Islamabad, Pakistan and Zurich, Switzerland - The Pakistan Digital Authority (PDA) and the DFINITY Foundation today signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at advancing the development of Pakistan's autonomous AI-native digital infrastructure, ensuring that sensitive data remains domestic while creating secure, modern software systems built for the AI era.
As part of the collaboration, DFINITY will support the creation of a dedicated Pakistan subnet on its Internet Computer Platform (ICP), which is a sovereign cloud designed to host tamper-proof software, national-level applications, and AI-driven systems that can be created and operated independently of foreign cloud infrastructure.
This collaboration also includes the development of a national instant messaging application for private and verifiable communication; expanding the use of the AI platform Caffeine incubated by DFINITY; issuing 1,500 Caffeine licenses for application development and capacity-building projects in government, education, and entrepreneurship; and DFINITY will also establish a local office in Pakistan to strengthen long-term collaboration and technical exchange with the country.
Dr. Sohail Munir, Chairman of the Pakistan Digital Authority, stated: "This collaboration marks an important step in Pakistan's digital development. By investing in autonomous cloud infrastructure and modern AI-ready platforms, we are enhancing national resilience, supporting innovation, and creating new opportunities for our public institutions, students, and entrepreneurs."
Dominic Williams, Chief Scientist and Founder of DFINITY and Caffeine, added: "Pakistan has taken a forward-looking approach to building digital infrastructure by establishing the Pakistan subnet and investing in autonomous, tamper-proof systems. Pakistan is laying the foundation for secure, verifiable software and AI applications that serve national priorities. This collaboration enables Pakistan to build, own, and operate AI and cloud services in its own way."
Caffeine enables users to describe their needs in natural language, allowing them to build and deploy applications and services for the Internet Computer in production environments, removing traditional barriers such as the need for engineering teams and complex development processes. Caffeine's users span the globe, including individual developers, municipal agencies, banks, and public institutions. Since its launch three months ago, users have executed over 3.4 million build commands.
DFINITY created the Internet Computer, an open network that provides a serverless sovereign cloud platform, allowing governments, institutions, and individuals to run tamper-proof and resilient software with complete ownership, free from access by foreign vendors and intelligence agencies. DFINITY has invested over $500 million in R&D, with a team of engineers and researchers from companies like Google, Apple, IBM, and Meta, having published over 1,500 papers, received more than 88,000 citations, and holding over 190 patents in distributed systems, cryptography, and advanced computing.
About the Pakistan Digital Authority
The Pakistan Digital Authority (PDA) is the national government agency of Pakistan responsible for building, managing, and promoting Pakistan's digital transformation through a unified whole-of-government approach. Established under the (2025 Pakistan Digital Nation Act), PDA is the central authority for Pakistan's digital policy, data and AI governance, national digital infrastructure, and shared government platforms, committed to ensuring interoperability, security, and consistency between federal, provincial, and departmental entities.
As the engine of Pakistan's digital future, PDA sets standards, builds digital infrastructure, and coordinates the national ecosystem, ensuring that every ministry, province, and institution works together towards a modern, efficient, and technology-driven national digital master plan for Pakistan.
About DFINITY
DFINITY is a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing the Internet Computer, a network that transforms the internet into a public sovereign cloud capable of hosting the next generation of software and services. Since 2016, DFINITY has evolved into a leading technology research organization, with numerous renowned computer scientists and researchers based in Zurich and San Francisco.
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