Naver Cloud, Upstage, SK Telecom, NC AI, and LG AI Research have been selected as elite teams to develop South Korea’s national artificial intelligence foundation model with government support. Naver Cloud, LG AI Research, and Upstage—widely regarded as the industry’s top three—secured their spots as expected. NC AI, a subsidiary of game developer NCSoft, also advanced, while Kakao and KT were excluded from the final selection.
The Ministry of Science and ICT said Sunday it had selected five finalists from among 15 participating teams following a document review and presentation evaluation for its Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project. The initiative is part of President Lee Jae-myung’s “AI for All” pledge, aimed at positioning South Korea among the world’s top three AI powers. The chosen consortiums will receive access to government resources, including graphics processing units and datasets, to build a national AI model known as the K-AI, designed to rival those of global tech giants.
A key evaluation criterion was whether the teams were committed to building sovereign AI models from the ground up. The ministry said all five finalists shared this core vision, aiming to develop and secure their own foundation models. They also proposed strong open-source policies, which are expected to contribute to expanding Korea’s AI ecosystem and improving public access to AI technologies.
Each consortium brings unique capabilities. Naver Cloud’s team includes Naver, Twelve Labs, and the research foundation at Seoul National University. The group aims to develop an omni foundation model capable of understanding and generating content across various modalities, including text, images, audio, and video. Upstage’s consortium includes Nota, RableUp, Flitto, VUNO, and MakinaRocks.
SK Telecom’s consortium includes Krafton, FortyTwoDot, AI chipmaker Rebellions, and startups such as Liner and SelectStar. The group plans to develop a large-scale AI model that exceeds the capabilities of current domestic language models and to build AI agents accessible to the general public. The NC AI-led consortium includes leading universities such as Korea University, Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and KAIST, along with POSCO DX.
The LG AI Research consortium is advancing its Exaone model in collaboration with LG Uplus, LG CNS, FuriosaAI, Hancom, and Lunit Technologies from Riiid. Based on LG AI Research’s technical foundation, the team plans to launch a K-Exaone model that surpasses the performance of leading global frontier models and release it as open source.
The five teams will be granted access to institutional datasets from the National Archives, the National Institute of Korean History, Statistics Korea, the Korean Intellectual Property Office, and national broadcasters. They will also receive phased support in the form of Nvidia graphics processing units valued at 157.6 billion won, or about $120 million, funded through the national budget.
The government plans to narrow the field to four teams by the end of this year, followed by a final selection of two by late 2026. A nationwide contest open to the public will be held as part of the evaluation process. The two finalists will receive full government support through 2027.
장은지 jej@donga.com