The Ministry of Science and ICT announced the results of the first round of evaluation for the "Independent AI Foundation Model" project on the 15th. Among the five elite teams, Naver Cloud and NC AI were eliminated, while three consortia—LG AI Research Institute, SK Telecom, and Upstage—advanced to the second round. The government had initially planned to eliminate only one team, but two teams were eliminated simultaneously.
Reasons for elimination: "Controversy over self-reflection and underperformance"
The two teams' reasons for being eliminated varied. NC AI was eliminated due to failing to meet the overall benchmark, expert, and user evaluation scores. Naver Cloud received excellent scores in the performance evaluation and was included among the four teams that passed, but was deemed "unfit for originality."
The problem was that the 'HyperClova X Seed 32B Sync' model submitted by Naver Cloud utilized the vision encoder and weights of China's Alibaba's open source model 'Qwen'. The Ministry of Science and ICT announced, "As a result of evaluating the independent AI foundation model standards from technical, policy, and ethical perspectives, the Naver Cloud elite team's AI model does not meet the independent standards."
Naver countered, “The core areas responsible for inference and judgment were developed using our own technology, and the vision encoder was a verified external module that took efficiency and global compatibility into account,” but this was not accepted.
LG AI Research Center's Top Rankings to Be Held in a Loser's Round
In the first evaluation, LG AI Research achieved the highest score, with a total score of 90.2 points. It ranked first in all three categories: benchmark evaluation (out of 40 points), expert evaluation (out of 35 points), and user evaluation (out of 25 points), and received a perfect 25 points in the user evaluation.
The Ministry of Science and ICT announced that it will hold a public contest in the first half of the year to select one additional elite team to maintain the four-team competition system. All companies, including Naver Cloud and NC AI, which were eliminated, as well as Kakao, KT, and the KAIST Consortium, are eligible to apply.
However, Naver Cloud officially withdrew from further participation in the competition, stating, "We respect the Ministry of Science and ICT's decision." Kakao also announced on the afternoon of the 15th, "We have decided not to consider a second attempt." Industry insiders believe the risk of brand image damage if they were to fail again weighed heavily on the company.
This project is a key initiative aimed at securing national AI competitiveness, and independent technology development was a key criterion for evaluation. The three consortia that passed the second round of evaluation will then select two final teams, who will receive substantial R&D funding. The balance between independence and performance has emerged as a key issue in the domestic AI technology ecosystem.