.
• Southeast Asia raised $5.4 billion across 461 deals in 2025, a slight decline from 2024, and no source reviewed breaks that figure down for Thailand.
• Salary Hero, a Bangkok earned-wage platform, raised a $7.6 million Series A on 14 October 2026 to enter Malaysia.

Two rounds account for most of the large startup money that Thai companies disclosed between November 2025 and March 2026: Roojai's $60 million and Amity's $100 million. Below them, the market is thin.

No source reviewed for this story gives a single agreed total for Thai startup funding in 2025. The regional figure is clearer. Southeast Asia raised $5.4 billion across 461 deals in 2025, a slight decline from 2024, according to the Southeast Asia Startup Funding Report for 2025 as summarised by Thailand Business News. Singapore took 91% of the capital. The report does not mention Thailand.

Roojai: a $60 million insurance bet

Roojai, a Thai direct-to-consumer insurer, announced a $60 million Series C on 26 November 2025. Apis Partners and Asia Partners co-led it, and existing shareholders HDI International, Primary Group and the International Finance Corporation took part, according to Roojai's release. Avendus Capital advised.

The money is for growth in Thailand, faster growth in Indonesia and acquisitions. Roojai is best known for online motor cover and also sells health, personal accident and travel policies. Udayan Goyal of Apis Partners called Thailand's insurance market, at around $5 billion, the largest in Southeast Asia.

DealStreetAsia's monthly tally shows how much weight that one round carried. It counted $60.3 million across two Thai equity deals in November 2025, second in the region behind Singapore. For December, its barometer recorded no disclosed equity funding for Thailand. ABACUS Digital, the Thai parent of the lending app MoneyThunder, raised $31 million in bonds that month, but debt is outside that scorecard.

Amity: $100 million, mostly earned abroad

On 25 March 2026, Amity announced a $100 million Series D led by EDBI, the investment arm of SG Growth Capital, with Asia Partners and SMDV, according to the company's release. It calls the round the largest focused on generative AI in Southeast Asia. Total funding is now $160 million.

The figures that matter are the company's own and unaudited. Amity says annualised revenue passed $100 million in 2025, more than ten times its 2022 level, and that more than 75% of its 2025 EBITDA came from its European business units. It targets more than $200 million of annualised revenue in 2026.

So Amity is Thai in its roots and its founder, Korawad Chearavanont, but its profits, its research centre in Singapore and its acquisition plans in Europe and Southeast Asia sit mostly outside Thailand. Evercore Asia advised. The company says it is preparing an IPO in 2027 and names no exchange.

Smaller rounds, steady interest

At the early end, Salary Hero, a Bangkok platform that lets employees draw wages they have already earned, announced a $7.6 million Series A on 14 October 2026. Cento Ventures led, with Kairous Capital and M Venture Partners. It serves more than 100 companies and over 300,000 employees in Thailand and plans 50 corporate partners in Malaysia by the end of 2027. Its credit line grew to $10 million.

Tracxn, a startup database, lists $151 million across 11 equity rounds in Thailand for 2026 through October. It gives only a partial 2025 comparison, and the two periods do not match, so treat that figure as direction, not a measurement.

The largest rounds here went to companies that already have revenue and a regional plan. The next things to watch are Amity's 2027 IPO and whether Roojai announces the acquisitions it raised money for.

Sources

• Thailand Business News: Southeast Asia startup funding hits $5.4 billion in 2025
• Roojai: Apis Partners funds lead Series C in Roojai
• DealStreetAsia: SE Asia Deals Barometer, November 2025
• DealStreetAsia: SE Asia Deals Barometer, December 2025
• Amity Solutions: Thai tech company Amity announces US$100 million Series D
• TechNode Global: Thailand-based Salary Hero raises $7.6M, enters Malaysia
• Tracxn: Startups in Thailand

• NSTDA and NECTEC's 2026 Organization AI Readiness Survey, released on 3 September 2026, found that 53.7% of 574 Thai organisations have adopted AI, 36.6% plan to and 9.8% have no plans.
• Deloitte Thailand's Digital Transformation Survey 2026, released on 6 August 2026, found that 61% of organisations are implementing AI, up from 47% a year earlier, but only 19% have scaled it across operations.
• An AWS and Strand Partners study released on 15 July 2026 found that 43% of Thai businesses use AI consistently, up from 32%, and that 74% of those are at a basic level.
• NECTEC found that 86.4% of organisations using AI cannot state the results they have achieved, and only 13.6% have measured clear positive outcomes.
• Deloitte found that 50% of organisations say AI reduced costs but only 9% say it opened new revenue.

How many Thai companies use AI? A state research centre says 53.7% of organisations. Deloitte says 61%. Amazon Web Services says 43%. All three published in the second half of 2026, and all three are right about the question they asked.

The gap comes from the question. NECTEC counted organisations that have adopted AI at all. Deloitte counted those implementing it. AWS counted businesses using it consistently. Read side by side, the surveys agree on something more useful than the headline: using AI is now common, and proving it works is not.

NECTEC: adoption tripled, readiness is low

The National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) and NSTDA released their 2026 Organization AI Readiness Survey on 3 September. It covers 574 public and private organisations across 10 industry groups. Of those, 53.7% have adopted AI, 36.6% plan to and 9.8% have no plans. Adoption roughly tripled between 2024 and 2026.

Size matters. Adoption is 67.2% among large organisations, 48.5% among medium ones and 43.8% among small ones. Manufacturing leads on use, followed by education.

Readiness is weaker than use. Across the 308 adopters, average readiness scores 40.0%, which NECTEC places at the "AI Aware" level. Governance is the weakest of five dimensions at 28.9%, and data and infrastructure the strongest at 51.0%. Only 40.8% have data of AI-ready quality.

Banks stand out. They score 70.7%, the only group to reach the "Ready" level, while non-bank financial firms such as insurers and securities houses score 22.8%.

NECTEC's own 2024 readiness index was higher, at 55.1%, but it was based on just 103 adopters. The centre attributes the drop to newer, less prepared organisations entering the 2026 sample, not to a decline in readiness.

Deloitte and AWS: pilots outnumber production

Deloitte's sixth annual survey of business leaders in six industries ran from January to May 2026. The release does not state a sample size. It found that 61% of organisations report implementing AI, up from 47%. Only 19% have scaled it across operations, while 81% remain in experiments and pilots.

The payoff is narrow. Half say AI reduced costs and 48% report efficiency gains, but 9% say it opened new revenue. Seventy-one percent named a shortage of technical talent as a barrier. Robert Gallagher, Deloitte Thailand's technology, media and telecommunications leader, said AI is still treated as "an IT project" rather than a business priority.

The AWS study, with Strand Partners, reported by the Nation, surveyed 1,000 business leaders and 1,000 members of the public. It put consistent business use at 43%, up from 32% a year earlier. Of those users, 74% are at a basic stage using off-the-shelf tools, 17% are intermediate and 9% advanced, barely changed from 10% a year earlier. Only 21% of businesses have a formal AI strategy, and 34% have no policy on AI use.

What the three have in common

Measurement is the shared weak point. NECTEC found that 86.4% of adopters cannot state what results they have achieved. Nearly half, 49.4%, have never measured them, and only 13.6% have measured clear positive results. Where value is shown, it is lower cost and shorter working time, not higher revenue or market share.

Agentic AI, meaning systems that carry out steps on their own, is early: 26.0% of NECTEC's adopters have begun using it. Among organisations not yet using AI, 51.4% put a clear regulatory framework first.

NECTEC executive director Dr Chai Wutiwiwatchai said the challenge is not merely getting organisations to start using AI. NECTEC proposes a National AI Governance Pack of standard templates, sector clinics for energy and non-bank finance, and cloud credits for medium-sized firms.

For a manager, the useful reading is that a Thai company that has adopted AI is in the majority, and one that can show a measured result is in a small minority. The next data point is the Thailand AI Readiness Index, launched on 2 July by NXPO, AIS Academy and IRIS Consulting, which aims to assess 5,000 organisations in its first year.

Sources

• NECTEC: 2026 AI Readiness Survey, 53.7% of Thai organizations now use AI
• Deloitte Southeast Asia: Thailand's digital momentum is real, yet the AI payoff is still to be unlocked
• Nation Thailand: Thailand's AI use surges to 43%, but most firms stay stuck in basics
• Tech For Good Institute: Governance Meets Reality, Thailand Tech Governance at mid-2026

• ThaiLLM was launched by the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) with the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI), NECTEC and the Digital Economy and Society Development Fund; the Nation reported the launch on 20 April 2026 and NSTDA's announcement is dated 1 April 2026.
• ThaiLLM comes in two sizes, 8 billion and 30 billion parameters, and was trained on more than 100 billion tokens of Thai-language data.
• Training and hosting run on the ThaiSC supercomputer inside Thailand, so data is stored and processed in the country.
• The first release bundles four 8B models from different teams, OpenThaiGPT (AIEAT), Pathumma (NECTEC), Typhoon-S (SCB 10X) and THaLLE (KBTG).
• The Ministry of Digital Economy and Society and MHESI held the formal launch on 5 May 2026, and said more than 8,000 people had used the ThaiLLM Playground since early 2026.

Thailand's state science agency has released its own Thai-language AI model, ThaiLLM, in two sizes of 8 billion and 30 billion parameters, trained on more than 100 billion tokens of Thai text. The Nation Thailand reported the launch on 20 April 2026, and the model runs on a domestic supercomputer so that data can be stored and processed inside the country.

Parameters are the adjustable numbers inside a model. More of them usually means a more capable model that also costs more to run. A token is a small chunk of text, so 100 billion tokens is a very large reading list.

Four teams, one release

ThaiLLM is not a single model built by a single lab. The National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) led it with the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation (MHESI), its NECTEC electronics centre and the Digital Economy and Society Development Fund. More than 700 people took part, according to the Nation.

The first phase packages four 8 billion parameter models from different groups:

• OpenThaiGPT, from AIEAT
• Pathumma, from NECTEC
• Typhoon-S, from SCB 10X
• THaLLE, from KBTG

Two of those names come from the private sector. KBTG is the KASIKORN Business-Technology Group. Both KBTG and SCB 10X are named as companies working with the models, alongside finance, technology and healthcare organisations, and VISTEC is running experimental medical work.

What a developer actually gets

Access is through an API that is compatible with the OpenAI software kit, so a team that has already written code against that interface can point it at ThaiLLM with small changes. There is also a public chat page, the ThaiLLM Playground, which shows its answers with cited sources.

The Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (DE) held the formal launch on 5 May 2026, according to a briefing published by Thailand Edition. It described the 8B and 30B models as open-licence and open-weight, meaning developers can download and fine-tune them, and it said healthcare is the first focus. Over 8,000 people had used the Playground since early 2026. NT and SIAM.AI CLOUD supply infrastructure for the Playground.

A deputy permanent secretary at MHESI said ThaiLLM is meant to move Thailand "from user to creator" of AI. The DE permanent secretary said the point is to understand the language as used in Thai social context, not only to access tools.

The Nation describes ThaiLLM as national AI infrastructure. Thailand NOW confirms the same builders and sizes. None of the sources reviewed for this story publish benchmark scores against those models, so how ThaiLLM compares on accuracy is not yet public.

The money question

No source gives a budget for ThaiLLM. The launch briefing says the Digital Economy and Society Development Fund provided funding but gives no amount.

The nearest public figure is a separate one. In August 2025 Thailand's National AI Committee endorsed a THB 25 billion framework for two fiscal years to 2027, Thailand Business News reported: THB 6 billion for AI workforce development, THB 5 billion for building and running Centres of Excellence and THB 2 billion for a National Data Bank. One of its nine planned Centres of Excellence covers language processing. That article does not mention ThaiLLM, so the two should not be added together.

Rules are catching up

The policy frame is also moving. The National AI Committee was formed in 2025 under the Prime Minister with the aim of making Thailand an ASEAN AI hub by 2027, according to the Tech For Good Institute. A draft Thailand AI Act went to public consultation from 9 July to 14 August 2026. It would give the Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA) powers to order corrective action or block an AI system, and it requires disclosure of AI-generated content.

For a Thai company that handles customer data, the practical draw is simple: a Thai-tuned model that can be hosted under Thai jurisdiction. The open question is quality. The thing to watch is the outcome of the AI Act consultation and whether the Playground user count grows past the 8,000 reported in May.

Sources

• Nation Thailand: ThaiLLM launched to strengthen Thailand's national AI capacity
• NSTDA: ThaiLLM, Thailand's national Thai-language model
• Thailand Edition: DE-MOHE Launches ThaiLLM
• Thailand NOW: ThaiLLM, what you need to know about Thailand's homegrown AI project
• Tech For Good Institute: Governance Meets Reality, Thailand Tech Governance at mid-2026
• Thailand Business News: Thailand Commits 25 Billion Baht to Drive AI Development Through 2027