HKGAI is Hong Kong’s research-led generative-AI effort (HKUST). osFoundry is a model-agnostic orchestration layer you could run open models through. How a Hong Kong business should think about the two.
dgm is an independent osFoundry integration partner — not affiliated with osFoundry’s maker (OS LLC), and dgm has no completed client integrations yet.
HKGAI is the Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Centre, led by HKUST and established in October 2023 under the InnoHK research initiative. It has produced research models (its HKGAI-V1 is described in its own paper as a regional model built on an open base and aligned to Hong Kong’s trilingual and socio-legal context) and public-facing tools such as the trilingual chatbot HKChat. osFoundry is a model-agnostic orchestration layer. These are not competitors — HKGAI is a research programme and a set of models; osFoundry is the layer you run a model through — so this is about how they relate.
HKGAI and osFoundry at a glance
| Dimension | osFoundry | HKGAI |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An orchestration platform (agents, apps, retrieval, automations) | A research-led generative-AI R&D centre and its models |
| Role | Runs and orchestrates models | Produces models and applied tools |
| Strength | Model-agnostic, BYOK, self-hostable | Hong Kong trilingual context (Cantonese / English / Mandarin) |
| Origin | A product of OS LLC | HKUST-led, under the InnoHK initiative (est. October 2023) |
How a Hong Kong business should think about it
If and where HKGAI’s models are openly available, a model-agnostic platform like osFoundry could in principle run them alongside global models — routing trilingual or Hong Kong-context work to a regional model and other work to a global one. The honest framing: a regional research model is one option in a multi-model setup, not a wholesale replacement for global models, and you should verify a model’s licence and availability before relying on it.
Data residency
Because osFoundry is model-agnostic and self-hostable, running open models inside a Hong Kong cloud region or on-device is feasible — useful for residency-sensitive work. osFoundry’s managed cloud pins data to the US, EU or Japan — it does not currently offer a Hong Kong managed region (its nearest managed region is Japan). To keep data in Hong Kong, the honest path is self-hosting osFoundry (BYO Cloud) inside a Hong Kong cloud region such as AWS Asia Pacific (Hong Kong) ap-east-1, Microsoft Azure East Asia (Hong Kong SAR) or Google Cloud asia-east2 (Hong Kong), or running models locally on-device. Pricing for both tools changes and varies by plan and usage — always check the official pricing page for current figures.
Where dgm fits
dgm is an independent integration partner that helps Hong Kong businesses adopt osFoundry — scoping a first use case, handling the build, and connecting AI to the systems you already run. dgm can help a Hong Kong business set up a multi-model configuration on osFoundry that uses regional models where their language strength helps. dgm is independent of osFoundry’s maker (OS LLC) and has no completed client integrations yet, so everything described here is a service offered, not a past result. If you want to scope a practical first project, dgm can help you map it out.