Korea's sovereign model race narrows to Upstage, SKT and LG

South Korea’s Sovereign AI initiative has entered its next stage 🇰🇷 and Artificial Analysis was proud to have supported the Korean Government (NIPA) as an official global evaluation partner, independently benchmarking all four participating models Launched in 2025 by Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) and National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), the Sovereign AI Foundation Model project is a government-backed competition to develop globally competitive Korean frontier AI models, with substantial GPU, data, and talent support for participating teams. The competition began with 5 teams: LG AI Research, SK Telecom, Upstage, Naver Cloud, and NC AI. Following the first evaluation, LG, SKT, and Upstage advanced, with Motif later joining through an additional selection round. Artificial Analysis collaborated with NIPA as an official evaluation partner, with the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index comprising the largest individual component of the judging criteria (25%), helping strengthen the credibility and fairness of the assessment and benchmark participating teams against the global AI frontier. This month’s Round 2 evaluation narrowed the field from four teams…