KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 21): Educational materials publisher Sasbadi Holdings Bhd (KL:SASBADI) is partnering with digital solutions provider Agmo Holdings Bhd (KL:AGMO) to jointly develop Malaysia’s first large language model (LLM), specialised for the education sector.
Under a joint venture cum shareholders’ agreement (JVA) signed on Saturday (Oct 18), Sasbadi’s subsidiary Sasbadi Online Sdn Bhd and Agmo’s wholly owned unit Agmo Capital Sdn Bhd will collaborate through Penerbitan Minda Sdn Bhd, a Sasbadi subsidiary that will serve as the joint venture company.
Sasbadi will hold 55% equity interest in the venture, while Agmo Capital will own 45%, according to the bourse filing on Tuesday.
The collaboration aims to build an education-specialised LLM capable of powering AI-driven tutoring, adaptive learning systems and intelligent content-creation tools.
Sasbadi, which has more than 40 years’ experience in the education sector, will contribute its proprietary educational content and domain expertise for model training, while Agmo will oversee the technical development, architecture, and integration of the model, leveraging techniques such as natural language processing (NLP) and reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF).
Sasbadi said the model will be aligned with Malaysia’s national curriculum and designed to support personalised, bilingual learning experiences for students and educators.
“This partnership represents a bold step in Sasbadi’s digital transformation journey,” said Sasbadi group managing director Law King Hui. “By combining our deep expertise in education with Agmo’s cutting-edge AI capabilities, we are creating a localised LLM that will redefine how Malaysians learn, teach, and interact with knowledge.”
Agmo chief executive officer Tan Aik Keong said the collaboration will drive innovation and create significant value for the education ecosystem and shareholders.
Sasbadi said the model could later be adapted for corporate training, language learning and knowledge management, tapping into the growing EdTech and AI markets across Southeast Asia.
Sasbadi and Agmo’s collaboration follows the recent launch of Ilmu 0.1, a Malaysia-developed LLM by YTL Power International Bhd (KL:YTLPOWR), which was introduced alongside the National AI Office by the Digital Ministry.
YTL Power said Ilmu 0.1 demonstrated superior understanding of Bahasa Melayu and outperformed global models on the Malay MMLU benchmark, including OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Agmo’s earlier Merdeka-LLM.
At market close on Tuesday, shares in Sasbadi were unchanged at 15 sen, giving the group a market capitalisation of RM65.42 million. Agmo’s shares were up 0.5 sen or 1.18% at 43 sen, giving it a market capitalisation of RM139.8 million.