Vietnam is positioning artificial intelligence as a core driver of its national economic strategy, according to Vo Xuan Hoai, Deputy Director of the Vietnam National Innovation Center, who spoke at NVIDIA AI Day Ho Chi Minh City on Tuesday, September 23. The event, held at the Sheraton Saigon Grand Opera Hotel, brought together over 800 attendees, including developers, researchers, startups, and industry leaders, to explore the future of AI across sectors. Chuck Tybur, Head of the NVIDIA Partner Network, opened the event by emphasizing the importance of sovereign AI—AI systems that are developed, controlled, and governed locally to meet national needs. He outlined five key pillars for sovereign AI success: a national AI imperative, a robust AI ecosystem involving government, enterprises, investors, and talent, an AI-ready workforce, region-specific AI models and data, and locally owned AI factories. Ho Chi Minh City, highlighted as a hub of dynamic economic growth and innovation, is at the forefront of Vietnam’s AI transformation. Hoai noted that Vietnam is actively integrating AI into government services, finance, smart manufacturing, healthcare, and creative industries, leveraging the country’s strong foundation in STEM education. Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, praised Vietnam’s young talent in science and technology during a visit last year, underscoring the nation’s potential to lead in future AI innovation. The event featured 15 breakout sessions covering physical AI, agentic AI, generative AI, and AI factories enabling scalable innovation. Attendees also participated in hands-on training labs from the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, including sessions on agentic AI fundamentals and generative AI model compression—techniques to optimize large language models for efficient deployment with minimal trade-offs in performance. Startups and partners showcased their progress in building Vietnam’s AI ecosystem. GreenNode is developing large-scale Vietnamese language models using culturally relevant data and secure, scalable infrastructure. FPT is advancing end-to-end AI development through a domestic AI factory powered by NVIDIA H100 and H200 GPUs, enabling secure training and deployment of enterprise AI agents. VNPT AI is enhancing real-time video analytics using NVIDIA DeepStream and in-house models for computer vision and speech recognition. Zalo is building sovereign LLMs tailored to Vietnamese language and cultural context. Looking ahead, Vietnam aims to establish three national data centers and become one of the top four AI leaders in Southeast Asia by 2030. Tuan Minh Pham, CEO of FPT Software and Executive Vice President of FPT Corporation, stressed that technological sovereignty is now a matter of national security and resilience. “AI is not just about innovation—it’s about independence, privacy, and protecting our nation from external risks,” he said. The next stop on NVIDIA’s global AI Day tour is Tokyo, taking place September 24–25, where participants will dive into the latest AI advancements and collaboration opportunities.