On July 31, NCSoft’s AI research division, NC AI, officially announced the launch of a large-scale consortium to develop Korea’s own national foundation AI model. Spearheaded by NC AI, the newly unveiled Grand Consortium includes 14 top-tier institutions across industry, academia, and research sectors in South Korea.
NC AI launches large-scale consortium to develop Korea’s own AI model.
The consortium aims to drive a successful industrial AI transformation (AX) by leveraging Korea’s world-class industrial foundation.
Over the past five years, participating institutions have collectively produced 141 papers in natural language processing and 131 in multimodal AI at premier international conferences and SCI(E)-indexed journals. They also boast an impressive portfolio of 430 patent applications and registrations, underscoring their technological leadership.
Key R&D contributors include KAIST, Korea University, Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and ETRI, which will focus on core areas such as 3D vision, robotics, large language models (LLMs), multimodal systems, and data reliability. Previous experience with KorBERT, EAGLE, and KULLM will also be fully leveraged. NC AI will oversee the project based on its end-to-end development and commercialization experience with the VARCO series of AI models.
Leading Korean companies, including HL Robotics, Lotte Inovate, POSCO DX, InterX, NHN, and MediaZen, are participating to help scale and implement the technology across industries. Notably, HL Robotics will refine and commercialize AI models for use in autonomous mobile robots.
NC AI outperforms global open-source vision-language models (VLMs) in benchmark results / Source: NC AI
NC AI’s vision goes beyond technology development. The team plans to build VARCO, a foundation model optimized for Korean language, culture, and industrial environments, entirely from scratch—and to deploy it across real-world industrial sites. This initiative aims to secure digital sovereignty while accelerating the nation’s industrial AI transformation (AX).
Lee Yeon-soo, CEO of NC AI, commented:
“True AI sovereignty is not about passively avoiding dependency on foreign technologies—it’s about becoming a game-changer who shapes the rules and leads the global stage. This consortium marks the beginning of a bold journey to establish Korea’s leadership in AI across technology, data, and industry. It will also align with national AI governance to help achieve our ‘AI G3’ ambition.”
On July 31, NCSoft’s AI research division, NC AI, officially announced the launch of a large-scale consortium to develop Korea’s own national foundation AI model. Spearheaded by NC AI, the newly unveiled Grand Consortium includes 14 top-tier institutions across industry, academia, and research sectors in South Korea.
The consortium aims to drive a successful industrial AI transformation (AX) by leveraging Korea’s world-class industrial foundation.
Over the past five years, participating institutions have collectively produced 141 papers in natural language processing and 131 in multimodal AI at premier international conferences and SCI(E)-indexed journals. They also boast an impressive portfolio of 430 patent applications and registrations, underscoring their technological leadership.
Key R&D contributors include KAIST, Korea University, Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and ETRI, which will focus on core areas such as 3D vision, robotics, large language models (LLMs), multimodal systems, and data reliability. Previous experience with KorBERT, EAGLE, and KULLM will also be fully leveraged. NC AI will oversee the project based on its end-to-end development and commercialization experience with the VARCO series of AI models.
Leading Korean companies, including HL Robotics, Lotte Inovate, POSCO DX, InterX, NHN, and MediaZen, are participating to help scale and implement the technology across industries. Notably, HL Robotics will refine and commercialize AI models for use in autonomous mobile robots.
NC AI’s vision goes beyond technology development. The team plans to build VARCO, a foundation model optimized for Korean language, culture, and industrial environments, entirely from scratch—and to deploy it across real-world industrial sites. This initiative aims to secure digital sovereignty while accelerating the nation’s industrial AI transformation (AX).
Lee Yeon-soo, CEO of NC AI, commented:
“True AI sovereignty is not about passively avoiding dependency on foreign technologies—it’s about becoming a game-changer who shapes the rules and leads the global stage. This consortium marks the beginning of a bold journey to establish Korea’s leadership in AI across technology, data, and industry. It will also align with national AI governance to help achieve our ‘AI G3’ ambition.”