South Korea has officially launched its mission to build a homegrown, globally competitive artificial intelligence ecosystem. The Ministry of Science and ICT has selected five elite teams for its Korean Sovereign AI Foundation Model project, a significant step toward securing technological independence in AI. These teams—Naver Cloud, Upstage, SK Telecom, NC AI, and LG AI Research Institute—were chosen after a rigorous selection process that evaluated their technical capabilities, development strategies, and potential for impact.
Each of the five selected teams brings unique strengths and a clear strategic focus to the project. They will be tasked with developing powerful AI foundation models from the ground up, with the government providing key support in computing resources, data, and talent.
- Naver Cloud aims to create an omni-foundation model capable of handling text, speech, image, and video. They plan to establish an AI agent marketplace to make these advanced services widely accessible to the public.
- Upstage, the only startup in the group, is developing its Solar WBL model. They will focus on expanding language support to include Japanese and various Southeast Asian languages, aiming to increase AI adoption across different industries.
- SK Telecom is leveraging its full-stack AI capabilities to build next-generation large-scale models. Their goal is to push beyond current transformer models by optimizing their AI with domestic neural processing units and powerful GPU resources.
- NC AI is concentrating on industrial AI transformation. They will develop a 200-billion-parameter language model and a multi-modal model package specifically designed for sectors like manufacturing, robotics, and content creation.
- LG AI Research Institute plans to develop K-Exaone, an open-source model designed to outperform current frontier models by at least 100%. Their broad industry consortium will focus on creating successful AI applications for B2B, B2C, and B2G markets.
This initiative is a high-stakes competition. The five teams will vie for leadership over the next several years. Interim evaluations will narrow the field from five to four by the end of this year and eventually to just two by 2027. The ultimate goal is to empower Korea with sovereign, globally competitive AI models that will promote widespread public and industrial accessibility, solidifying the nation’s position as a leader in AI innovation.
