South Korea has launched an ambitious national initiative to develop homegrown foundational Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to compete with major U.S. and Chinese systems like ChatGPT and Gemini. This strategy, rooted in the concept of "Sovereign AI," aims to achieve technological independence, strengthen national security, and drive economic growth.
A Public-Private Partnership for a Full AI Stack
Seoul's approach combines massive government funding with the agile expertise of its tech giants, aiming to build domestic capacity across the entire "AI stack"—from chips and data centers to software and models.
- National Champions:The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) has selected five consortia featuring tech titans like Naver, LG, SK Telecom, NCSoft, and Upstage to spearhead the development of Large Language Models (LLMs).
- Massive Investment:The government is establishing a ₩100 trillion ($72-74 billion) National Growth Fund in partnership with the private sector to finance this transformation. The government's 2026 AI budget is set at 10.1 trillion won, more than triple the amount from the previous year, with much of the funding allocated to R&D and future growth engines.
- Infrastructure:A critical focus is expanding AI computing infrastructure, with plans to increase GPU performance capability by 15 times the current capacity by 2030. The government is set to purchase 15,000 high-performance GPUs and aims to control a total of 35,000 GPUs within two years.
Leveraging the Semiconductor Edge
South Korea's greatest competitive advantage lies in its global dominance in memory chip manufacturing. The strategy is explicitly designed to pair this chip leadership with the creation of native AI capabilities.
- Homegrown Hardware:Companies like Samsung and SK Hynix are world leaders in advanced memory chips (like HBM), which are crucial for AI processors. Projects are underway to deploy domestic AI chips (NPUs and PIMs) and develop specialized hardware to foster a domestic AI computing ecosystem, which could cut costs by 30-50% compared to reliance on foreign GPUs.
- Global Collaboration:Despite the "sovereign" goal, Korean firms are also forging key partnerships, such as Samsung and SK Hynix working with OpenAI to supply advanced chips and collaborate on the "Stargate" AI data center project.
Tailored and Strategic AI Applications
The goal is not just to replicate Western models but to build AI systems tailored to the nation's specific needs, reducing the risks associated with using foreign, "black-box" models.
- Cultural Relevance:The sovereign AI models are being trained exclusively on the Korean language, culture, and historical records, allowing for enhanced tokenization for Korean morphology and correct handling of honorifics.
- Industry Adoption (AI+X):The plan outlines 30 flagship AI transformation projects across public and corporate sectors. These include applying AI to physical processes in robotics, autonomous vehicles, shipbuilding, smart factories, and AI-enabled home appliances.
- Public Sector Transformation:The government plans to use AI to revamp the public sector in areas like welfare delivery, tax compliance, and faster drug approvals.
Through this sweeping, coordinated national strategy, South Korea views AI innovation as the "only viable path to sustainable growth," aiming to raise the country's potential growth rate and establish itself as one of the top three AI powerhouses globally.
