Five Leading Consortiums, Including Naver and LG, Selected for National AI Foundation Model Project: What Are Their Strengths?

Full-scale Launch of 200 Billion KRW Budget Support by the Ministry of Science and ICT
Recognition of In-house AI Development and Service Implementation Capabilities
Synergy with Participating Companies... Backed by Government Support

On August 4, five elite teams were selected to develop Korea's representative artificial intelligence (AI) foundation models, signaling the full-scale launch of efforts to build a national AI ecosystem.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced that Naver Cloud, LG AI Research, Upstage, SK Telecom, and NC AI have been chosen as the main participants in the independent AI foundation model project.

Yuwon Kim, CEO of Naver Cloud

Naver Cloud, which possesses abundant domestic data, is leading in Korean language optimization and service practicality with its 'HyperCLOVA X' model. The company was recognized for its 'AI full-stack' capabilities, which enable it to handle the entire process from AI technology development to service implementation using its own technologies.

Naver Cloud plans to develop an 'Omni Foundation Model' that integrates the AI technology of Silicon Valley startup Twelve Labs, allowing comprehensive understanding and generation of heterogeneous data such as text, images, audio, and video. Through this, the company aims to realize a complete multimodal AI that can compete in the global market.

LG AI Research was noted for its advanced multimodal technology based on its proprietary 'Exaone' model series. LG AI Research plans to develop 'Frontier AI' capable of performing complex tasks at a human-like level using state-of-the-art technologies.

Eastsoft and its subsidiary Eighte, participating as part of the LG AI Research consortium, were recognized for their competitiveness in commercializing AI software, backed by real-world experience with tens of millions of users.

Upstage was highly evaluated for its diverse pre-training data and experience in developing proprietary AI models. Kim Sung-hoon, CEO of Upstage, is recognized as a leading figure in the IT industry, having secured 31.6 billion KRW in investment just one year after founding the company.

Upstage plans to progressively expand by newly designing its own architecture and training algorithms, and by scaling model size (ranging from 100 billion to 300 billion parameters), language support, multimodality, and industry-specific specialization.

Sunghoon Kim Upstage CEO

The SK Telecom consortium aims to implement a full-stack AI based on proprietary technologies across semiconductors (Rebellions), models (Riiid), data (SelectStar), and services (42dot), and to open-source the developed models to various startups.

In particular, leading scholars from Seoul National University, KAIST, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are conducting fundamental technology research. Over 80% of the total project personnel in the SKT consortium's lead and participating organizations hold master's or doctoral degrees, and more than 120 AI specialists are at the core of fundamental research.

NC AI, which spun off from NCSoft as an independent AI company earlier this year, achieved significant results by being selected among the top five in this public-private project. The company has been recognized for its consistent R&D and strategic investments over the past 14 years.

NC AI is integrating AI technology across game development, such as automatically generating game character dialogues and applying AI to in-game item design, through its generative AI 'VARCO'.

Yeonsoo Lee NC AI CEO. Photo by Yongjun Cho

The NC AI consortium, in collaboration with NHN, will promote optimization demonstrations based on domestic AI neural processing units (NPU), and together with NPU startup Mobilint, will also carry out edge device demonstration projects for drones and robots, directly verifying the effectiveness of AI transformation in the field.

The AI industry is expressing expectations that this selection will lead to strong government support.

The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to provide the five selected teams with essential AI model development infrastructure, including GPU resources, research and development (R&D) funding, and large-scale data acquisition, with a budget of approximately 200 billion KRW.

Meanwhile, Kakao, which was not selected for this project, stated, "We will continue to develop AI technologies to contribute to the activation of the domestic AI ecosystem and the establishment of technological sovereignty," adding, "We aim to realize 'AI for Everyone' with models optimized for agent services."

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