How South Korea Plans To Best Openai, Google, Others With Homegrown Ai 

From tech giants to startups, South Korean players are processing ample connection models tailored to their ain connection and culture, fresh to compete pinch world heavyweights for illustration OpenAI and Google. 

Last month, nan federation launched its astir eager sovereign AI inaugural to date, pledging ₩530 billion, (about $390 million), to 5 section companies building large-scale foundational models.  

The move underscores Seoul’s desire to trim reliance connected overseas AI technologies, hoping to fortify nationalist information and support a tighter power complete information successful nan AI era.  

The organizations picked by nan Ministry of Science and ICT to compete were LG AI Research, SK Telecom, Naver Cloud, NC AI, and nan startup Upstage. 

Every six months, nan authorities will reappraisal nan first cohort’s progress, trim underperformers, and proceed backing nan frontrunners until conscionable 2 stay to lead nan country’s sovereign AI drive. 

Each subordinate is bringing a different advantage to South Korea’s AI race. TechCrunch said pinch respective of nan selected companies astir really they scheme to return connected OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and nan remainder connected their location turf. NC AI declined to comment.

LG AI Research: Exaone 

LG AI Research, nan R&D portion of South Korean elephantine LG Group, offers Exaone 4.0, a hybrid reasoning AI model. The latest type blends wide connection processing pinch nan precocious reasoning features first introduced successful nan company’s earlier Exaone Deep model. 

Exaone 4.0 (32B) already scores reasonably good against competitors connected Artificial Analysis’s Intelligence Index benchmark (as does Upstage’s Solar Pro2). But it plans to amended and move up nan ranks done its heavy entree to real-world manufacture information ranging from biotech to precocious materials and manufacturing.  

It’s coupling that information pinch a attraction connected refining nan information earlier feeding to nan models to train. Instead of chasing sheer scale, LG wants to make nan full process much intelligent, truthful its AI tin present real, applicable worth that goes beyond what general-purpose models tin offer. “This is our basal approach,” co-head Honglak Lee told TechCrunch. 

LG is improving its models via acquainted tactics: offering them done APIs, past utilizing nan real-world information generated by users of those services to train nan exemplary to improve.  

“As LG’s models improve, our partners tin present amended services, which successful move make greater economical worth and moreover richer data,” he said. 

However, alternatively of chasing monolithic GPU clusters, LG AI Research is focusing connected efficiency, getting nan astir retired of each chip, and creating industry-specific models, he mentioned. The extremity isn’t to outspend nan world giants but to outsmart them pinch high-performing, yet much efficient, AI. 

South Korea’s telco elephantine SK Telecom (SKT) launched its personal AI supplier A. (pronounced A-dot) work measurement backmost successful precocious 2023 and conscionable rolled retired its caller ample connection model, A.X, this July.  

Built connected apical of nan Chinese unfastened root exemplary from Alibaba Cloud, Qwen 2.5, A.X 4.0 comes successful 2 models, a hefty 72-billion-parameter type and a lighter 7B version.  

SK says that A.X 4.0 processes Korean inputs astir 33% much efficiently than GPT-4o did, underscoring its section connection edge. (OpenAI’s GPT 5.0 comparison information is not available.) SKT besides unfastened originated its A.X 3.1 models earlier this summer. Meanwhile, nan A. work offers features for illustration AI telephone summaries and auto-generated notes. As of August 2025, it’s already pulled successful astir 10 cardinal subscribers. 

SK’s separator is its versatility, because it has entree to accusation from its telecom web ranging from navigation to taxi-hailing. 

“SK Telecom’s domiciled is to enactment arsenic a span betwixt cutting-edge exemplary investigation and real-world impact. With our telecom infrastructure, extended personification guidelines and proven work for illustration A., we bring AI straight into mundane life, whether successful customer service, mobility, aliases manufacturing,” Taeyoon Kim, caput of nan instauration exemplary agency astatine SK Telecom, told TechCrunch. 

SK Telecom is besides investing successful AI infrastructure, utilizing GPUaaS, South Korea’s largest GPU-based service, and building a caller hyperscale AI information halfway pinch AWS. Whatever it lacks, it is partnering to obtain.  

“We’re building a full-stack ecosystem pinch Korean AI chipmaker Rebellions, securing trusted information partnerships done activity pinch nan authorities and universities, and fostering a world investigation network,” said Kim. “That includes projects for illustration our collaboration pinch MIT (MGAIC), which applies instauration models to precocious manufacturing and artillery and semiconductor innovation.” 

Naver Cloud: HyperCLOVA X 

Naver Cloud, nan unreality services limb of South Korea’s starring net company, introduced its ample connection model, HyperClova, successful 2021. Two years later, it unveiled an upgraded version, HyperCLOVA X, on pinch caller products powered by nan technology: CLOVA X, an AI chatbot, and Cue, a generative AI-driven hunt motor positioned arsenic a rival to Microsoft’s CoPilot-enhanced Bing and Google’s AI Overview. It besides unveiled this twelvemonth its multimodal reasoning AI model, HyperCLOVE X Think. 

Naver Cloud believes nan existent powerfulness of LLMs is to service arsenic “connectors” linking bequest systems and siloed services to amended usefulness, according to a Naver spokesperson.  

Naver stands retired arsenic Korea’s only institution — and 1 of nan fewer successful nan world — that tin genuinely declare to person an “AI afloat stack.” It built its HyperCLOVA X exemplary from scratch and runs nan monolithic information centers, unreality services, AI platforms, applications, and user services that bring nan exertion to life, nan spokesperson explained. 

Similar to Google — but tuned for South Korea — Naver is embedding its AI into halfway services for illustration search, shopping, maps, and finance. Its advantage is real-world data. It’s AI Shopping Guide, for instance, offers recommendations based connected what group really want to buy. Other services see CLOVA Studio, which lets businesses build civilization generative AI, and CLOVA Carecall, an AI-powered check-in work geared for seniors surviving alone. 

The Naver spokesperson says besting world AI giants for illustration OpenAI and Google hinges connected 2 things: perfecting its “recipe” for models and securing nan superior to standard them. Even so, alternatively than chasing size, nan institution emphasizes sophistication, arguing its AI is already globally competitory astatine comparable scales.  

Upstage’s Solar Pro 2 

Upstage is nan only startup competing successful nan project. Its Solar Pro 2 model, launched past July, was nan first Korean exemplary recognized arsenic a frontier exemplary by Artificial Analysis, putting it successful nan ringing pinch OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic, according to Soon-il Kwon, executive vice president astatine Upstage. 

While astir frontier models person 100 cardinal to 200 cardinal parameters, Solar Pro 2 — pinch conscionable 31 cardinal — performs amended for South Koreans and is much cost-effective, Kwon told TechCrunch. 

“Solar Pro 2 has outperformed world models connected awesome Korean benchmarks. With this project, Upstage intends to execute a Korean connection capacity of 105% of nan world standard,” Kwon said.  

Upstage intends to differentiate itself by focusing connected existent business impact, not conscionable benchmarks, he said. So it is processing specialized models for industries for illustration finance, law, and medicine, while pushing to build a Korean AI ecosystem led by “AI-native” startups.