Naver, SKT, LG, NC, and Upstage Reveal Independent AI Development Strategies
Kakao and KT, Despite Setbacks, Continue AI Advancement
The five companies selected as lead operators for the government-led independent artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model project have expressed their support for the initiative. Each company plans to develop a high-quality proprietary AI model through its own consortium.
On August 4, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced that, after conducting document and presentation evaluations of participating companies and institutions, it had selected five elite teams: Naver Cloud, Upstage, SK Telecom, NC AI, and LG AI Research Institute for the independent AI foundation model project.
The selected elite teams will receive government support in securing graphics processing units (GPUs), data, and talent. Additionally, these teams will be granted the titles of 'K-AI Company' and 'K-AI Model' for their companies and the models they develop, respectively.
First, Naver Cloud will develop the 'Omni Foundation Model,' which integrates Naver's language and speech-based multimodal technology with Twelve Labs' video AI technology to enable comprehensive understanding of various types of data, including video, audio, and images. The goal is to create a fully developed multimodal AI that can compete in the global market.
The Naver Cloud consortium will provide AI services that are easily accessible to all citizens, based on the Omni model. Furthermore, it will support the development, registration, and distribution of AI agents by anyone through platforms such as the AI Agent Marketplace. Leveraging its experience in building sovereign AI, it aims to create a K-AI global export model and release lightweight and inference-specialized models as open source for universal use.
The SK Telecom consortium is aiming to develop a super-large AI model that surpasses the scale of existing large language models (LLMs) developed in Korea. Similarly, it plans to apply 'Omni-Modal' technology, which can process various types of data in an integrated manner. The goal is to develop AI agents that are easily accessible to all citizens and to drive major AI transformation in the office, manufacturing, automotive, gaming, and robotics sectors.
SKT has trained its proprietary model 'A.X' on its own supercomputer, 'Titan,' and plans to procure large-scale resources at the consortium level to conduct high-level research and development (R&D) in the future. In addition, it will optimize the use of domestic neural processing unit (NPU) technology owned by Rebellions to provide high-performance and high-efficiency AI services.
The consortium led by LG AI Research Institute has set the goal of developing 'K-EXAONE,' a model with more than 100% of the performance of the world's top AI models, and releasing it as open source. The institute plans to develop and launch a variety of services based on K-EXAONE in collaboration with participating companies. In addition, it will expand its existing 'open recruitment internship program' to provide more domestic graduate students with opportunities to gain experience in generative AI research.
The NC AI consortium aims to develop a multimodal foundation model for AI transformation. To achieve this, its goals include: ▲ developing a proprietary large-scale language foundation model package with global top-tier performance at the 200B (20 billion parameters) level ▲ developing a proprietary LLM-based foundation model package ▲ building and servicing a 'DomainOps' platform that enables operation, automation, and optimization in specific industry sectors ▲ developing industry-specialized foundation models for the manufacturing, distribution, robotics, content, and public sectors.
Upstage, the only selected consortium led by startups, aims to expand AI adoption across industries based on its foundation model. At the same time, it plans to build a domestic AI technology ecosystem with global competitiveness. To this end, it will collaborate with companies such as ▲VUNO (medical) ▲MakinaRocks (manufacturing and defense) ▲Law&Company (legal) ▲Orchestra (public sector) ▲Day1Company (education) ▲Allganize (search and global) ▲KFTC (financial infrastructure).
Meanwhile, companies that were not selected as project participants will continue to pursue AI technology development. A Kakao representative stated, "We will continue to develop AI technology to help vitalize the domestic AI ecosystem and establish technological sovereignty," adding, "We will realize 'AI for Everyone' with models optimized for agent services."
KT is also expected to continue developing AI technology based on its proprietary model, 'Mideum 2.0.'
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