#5 typical AI businesses at AI Awards 2026

HanoiThe Outstanding AI Enterprise category at AI Awards 2026 honors 5 companies that have made positive contributions to the development of artificial intelligence, creating economic and social value.

The AI ​​Awards ceremony, organized by VnExpress, took place on the afternoon of November 5 within the framework of Vietnam Artificial Intelligence Festival - AI4VN 2026. Typical AI development enterprise is one of three categories at the awards at AI Awards 2026, besides Excellent AI Products and Solutions, and Vietnamese AI Talent.

Elcom Technology - Telecommunications Joint Stock Company

Elcom was founded in 1995, currently has more than 40% of its staff working in R&D, developing a smart traffic AI ecosystem from hardware, AI models to operating software. The company's products are currently available in more than 20 countries. Smart transportation segment revenue increases from 184.6 billion VND in 2021 to more than 1,500 billion VND in 2024.

In addition to expanding the Southeast Asian market, Elcom focuses on training AI human resources, collaborating on research with universities and research institutes, and developing open standards. The business said it has more than 10 years of accumulating Vietnamese traffic data, serving training, improving models and developing solutions suitable to domestic conditions.

CMC OpenAI Joint Stock Company

CMC OpenAI (C-OpenAI) was established in August 2025, is a strategic unit of CMC Group, focusing on mastering core AI, including large Vietnamese language models, Agentic AI and Multimodal AI. The company currently has more than 100 employees, over 50% of whom are engineers, aiming to develop a sovereign AI platform and specialized applications.

CLEX, the company's legal AI assistant, is developed on the CMC-AI-Legal-32B model specialized in Vietnamese law, supports searching, drafting and reviewing documents, and is one of two platforms selected for pilot evaluation at the Ministry of Science and Technology. CMC OpenAI also cooperates with Ho Chi Minh City University of Law and Foreign Trade University, providing 30,000 CLEX accounts, aiming to expand AI applications in the public sector, businesses and education.

MoMo Financial Technology Group

MoMo was born in 2010, currently serving more than 30 million users and 500,000 businesses and small businesses. The group has more than 1,000 engineers, including 300 AI and data experts, focusing on self-research and development of core technology instead of depending on available models. Typical applications include Moni financial assistant, credit scoring and fraud prevention AI system.

The company representative said the highlight is that the AI ​​defense system detected nearly 29,000 unusual transactions, warned more than 10,000 users every day, contributing to protecting more than 15,000 billion VND each year. MoMo also coordinates with A05, the National Cyber ​​Security Association, to implement initiatives to share risk signals, raise awareness and build digital trust in Vietnam.

Zalo Platforms Company

Zalo is considered the leading connection platform in Vietnam with 81.3 million monthly users and 2.2 billion messages per day. The enterprise has pursued the AI-First strategy since 2016, focusing on developing a large language model KiLM 13B for training from scratch, as well as building a set of Vietnamese AI assessment standards including 10,880 questions on 58 topics.

Notable products include Kiki Auto voice assistant with more than 1.6 million installations, Kiki Info reaching one million users and Digital Citizen Assistant exceeding 500,000 users after four months. Zalo also integrates AI into voice-to-text, translation and call subtitles, and organizes the Zalo AI Challenge, Zalo AI Summit and participates in the Au Lac AI Alliance to develop human resources, promote research and expand access to AI in Vietnam.

Minh Phuc Transformation Company

Established in 2002, Minh Phuc Transformation has grown into a Contact Center solution provider with more than 2,500 employees, more than 1,000 customer care desks, handling 54 million calls per year and serving more than 500 businesses. The company focuses on bringing AI into customer care, sales and experience management, with a self-developed product ecosystem, optimized for Vietnamese.

The Transformation ecosystem includes OmiCX supporting multi-channel customer care, OmiBOT automating voice interactions and OmiQC analyzing and controlling the quality of all calls in real time. The company's speech recognition and synthesis application solutions reduce processing time by 70%.

The AI ​​Awards will be organized annually by VnExpress from 2022, within the framework of the AI4VN Vietnam Artificial Intelligence Festival event. Through four seasons, the program honors many AI solutions applied in education, healthcare, public services and commerce. From 162 nominations, AI Awards 2026 selected 17 products, solutions and 16 businesses as finalists. C

AI4VN is an annual event since 2018, directed by the Ministry of Science and Technology and coordinated by VnExpress newspaper. This year, the program cooperates with Hanoi National University to inspire, encourage research spirit and promote AI application orientation in the young generation.

Bao Lam