Foster 5 Global AI Unicorns Within 2 Years

AI Utilization Rate of SMEs to Reach 50%
Government Announces Plan to Foster AI Startups and Expand AI Adoption

The government announced its plan to intensively nurture artificial intelligence (AI) startups to secure world-class competitiveness in terms of services and utilization. To this end, it also set a goal to increase the AI utilization rate among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to 50% within two years and to foster five global AI unicorns.

On the 20th, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced the "Plan to Expand AI Utilization through AI Startup Development" at the 3rd National AI Committee meeting chaired by Acting Minister Choi Sang-mok. This measure focuses on intensively nurturing AI startups that develop and provide AI services and solutions.

First, support will be provided to strengthen the capabilities of AI startups by sector. By supporting AI model development through inter-company collaboration, the plan aims to nurture startups supplying AI services in sectors such as manufacturing and finance, and to create and spread new business models. Additionally, the establishment of a 'Data Generation LAB' capable of generating and synthesizing data will be promoted, and 100 manufacturing AI specialized companies will be designated to receive support such as loans and guarantees up to 10 billion KRW per company, as well as assistance in manpower and market expansion.

To support the creation of demand markets for AI services developed by startups, public-private cooperation innovation projects will be utilized. Large corporations and startups will collaborate to develop sector-specific AI services specialized in solving particular industrial problems, and successful cases will be disseminated. Furthermore, education and consulting will be provided to enhance the awareness and understanding of AI utilization among SME executives and employees.

Policy fund support for AI startups will also be strengthened. This year, 60% of the total new liquidity supply of 9.8 trillion KRW for SMEs through loans and guarantees will be concentrated on innovative growth sectors such as AI and semiconductors. By 2027, an AI fund of approximately 3 trillion KRW, including government and private funds, will be established and operated to significantly expand financial support for AI startups.

AI. Provided by Getty Images Bank

Moreover, more than 50% of the new SME research and development (R&D) budget of 330.1 billion KRW will be invested and supplied to strategic technology fields such as AI. In high-risk, high-performance R&D projects that provide up to 10 billion KRW combining R&D funds and private investments, challenging AI tasks will be intensively supported. Joint research with overseas AI-related institutions (such as MIT) will be supported, and an AI specialized accelerator system will be introduced to assist overseas expansion.

Minister Oh Young-joo of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups said, “We have entered an era where AI technology is applied even to everyday products like TVs, washing machines, and watches. In this situation, it is time for the Ministry, startups, and SMEs to have a sense of crisis and prepare.” She added, “We will take the shock given by DeepSeek as an opportunity for a new leap forward, focus on specialized AI service sectors where startups and SMEs can excel, nurture AI national representative startups, and strive to lead AI technology and market dominance.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.