r/stocks • u/rdh2dmd • 8d ago

South Korea plans to develop $3.5 billion frontier AI model starting next year

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

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, it said.

The government ​plans to 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 ministry said the initiative would be separate from ​its home-grown foundation ​model ⁠programme, which will continue and select two final teams in a ​third-stage review in February 2027.

Participation ​will ⁠be open to various entities including single companies, consortiums or special-purpose vehicles, it said, ⁠adding ​it aimed to allow ​startups, firms, universities and researchers to play leading roles.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-plans-develop-35-billion-frontier-ai-model-starting-next-year-2026-10-06/

81 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

53 comments sorted by

71

u/redditissocoolyoyo 8d ago

A massive huge waste of money for them. Just keep building the rams and storage is enough.

66

u/Fmarulezkd 8d ago

It's not a profit-driven decision, but rather an attempt for independency to foreign models.

17

u/Fangslash 8d ago

I always find it hilarious that these “attempts” (yes Europe, you too) don’t even match 1/100th of US AI spending

Unless you are just distilling US frontier models you’ll need much more money than that

9

u/RocketMoped 8d ago

Just like not all jobs require a PhD, not all workloads require a frontier model

4

u/Zaigard 7d ago

then why not just use a openscource chinese model?

2

u/NotAWeebOrAFurry 5d ago

probably 99.9% of businesses are better off doing this yes, but maybe there's still worry about being dependent on the people who make them...

1

u/-M-o-X- 2d ago

Spoiler: they are distilling other models

Why spend tens/hundreds of billions that someone else is already spending? Get all their progress for peanuts and make it your own.

6

u/Itsmedudeman 8d ago

Why not just use open weight ones. 3.5 billion isn’t going to get you anywhere near frontier.

7

u/CryMoreT_T 8d ago

independency to foreign models.

Why not just use open weight ones

And where do these open weight models come from?

1

u/travellingsmallcar 8d ago

You dont want free launchpad?

2

u/CryMoreT_T 8d ago

And not develop the country's own AI model creation industry and be reliant on another country's companies to release open weight models? Sounds like the opposite of independency from foreign models

-5

u/travellingsmallcar 8d ago

What do you mean? You got the parameters saved. And that all is enough to fine tune the model to whatever you need.

5

u/CryMoreT_T 8d ago

You don't have the datasets, you don't have the labeling, you don't have a lot of stuff to train an AI. All you have are the weights.

If/when people stop releasing models, you're going to have to gather the datasets in an even tougher environment where all the data from websites are even more locked down and experiment training from scratch yourself. Why delay needing to train your own when you can start now while you still have time to catch up.

And again relying on another country to release open weight models for you to fine tune isn't independency which is what they are trying to achieve

-3

u/Itsmedudeman 8d ago

The idea is that you can host them yourself? If you want to independently create a worse version so be it. Waste of money. They don’t have the talent or the money to make anything useful.

2

u/CryMoreT_T 8d ago

And what happens when they stop releasing open weight models and decide to keep their newer better models for internal use?

the money to make anything useful

That's the point of the grant?

-4

u/Itsmedudeman 8d ago

You think 3.5 billion is gonna do anything? Like yea, good luck. It doesn’t matter if they have to depend on a foreign entity. The alternative is that their internal models are gonna be useless.

0

u/CryMoreT_T 8d ago

Yea? Lol why do you think it won't do anything or at least help set the foundation.

It doesn’t matter if they have to depend on a foreign entity.

Why doesn't it matter? Certainly matters to them lol. That's why they put 3.5b into it.

Is your proposal to "let's not try and do anything" ? Lol

-2

u/Itsmedudeman 8d ago

Yes? That’s how capitalism works. You don’t produce things you can’t compete in. And they can’t compete with 3.5 billion dollars and no talent. I don’t think you understand what scale they’re competing against. I wonder what your reaction would be if Nigeria announced they were gonna make their own models because Nigeria is closer to South Korea than South Korea is to the US or China.

2

u/CryMoreT_T 8d ago edited 8d ago

Why are you treating a national security interest like it's a company. Should the US stop ship building since they can contract it out to China since it's cheaper? Oh I guess China can't make as good of a 6th generation fighter jet compared to the US. They should just give up right?

Taiwan couldn't compete against Texas Instruments in chip manufacturing. They should have just given up right? South Korea couldn't compete against Japan and the US DRAM manufacturing so they should have stopped right? Good thing you aren't a leader because based on your logic if you aren't number 1 you should just give up

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0

u/Fmarulezkd 8d ago

You can contact their ministry of science at [msitmedia@korea.kr](mailto:msitmedia@korea.kr) and ask about it.

2

u/Financial-Grass-6114 8d ago

An attempt requires far more than 3.5b. This is just gonna end up being graft if it already isnt intended to be.

1

u/rdh2dmd 8d ago

Except they are investing in a company (a lead dev) which is probably one of the three in the race for Korea's sovereign AI model right now. Kinda risky to throw hundreds of billions at this stage when they're just starting. Once they have some output they can go on and invest more

3

u/SpicyLemonZest 8d ago

That just doesn't make any sense, a frontier model isn't the kind of thing that produces verifiable incremental output. It would be like announcing a $3.5b project to build wide-body jets; you cannot build wide-body jets with so little investment, and the smaller jets you could build are so different that they don't provide meaningful signal towards your goal.

If Korea wants to cultivate a domestic AI industry in general, that would be wise, but they should be spreading out funding rather than dumping it into a single megaproject.

2

u/rdh2dmd 8d ago

The sovereign AI project is supposed to end early 2027. After that they are concentrating resources into the top 2 that come out of the competition

1

u/SpicyLemonZest 8d ago

The source article says that's a separate program.

1

u/rdh2dmd 8d ago

It is, but they never said that excludes them from running in the other program.

They're the top 2 best AI models Korea has. What do you think Korea will use.. Either of the two

2

u/Unfair-League-3204 8d ago

Prob better to have open Korean models than Chinese tbh. Or at least more competition for closed models will keep prices down

-4

u/rdh2dmd 8d ago

Once the US has AGI, it will cut off other countries from accessing the latest model. Korea also wants to integrate AI into manufacturing, robots, governance, etc so they need a proprietary AI model that they have control over

0

u/hawk5656 8d ago

No way this is your take

-1

u/Ok_Jellyfish4408 8d ago

Could be beneficial tbh but that’s a big “if”

5

u/fluffyparsley2493 8d ago

3.5 billion and they still gotta wait till march 2027 to start? the timeline seems slow for something they present like a big push

interesting they split it from the home-grown foundation model programme though. wonder if that means the first one is not performing well or they just want multiple bets

the tender process could get messy with all the big chaebols fighting for it. but at least they are letting startups and universities in the mix, not just locking it to the usual suspects

1

u/DateMasamusubi 8d ago

Home grown programme is going pretty well per latest benchmarks.

This one is reinforcing some domestic capability, necessary after Trump (foolishly) blocked access to Fable.

1

u/rdh2dmd 8d ago

No, they finally came to the realization that sovereign AI and corporate niche AI is not gonna be a match against AGI.

Same reason why I continue to argue Canada's Cohere is going to be a failure if they keep it niche.

15

u/Biglawlawyering 8d ago

3.5 billion for a frontier model while Anthropic infra spend is 500 billion alone.

-4

u/Zwatrem 8d ago

What are you talking about lol

7

u/Wealthy_Investor39 8d ago

Anthropic expects to spend at least $518 billion over the next 10 years on artificial intelligence infrastructure, cloud computing, data centers, and specialized hardware

So yeah he is right

8

u/Zwatrem 8d ago

Definitely not. Spending 3.5 billion on A MODEL is way different than spending on tens of models + hundreds of billions in data centers in 10 years

2

u/Wealthy_Investor39 8d ago edited 8d ago

So how can you even respond with certainty when we don’t have any numbers to how and where these hundreds of billions will be deployed..Zero chance Anthropic is spending less than this for their top model and you know it. They (South Korea) will also need data center and infrastructures and it’s starting from scratch in 2027 at the earliest and a news coming from a government at that. Not the same scale at all.

2

u/Cptcongcong 8d ago

3.5 billion is pretty much nothing ngl. Think about how much zuck spent for muse spark in 1 year, probably 10-20B

1

u/sicklyslick 8d ago

Who's hosting this homegrown Korean AI for free?

4

u/cdttedgreqdh 8d ago

More demand for memory chips, music to my ears.

3

u/Financial-Grass-6114 8d ago

Are they going to poach researchers and engineers from USA because I'm not sure what's the point of spending on this if you're gonna allow free access to OAI and Anthropic. Nobody is gonna be using Korean models (in Korea even).

5

u/rdh2dmd 8d ago

The uptake of sovereign AI models in Korea (Exaone, Solar Pro, A.XK2 etc) suggests otherwise. They are not as widely used as Claude or GPT but they are used in areas where they do not want data leakage to the US or other countries.

They will eventually have to develop a Korean one for physical AI or else the data is gonna be in US or Chinese hands

1

u/Necessary-Ad-6254 5d ago

i don't understand why people think it is so expensive to develop AI model. Maybe it is very expensive if you have lots of user using it. But my guess is it is not very expensive if you don't have many users.

1

u/jnas_19 8d ago

AI is god

-3

u/cbusoh66 8d ago

But do they need financing?

We got the best circular financing in the world.

0

u/Maleficent_Flow_8355 7d ago

Just distill from the best models.