South Korea’s Sovereign AI initiative has entered its next stage 🇰🇷 and Artificial Analysis was proud to have supported the Korean Government (NIPA) as an official global evaluation partner, independently benchmarking all four participating models

Launched in 2025 by Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) and National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), the Sovereign AI Foundation Model project is a government-backed competition to develop globally competitive Korean frontier AI models, with substantial GPU, data, and talent support for participating teams.

The competition began with 5 teams: LG AI Research, SK Telecom, Upstage, Naver Cloud, and NC AI. Following the first evaluation, LG, SKT, and Upstage advanced, with Motif later joining through an additional selection round.

Artificial Analysis collaborated with NIPA as an official evaluation partner, with the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index comprising the largest individual component of the judging criteria (25%), helping strengthen the credibility and fairness of the assessment and benchmark participating teams against the global AI frontier.

This month’s Round 2 evaluation narrowed the field from four teams to three:

➤ Upstage | Solar Open 250B (Intelligence Index score: 37) ➤ SK Telecom | A.X K2 (Intelligence Index score: 35) ➤ LG AI Research | K-EXAONE 2.0 (Intelligence Index score: 31)

Each advancing team is expected to receive access to roughly 1,000 NVIDIA B200 GPUs for six months, representing approximately ₩40B of support per team (₩120B total). The next round of the competition is expected in early 2027, when the field is currently planned to narrow to two teams.

We’re excited to continue supporting Korea’s rapidly developing AI ecosystem and its push toward the global frontier.

Link to announcement from Korean Government: https://www.msit.go.kr/bbs/view.do?sCode=user&mId=307&mPid=208&pageIndex=&bbsSeqNo=94&nttSeqNo=3187672&searchOpt=ALL&searchTxt=