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ProgrammeGovernmentFrontierSouth KoreaReported

Korea picks Naver Cloud, SK Telecom, LG, NC AI and Upstage to build national AI models

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Source: Asia EconomyAlso reported by Startup Recipe

South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT selected five of the ten teams in the final round for its national AI foundation model project on 4 August 2025: Naver Cloud, SK Telecom, LG AI Research, NC AI and Upstage. Kakao, KT, Motif Technologies, Konan Technology and KAIST were not selected. The government offered GPUs in 2025 (512 NVIDIA B200 or 1,024 H100 per team) to Upstage, NC AI and LG, with SK Telecom and Naver Cloud, chosen as GPU-leasing suppliers, eligible from the second half of 2026; it also offered jointly purchased training data and staged evaluations every six months that drop one team per round.

Why it matters

Five Korean developers received state support, starting with GPUs for three of them, to build domestic foundation models, with funding tied to surviving six-monthly cuts.

When
4 Aug 2025
ID
WTA-N-2025-0111
Who
Ministry of Science and ICT, Naver Cloud, SK Telecom, LG AI Research, NC AI, Upstage

Summary by wheresthe.ai, from Asia Economy and the reporting credited above. We could not open the primary document, so it is marked Reported. Checked against the source on 9 Oct 2026.

Read the original at Asia Economy

Source copy: download the page as saved on 18 Oct 2026 (PDF). Also held by the Internet Archive.

Next stop on this Storyline: Led toKorea cuts Naver Cloud and NC AI from its national AI model project; LG scores highest

Cite this story

WTA-N-2025-0111: “Korea picks Naver Cloud, SK Telecom, LG, NC AI and Upstage to build national AI models.” wheresthe.ai, 4 Aug 2025. https://wheresthe.ai/d/kr-sovereign-ai-five-teams-selected-2025-08/ (source: Asia Economy).

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