South Korea's race to develop a cybersecurity-focused artificial intelligence model has narrowed to two rival alliances. A consortium led by Naver Cloud and LG will compete against one led by SK Telecom and joined by AI startup Upstage.
According to industry sources on Aug. 26, the Naver Cloud and LG consortiums combined ahead of the application deadline, while Upstage joined the SK Telecom consortium. Each side will now enter the competition with two foundation-model capabilities, strengthening the contest for the government-backed project.
LG's original consortium, which included LG CNS, LG AI Research and LG Uplus, had considered submitting an independent bid. It ultimately joined Naver Cloud, combining Naver's HyperCLOVA X model capabilities with LG AI Research's EXAONE model and expanding the alliance's AI-model and infrastructure resources. The Naver Cloud consortium includes 32 companies and institutions.
SK Telecom, meanwhile, has joined forces with Upstage despite competing against it in South Korea's sovereign AI foundation-model initiative. In the cybersecurity project, the companies will combine their respective model-development capabilities rather than compete separately. SK Telecom's 13-member consortium also includes SK Shielders, AhnLab, Secui, Igloo Corp., RaonSecure, Genians and several academic partners.
The government will select one consortium to develop a cybersecurity-specialized AI foundation model. The winner will receive access to 256 NVIDIA B200 GPUs, equivalent to 32 nodes, for 10 months. An interim model will be assessed after five months, with continued GPU support for the remaining period dependent on that evaluation.
After failing to win a place in the sovereign AI foundation-model program, Naver Cloud has chosen not to participate in the separate “AI for All” initiative and is instead concentrating its resources on the cybersecurity AI project. If selected, the company plans to add its own GPU capacity beyond the government allocation to build a high-performance security model.
Naver Cloud plans to draw on its large-scale AI cluster infrastructure, as well as security data accumulated through its operation of Naver services and cloud platforms. It has also brought cybersecurity companies, relevant public agencies and prospective user organizations into its consortium, aiming to connect model development with real-world deployment.
SK Telecom is seeking to build on its participation in the sovereign AI foundation-model and “AI for All” initiatives by winning the cybersecurity AI project. The addition of Upstage near the application deadline strengthened its model-development capacity and appears to have contributed to the consolidation between the Naver Cloud and LG camps.
SK Telecom is emphasizing its “AI full-stack” capabilities, spanning models, infrastructure, security technology and services. Its plan is to combine that foundation with the expertise of cybersecurity vendors to develop a security-specialized AI model and translate it into deployable services for domestic cyber-threat environments.
“The key is not simply developing a model, but achieving performance strong enough for actual use by defense and public-sector organizations,” said Lee Seong-yeop, a professor at Korea University's Graduate School of Management of Technology. “Because AI-development resources such as GPUs are limited, they need to be used efficiently.”
