SA’s Vambo AI releases language model trained for 12 African languages

What happened

South African startup Vambo AI has released MORENA, an open weight (a model whose trained parameters anyone may download) (published so anyone may download the trained model) 1.5-billion-parameter language model trained from scratch for 12 African languages, as well as English and French. Individual users [...] The post SA’s Vambo AI releases language model trained for 12 African languages appeared first on Disrupt Africa .

Founded by Chido Dzinotyiwei and Isheanesu Misi in April 2023, Vambo AI builds AI that “understands the languages of people in the rest of the world”. Individual users can write, search, translate and transcribe, while businesses and innovators can use the startup’s API (the interface one piece of software uses to talk to another) and developer tools to build solutions for people across multiple geographies, and localise solutions that “have solved pertinent problems in other regions”.

Key facts

• South African startup Vambo AI has — released: MORENA, an open weight 1.5-billion-parameter language model trained from scratch for 12 African languages, as well as English and French