SLT-MOBITEL has launched SMART AI, a platform that sells access to artificial-intelligence tools through prepaid token credits rather than a monthly subscription, with Sinhala- and Tamil-oriented features.
Under the announced pricing, 10,000 token credits cost Rs. 749, and new users receive 1,000 free credits on registration, the Colombo Gazette reported. Daily FT carried the same launch on Wednesday morning.
The operator pitches the platform at students, creators, entrepreneurs and businesses, and presents the credit system as an alternative to maintaining separate paid accounts across multiple global AI services. It is accessible through a mobile connection, and SLT-MOBITEL says the local-language experience is intended to help users work with AI in languages familiar to them.
This is a delivery, not a surprise
The launch completes a product the company unveiled more than two months ago. At the launch of Sri Lanka AI Week 2026 on 6 August, SLT-MOBITEL introduced SMART AI — in the future tense — as a platform that would let customers buy AI token credits through their existing SLT-MOBITEL connectivity, describing it then, as now, as South Asia’s first AI tokenisation platform.
That puts 69 days between announcement and switch-on. Neither of today’s filings mentions the August announcement, and neither notes that the companion platform unveiled on the same day — AI Hub, a national AI engagement platform linking learners, researchers, universities, industry and government — was described as already operational back in August.
The local-language emphasis also tracks a strategy the group has been setting out publicly. SLT Group Chairman Dr. Mothilal de Silva argued in late September that Sri Lanka should chase smaller, task-specific AI models rather than frontier-scale systems, naming a Sinhala- and Tamil-capable assistant as a priority application and calling the country’s lack of computing capacity its “most critical gap.”
The claim, and the company’s record of making it
“South Asia’s first AI token credit based platform” is SLT-MOBITEL’s own characterisation, carried in both filings’ headlines. Neither outlet tests it, and this report does not either.
It is worth noting the operator has claimed firsts for earlier AI products: “HELLO AI” was billed as Sri Lanka’s first AI-based package, and “AI Pazz”, built with Redblocks AI, as the country’s first AI-powered legal research platform. Both were reported in 2025 by outlets including the Daily Mirror, island.lk and Lanka Business Online; those filings are noted here for context and are too old to count among this article’s sources.
Not reported: what a credit buys
The pricing is specific and the unit is not. Rs. 749 for 10,000 credits is not interpretable without knowing how many credits a single query consumes, and neither filing says.
Also unstated: which underlying models the platform runs on or licenses, whether credits expire, whether the Sinhala and Tamil capability is a translation layer or native language support, and whether the free 1,000 credits are a one-off or recurring. The Colombo Gazette is explicit that the productivity and content-creation gains described are “the company’s intended outcomes rather than independently measured results.”
Sources: Colombo Gazette, Daily FT.