
Ant International, a Singaporean fintech company, has teamed with NTU Singapore to develop privacy-enhancing technology to boost digital economy growth.
The duo announced a five-year collaboration to advance digital trust using Ant International’s industry experience and NTU Singapore’s privacy-enhancing technology research to boost digital economic growth in the Asia Pacific region.
Ant International will donate up to S$20 million ($14.9 million) over five years to PET research.
Ant International will provide a total financing sum of S$5 million ($3.73 million) for the five-year partnership until July 2029 under the terms of this master research collaboration agreement.
Apart from funding the MRCA’s research, Ant International plans to contribute an additional S$15 million ($11.18 million) to enhance Ant’s research capacity and subject matter expertise, boost the nation’s overall R&D, and promote responsible innovation in Asia through the use of PETs.
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To promote the development of PETs in Singapore and the surrounding area, Ant International will work with NTU Singapore’s Digital Trust Centre under the MRCA. These technologies attempt to help businesses maximise data value and use cases. Additionally, PETs for AI will boost digital trust and make AI more reliable. By reducing data leaks, firms may share data and obtain insights without compromising confidential information.
The NTU Singapore-based cooperation will give researchers real-world use cases from Ant International to advance industry tools and methods for machine learning and secure insights sharing between firms.
Zero-knowledge proofs and federated learning will enhance privacy. Researchers hope to build a team of PET experts as they work on projects. Ant International and NTU will research large language models (LLMs) that protect user privacy when trained or queried.
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The parties will present their findings at top AI safety conferences. To oversee agreement initiatives, a joint research committee will be formed. Dr. Duan Pu, Ant International’s Head of Data Algorithm and Technology Department, and Professor Lam Kwok Yan, NTU Singapore’s Digital Trust Centre Executive Director, will co-chair the committee.
Jerry Yin, Chief Technology Officer of Ant International, said as a global digital payment and financial technology provider, data privacy is a core part of their business as they aim to provide merchants with secure, reliable and seamless solutions. By leveraging NTU’s academic expertise and Ant International’s industry experience, we look forward to advancing the development of privacy-enhancing technologies with new innovations that address real business needs,” he added.
NTU Singapore and Ant Group developed a new state-of-the-art Private Set Intersection (PSI) protocol that allows businesses to perform joint database analysis while protecting their data. The MRCA builds on this collaboration.
“Robust data protection is important for Singapore’s digital economy. The Ministry of Digital Development and Information has taken steps to strengthen our data ecosystem, including by encouraging the use of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), This partnerships help us advance the development and adoption of data protection tools in Singapore and the region,” said Tan Kiat How, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Digital Development and Information.
About Ant International
Ant International drives global commerce with digital innovation to help everyone and every business succeed.
About NTU Singapore
NTU Singapore has world-renowned autonomus institutes. It has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in engineering, business, science, medicine, humanities, arts, social sciences, and graduate colleges.