Yoo Sang-im "Securing 15,000 GPUs Within This Year... If Supplementary Budget Is Approved, It Must Be Used for AI" (Comprehensive)

Minister Yoo Sang-im of the Ministry of Science and ICT. Photo by Jo Yong-jun

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The government will announce the 'AI Computing Infrastructure Development Strategy' this month, which includes securing 15,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) within this year to build core artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. This reflects the judgment that the importance of high-performance computing resources for AI model and service development cannot be overlooked.

Yoo Sang-im, Minister of Science and ICT, held a briefing on the progress of key tasks for this year at the Government Seoul Office on the 4th. This was the first briefing held after Choi Sang-mok, Acting Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Finance, instructed last month that each minister provide monthly briefings on the progress of key tasks. Minister Yoo plans to report to the public every month.

The Ministry of Science and ICT will announce the AI Computing Infrastructure Development Strategy at the end of this month, which includes expanding AI computing infrastructure and improving data center regulations. On the 7th, an explanatory session on the National AI Computing Center project, which will invest up to 2.5 trillion won, will be held at the Bankers Hall in Jung-gu, Seoul.

The National AI Computing Center plans to initially install advanced foreign GPUs such as NVIDIA and gradually increase the proportion of domestically produced AI semiconductors to handle 1 exaflop (EF; the ability to perform 10^18 floating-point operations per second) of computing power.

Originally, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced a plan to secure 30,000 GPUs by 2030, but Minister Yoo emphasized that "30,000 units should be secured by the end of 2026, or at the latest early 2027," urging to accelerate the timeline. He said, "I think securing about 15,000 units this year would be sufficient," adding, "Originally, the national budget was planned to be spent until 2030, so this is just bringing it forward."

Regarding recent claims that additional budget is needed for AI, he said, "If it happens, I hope the purchase of AI GPUs will definitely be carried out." He added, "Out of the national budget of 677 trillion won, spending about 1 trillion won on AI is not unreasonable at all, and if more can be spent, it should be," and said, "We are persuading to use it as seed money to trigger the private sector."

On the shock caused by DeepSeek, Minister Yoo said, "We have about 10 models that have the potential to become like DeepSeek," and expressed optimism by saying, "Although their accuracy is currently more than 10% lower, it can be improved."

He said, "I don't think it fundamentally changed the landscape, but I think it gave considerable courage to our startups," and emphasized, "Along with pursuing high performance with low cost and low power consumption, there will be an intense battle to create new models, so we must quickly build infrastructure and create an environment for that."

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