Six Companies, Including SKT, KT, and Kakao, Join National Free "AI for All" Project (Comprehensive)

LG Affiliates Join Kakao Consortium
Naver Cloud Ultimately Opts Out
2–3 Participants to Be Selected by Month-End; Service Launch Planned This Year

The “Everyone’s AI” project, which aims to provide free nationwide AI services using domestically developed artificial intelligence models, has drawn applications from the country’s three major telecommunications companies as well as Kakao. The government plans to select participants by the end of this month, with a beta service launch set for the end of September and an official release scheduled for December.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on August 18 that “a total of six companies (consortiums) have submitted proposals in response to the open call for participation in the Everyone’s AI project.”

According to the Ministry, by the 5:00 p.m. deadline that day, six companies—SK Telecom, KT, Kakao, ESTsoft, MKD, and Xenon—had each formed consortiums to bid for the project. Naver Cloud, which had been weighing participation, ultimately decided against joining, while LG Uplus and other LG affiliates that were expected to participate opted instead to join the Kakao consortium.

Everyone’s AI is a project led by private companies with experience in developing public services, aiming to provide AI services to the general public that reflect national demand, free of charge. In contrast to global AI companies’ models, which induce users to subscribe to paid plans once usage exceeds a certain limit, this project allows the public to use essential AI functions without usage restrictions.

Selected companies must utilize Korean AI models that meet the criteria for “independent foundation models” for at least 50% of their operations. In addition, at least 30% of the models used must come from other domestic AI providers besides the primary model of the service company. If there is an operational need to use foreign AI models, limited use will be permitted; however, the usage of foreign models will not be eligible for government support.

Naver Cloud and Naver, both considered major contenders, have decided not to participate in the Everyone’s AI project. Naver Cloud explained that its decision was made to focus on other ongoing projects.

Six Companies (Consortiums) Such As SK Telecom, KT, Kakao Join the Initiative

Kakao, which expressed interest in the early stages of the public solicitation, has included key LG Group affiliates—such as LG AI Research, LG Uplus, LG Electronics, and LG CNS—in its consortium. Although LG Uplus and other LG affiliates expressed intentions to participate in the project, rather than forming a separate consortium, they opted to join the Kakao consortium. In addition to LG affiliates, Day1 Company, Lunit, Seoul National University Hospital, Shinhan Bank, Worksphere LLC, Wonderful Platform, Jobis & Villains, Kakao Enterprise, Crowdworks, and FuriosaAI are also part of the consortium.

SK Telecom will participate in the project with its “A.DotX K2” model, which passed the second stage of the independent foundation model evaluation. The SKT consortium also includes Goodoc, Nota, Senior Citizen Support Center, Riner, Soundable Health Korea, SelectStar, Shinhan Card, Alfred, SK Broadband, A2sys, AIM Intelligence, ELICE Group, Channel Corporation, Tmap Mobility, PersonaAI, Hana Card, Korea Association of Certified Public Tax Accountants IT Corporation, Habit Factory, and Hashed Ventures.

KT has formed a consortium with companies that have experience participating in independent foundation model projects, such as Upstage and Motif Technologies. Specifically, the consortium includes Daum (a subsidiary of Upstage), Deep Search, Ravelup, Rebellions, Mathpresso, Motif Technologies, MUSINSA, Vessel AI, BC Card, Saltlux, Action Power, Upstage, NC AI, Zigbang, Connectwave, and Korea Educational Broadcasting System (EBS).

ESTsoft has formed a consortium with Megazone, Bidraft, SureSoftTech, WiseNut, EastAid, Polaris Office, and Korea Productivity Center. MKD and Xenon are participating individually without forming consortiums.

The government will evaluate the applications and select two to three participants for the Everyone’s AI project by the end of this month. The selection process consists of reviewing eligibility and conducting both written and presentation evaluations, ultimately selecting the highest-scoring companies. The written evaluation assesses overall factors such as AI model and service competitiveness, GPU utilization and infrastructure management, and service development plans.

The Ministry of Science and ICT will sign agreements with the final participants in September, followed by a beta service launch at the end of September and an official launch of the Everyone’s AI chatbot service in December. Additionally, the project will provide a public AI agent through Everyone’s AI to notify users of and allow them to apply for public services in advance. The government also plans to further advance the AI agent after 2027.

The selected companies will each receive support in the form of either 256 or 128 units of NVIDIA’s latest B200 GPU. Government support will be provided for a five-year period from the signing of the agreement until December 31, 2030.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.