KARACHI: Pakistani startup World Context and Multinet Pakistan announced a partnership on Monday to support the infrastructure behind World Context's growing collection of real-world visual data for robotics companies and research teams in the United States and other markets.
Under the partnership, Multinet will provide storage, security and data communications infrastructure for World Context's datasets, according to the companies.
The arrangement brought together World Context's industrial data-collection operations with Multinet's fiber network and data infrastructure.
World Context said it had been collecting data from real industrial environments by deploying sensors and mapping local industries.
The startup said it was focused on building computer vision datasets that could help artificial intelligence systems understand physical tasks and environments.
The partnership came as technology companies increasingly developed AI systems designed to operate in the physical world, including robots that require real-world visual and movement data to learn industrial tasks.
World Context CEO Sherdil Ali Khan said the company was building a "physical data layer" over Pakistan's existing industrial infrastructure.
"World Context is building a physical data layer atop legacy Pakistani industry & infrastructure," Khan said in a statement issued by the company. "We aim to collate the largest computer vision datasets that the country has ever produced."
Khan said the data would require secure storage and reliable transmission as the company expanded its operations.
"Data is delicate and cumbersome; it must be stored and transited deliberately and with scientific protocol," he said, adding that frontier AI laboratories and other customers required high standards of data management across their supply chains.
Khan said World Context would rely on Multinet for bandwidth and networking as it deployed sensors and mapped industrial environments in Pakistan.
Multinet CEO Adnan Zaidi said the partnership would support the infrastructure needed to move and manage data used in the development of new intelligent systems.
"The next generation of intelligent systems will depend on access to high-quality data, resilient infrastructure, and the ability to securely move and manage that data at scale," Zaidi said in a statement.
Zaidi said Multinet's role extended beyond conventional connectivity.
"At Multinet, we see our role extending beyond connectivity to providing the secure and reliable infrastructure that enables organizations to build, process, and exchange the data powering the technologies of tomorrow," he said.
The companies said the partnership would connect Pakistan's "real-world data capabilities" with the wider robotics and AI ecosystem.
World Context said its datasets were intended for robotics companies and research teams in the United States and elsewhere, although the companies did not identify specific customers in the partnership announcement.
Multinet said it operated more than 18,000 kilometers of fiber infrastructure and connected more than 13,000 sites and 3,000 enterprises across Pakistan. The company also provided data center, cloud and information-security services.
World Context said the partnership would support its expansion of sensor deployments and industrial mapping in Pakistan, while Multinet would provide the network and data infrastructure required to store and transfer the resulting datasets.
The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the partnership or identify specific robotics companies or research teams that would use the datasets.