SKT, KT and Kakao consortia selected for South Korea's 'AI for all' service project
Key Takeaways
- •Three consortia led by SK Telecom, KT and Kakao were selected to build a nationwide AI service.
- •The government will provide the teams with a combined 512 Nvidia B200 GPUs and fund the service rollout next year.
- •Officials plan to sign agreements with each consortium next month, and the services are expected to launch by the end of the year.
- •The project requires domestic AI models to account for at least 50% of each system under the ministry’s standards.
- •The initiative is part of South Korea’s broader effort to expand AI infrastructure and create an “AI-basic society.”
South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT said Friday it has selected three consortia — led by SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and Kakao Corp. — to build an artificial intelligence service accessible to everyone, under the government's "AI for all" initiative.
The three teams will receive a total of 512 B200 graphics processing units from Nvidia, while the expenses needed to roll out the service next year will be covered by government budgets, the ministry said. The Nvidia B200 is a data-center GPU from the US chipmaker's Blackwell-generation lineup, designed for large-scale AI workloads.
The selection comes amid a wider state buildout of AI infrastructure. President Lee Jae Myung, who took office in June, has pledged to make South Korea one of the world's top three AI powers, and in July the government announced a 100 trillion won support package for the AI chip sector through 2030, along with plans for a national AI computing center — starting in Ulsan — expected to house tens of thousands of high-performance GPUs.
The science ministry plans to sign an agreement with each consortium next month, with the official launch of each service to take place by the end of the year.
The government initiated the "AI for all" project in July as part of its effort to create what it calls an "AI-basic society," in which people can use AI services regardless of income, age or digital literacy.
Under the project's requirements, developers must use domestic AI models that meet the ministry's independent foundation-model standards for at least 50 percent of the system. South Korea has an active homegrown model sector — Naver's HyperCLOVA X, LG AI Research's EXAONE and SK Telecom's own A.X series among them, with Kakao having introduced its Kanana models — giving the consortia domestic options for meeting that threshold.
A total of six consortia applied for the project, with applications closing in mid-August. SK Telecom and KT are South Korea's two largest telecommunications carriers, while Kakao operates Kakao Talk, the country's dominant mobile messaging platform. Both carriers have made AI a central plank of their growth strategies — SKT through its "AI pyramid" strategy and its A. personal assistant, KT through a partnership with Microsoft announced in 2024 to develop Korean-localized AI models.
(Yonhap)
Source: Korea Herald Business
