South Korea AI teams unveil foundation models in national project

Dec. 30 (Asia Today) -- South Korea on Tuesday publicly unveiled early results from its national "Independent AI Foundation Model" project as five domestic teams presented foundation-model technology at a showcase event in Seoul attended by more than 1,000 people.

Deputy Prime Minister Bae Kyung-hoon, who also serves as minister of science and information and communications technology, said the results were difficult to believe after only four months of development and called the effort a driver for South Korea's ambitions to become an AI powerhouse.

The five teams - Naver Cloud, Upstage, SK Telecom, NC AI and LG AI Research - presented their first disclosed benchmarks, model designs and deployment strategies at the COEX auditorium in Seoul's Gangnam district, according to organizers.

Government officials said the project is a "coordinate verification" phase rather than a ranking contest. Lim Moon-young, standing vice chair of the National AI Strategy Committee, said the first announcement marked the start of a broader effort.

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Ha Jung-woo, senior secretary for AI future planning at the presidential office, said the presentations show domestic companies are improving competitiveness through the development of independent AI models and that the government will concentrate public and private sector capabilities to position South Korea as "Asia's AI capital."

Each team outlined different approaches.

LG AI Research introduced "K-EXAONE," which it said has 236 billion parameters and exceeded parity with leading global models across an average of 13 shared benchmarks. The company said it improved inference efficiency and reduced memory and computing needs using a mixture-of-experts architecture and hybrid attention.

SK Telecom presented its 500-billion-parameter "A.X K1" model and said it aims to build a foundation for AI to function as industrial infrastructure across sectors including manufacturing, energy and semiconductors.

Naver Cloud highlighted an "omnimodal" and service-integration strategy centered on HyperCLOVA X, emphasizing a sovereign AI ecosystem spanning models, platforms and services. Upstage showcased its open-weight Solar series models, focusing on efficient training and faster deployment for smaller businesses and developers. NC AI said it is targeting sector-specific use cases including manufacturing, defense and content.

The science ministry said it plans a first-phase evaluation of the teams' performance and future plans on Jan. 15. It said the lowest-ranked team will be eliminated based on the evaluation results.

-- Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

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