South Korea plans $3.5bn frontier AI model programme starting March 2027

SEOUL — South Korea plans to launch a 4.7 trillion won ($3.5 billion) programme to develop a frontier artificial intelligence model from March 2027, the science ministry said, as Seoul moves to compete in the race for cutting-edge AI, Reuters reported.

The Ministry of Science and ICT plans to select a lead developer through a competitive tender after parliament approves the 2027 budget in December, with the winner potentially chosen as early as February. The government will combine state equity investment with private funding and concentrate computing chips, data and talent on the project, which aims to develop a model with leading performance.

The initiative will run separately from the country’s home-grown foundation model programme, known in Korean as Dokpamo, which will continue: the current competition among teams led by LG AI Research, SK Telecom and Upstage will select two finalists after its third-stage review in February 2027.

Second Vice Minister Ryu Je-myung said participation would be open, adding that startups with strong technology and talent should have “fair and reasonable opportunities” to compete, The Korea Herald reported. He said the current support — equivalent to roughly 1,000 high-end graphics processing units per team — was insufficient: “Investment on the scale of 1,000 GPUs is not enough to catch up with frontier-class models. The scale has to be completely different.”

The ministry is also preparing to allocate about 29,000 GPUs the government has purchased or is bringing online, with a distribution plan expected by year-end.

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