Hyundai Heavy Industries Group, the world's biggest shipbuilder by sales, said Wednesday it has signed a pact with a US data analytics firm for the big data platform business.

At the Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas, the South Korean shipbuilder signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Palantir Technologies Inc. to establish a big data platform and a joint venture, the company said in a statement.

"The partnership will substantially improve the competitiveness of the group's core businesses, and it will be an important turning point in innovation of organizational culture," Chung Ki-sun, chief executive officer of Hyundai Heavy Industries Holdings, said in the statement.

Under the MOU, the two companies will jointly build a big data platform for the group's key affiliates related to shipbuilding and offshore engineering, energy, and industrial machinery.

The group will provide the affiliates' process expertise and sales know-how, whereas Palantir will offer software and development personnel, it said.

Once the platform is built, they will create a joint company that specializes in developing and selling big data platform services and commercialize big data solutions from platform construction to operation to global companies, the company said. (Yonhap)