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, acceptable to vie with planetary heavyweights similar OpenAI and Google. 

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

The determination underscores Seoul’s tendency to chopped reliance connected overseas AI technologies, hoping to fortify nationalist information and support a tighter power implicit information successful the AI era.  

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

Every six months, the authorities volition reappraisal the archetypal cohort’s progress, chopped underperformers, and proceed backing the frontrunners until conscionable 2 stay to pb the country’s sovereign AI drive. 

Each subordinate is bringing a antithetic vantage to South Korea’s AI race. TechCrunch spoke with respective of the selected companies astir however they program to instrumentality connected OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and the remainder connected their location turf. NC AI declined to comment.

LG AI Research: Exaone 

LG AI Research, the R&D portion of South Korean elephantine LG Group, offers Exaone 4.0, a hybrid reasoning AI model. The latest mentation blends wide connection processing with the precocious reasoning features archetypal introduced successful the 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 determination up the ranks done its heavy entree to real-world manufacture information ranging from biotech to precocious materials and manufacturing.  

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

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

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

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

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

Built connected apical of the Chinese unfastened root exemplary from Alibaba Cloud, Qwen 2.5, A.X 4.0 comes successful 2 models, a hefty 72-billion-parameter mentation 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 examination information is not available.) SKT besides unfastened sourced its A.X 3.1 models earlier this summer. Meanwhile, the A. work offers features similar AI telephone summaries and auto-generated notes. As of August 2025, it’s already pulled successful astir 10 cardinal subscribers. 

SK’s borderline is its versatility, due to the fact that it has entree to accusation from its telecom web ranging from navigation to taxi-hailing. 

“SK Telecom’s relation is to enactment arsenic a span betwixt cutting-edge exemplary probe and real-world impact. With our telecom infrastructure, extended idiosyncratic basal and proven work similar A., we bring AI straight into mundane life, whether successful lawsuit service, mobility, oregon manufacturing,” Taeyoon Kim, caput of the instauration exemplary bureau astatine SK Telecom, told TechCrunch. 

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

“We’re gathering a full-stack ecosystem with Korean AI chipmaker Rebellions, securing trusted information partnerships done enactment with the authorities and universities, and fostering a planetary probe network,” said Kim. “That includes projects similar our collaboration with MIT (MGAIC), which applies instauration models to precocious manufacturing and artillery and semiconductor innovation.” 

Naver Cloud: HyperCLOVA X 

Naver Cloud, the 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 with caller products powered by the 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 the 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 lone institution — and 1 of the fewer successful the satellite — that tin genuinely assertion to person an “AI afloat stack.” It built its HyperCLOVA X exemplary from scratch and runs the monolithic information centers, unreality services, AI platforms, applications, and user services that bring the exertion to life, the spokesperson explained. 

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

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

Upstage’s Solar Pro 2 

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

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

“Solar Pro 2 has outperformed planetary models connected large Korean benchmarks. With this project, Upstage aims to execute a Korean connection show of 105% of the planetary standard,” Kwon said.  

Upstage aims to differentiate itself by focusing connected existent concern impact, not conscionable benchmarks, helium said. So it is processing specialized models for industries similar finance, law, and medicine, portion pushing to physique a Korean AI ecosystem led by “AI-native” startups.