Verdas AI and Puncak Utara Form Partnership to Build AI Implementation Capability in the Malaysian Public Sector

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and Munich, Germany — 5 August, 2026

Verdas AI GmbH and its Malaysian entity, Verdas AI Sdn. Bhd. (Verdas AI Malaysia), have entered into a partnership with Puncak Utara Academy & Advisory to develop and deliver artificial intelligence implementation programmes for Malaysian public sector institutions. The partnership combines European AI practice with three decades of Puncak Utara capability development inside Malaysian government, and places Responsible AI and ethics at the centre of every programme the two organisations build.

The partnership responds to a specific gap. Malaysian institutions are moving quickly on AI adoption, and the officials asked to specify, procure, and oversee these systems often depend on the suppliers selling to them for their understanding of the technology. The programmes developed under this partnership are designed to close that gap by building understanding that belongs to the institution itself.

What Verdas AI brings

Verdas AI is an AI ethics and governance consultancy based in Bavaria, Germany. Its assessors evaluate AI systems for European organisations, and the company contributes the assessment methodology, the ethics framework, and the instructional design on which all joint programmes are based.

Verdas AI works with organisations preparing for and operating under the EU AI Act, currently the most demanding AI regulatory regime in force anywhere. Malaysian participants therefore work with governance practice that has already been tested against a live regulator, rather than with guidance still under discussion. Bavaria’s industrial and public sector base gives that experience an operational rather than an academic character.

The Verdas AI team has designed and scaled AI education programmes to more than 25,000 participants globally. Verdas AI Malaysia provides local delivery, assessment, and client support.

What Puncak Utara brings

Puncak Utara Academy & Advisory is the executive education and strategic advisory division of Puncak Utara Sdn. Bhd., established in Kuala Lumpur in 1995 and a partner to Malaysian government and corporate institutions for three decades. The company serves ministries, government agencies, government-linked companies, statutory bodies, and higher education institutions, and is a registered Ministry of Finance supplier.

Puncak Utara contributes programme design for the Malaysian context and institutional knowledge of how public sector organisations actually work, including procurement processes, ministry structures, and the operational conditions that determine whether a programme produces change or produces certificates. Its expertise spans leadership and organisational excellence, digital and emerging technologies, engineering and infrastructure, future economy and sustainability, and governance and professional excellence, supported by a panel of senior academic advisors and national corporate leaders.

Puncak Utara also acts as central delivery partner across Malaysia and Germany, managing end-to-end programme operations in both countries and aligning every programme against national priorities including Malaysia MADANI, the Thirteenth Malaysia Plan, the National Artificial Intelligence Roadmap, and the Public Sector Reform Agenda.

Intended programmes and projects

The two organisations are developing a portfolio across four areas, all of them aimed at capability that sits inside the institution, rather than capability the institution has to keep buying.

Leadership programmes for senior officials responsible for approving and overseeing AI systems, focused on the decisions that sit at that level.

Internal advisor programmes for public servants who go on to become the people their colleagues consult on AI. Participants build enough working understanding of the technology to judge where it delivers real value for their institution and to guide implementation responsibly, so that the advice their agency acts on comes from inside. This competence is deliberately independent of any vendor or platform. It is grounded in how AI systems work and where they fail rather than in how one company’s product works, which is what allows it to hold its value as tools, suppliers, and market leaders change.

International immersion, with components delivered in Germany, where participants work alongside European organisations operating under the EU AI Act.

Assessment and advisory projects alongside the programmes, including ethical evaluation of live public sector AI systems, development of procurement criteria for AI acquisition, and governance documentation for systems already in service.

Responsible AI and ethics as the foundation

Both organisations treat Responsible AI as the framework the technical content is built on, rather than as a separate module. Programmes work from established assessment criteria covering transparency, accountability, algorithmic bias, and privacy, and participants learn to identify where ethical risk appears in a system, how to document it, and what a defensible response looks like when a decision is questioned later.

This carries particular weight in the public sector, where citizens cannot opt out of the systems that affect them. Building the capacity to govern those systems is inseparable from building the capacity to deploy them.

Value to the Malaysian public

Malaysia has set a clear national direction on AI adoption, and the constraint on that ambition is capability rather than intent.

The partnership is designed to build capability inside Malaysian institutions. Delivery happens in Malaysia, with Malaysian case material, by a team that includes Malaysian practitioners, and knowledge transfer to local trainers and assessors is part of the design from the outset.

An institution that understands the technology on its own terms makes better procurement decisions and is harder to sell things it does not need. Public money goes further, systems get chosen because they fit the problem, and the officials answerable for those systems can explain them. The intended result is public services better served by the technology they adopt, and public institutions able to hold that technology to account.