{"slug": "south-korea-picks-skt-kt-and-kakao-to-build-its-free-national-ai-chatbot", "title": "South Korea Picks SKT, KT and Kakao to Build Its Free National AI Chatbot", "summary": "South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT has selected SK Telecom, KT, and Kakao to build its free national AI chatbot, 'AI for Everyone,' which will be available to all 52 million citizens, with a public beta in late September and full rollout by the end of 2026, free through 2028. The consortia must route at least half of user queries through their own certified domestic models and another 30 percent through a domestic model from another Korean company, excluding foreign models from powering the core service. The operators will split 512 Nvidia B200 GPUs from the state this year, with phase two in 2027 introducing an agent to automate welfare applications.", "body_md": "*South Korea just picked SK Telecom, KT and Kakao to build the free AI chatbot it is handing to all 52 million citizens, and not one of the underlying models comes from Silicon Valley.*\n\nOn Friday, South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT named three consortia, led by SK Telecom, KT and Kakao, as the operators of \"AI for Everyone,\" the project that will make Korea the first G20 nation to give every citizen free, unlimited access to a government-backed AI assistant. The ministry picked the trio from six bidders, according to The Korea Times, and a public beta is set to open in late September, with a full national rollout promised by the end of 2026 and no charge to users through 2028.\n\nKT's job is distribution. Instead of asking Koreans to download a new app, KT plans to embed the chatbot directly into services people already use, running mainly on its own Mi:dm K Pro 2.5 model alongside Upstage's Solar Pro 4 and Motif Technologies' Motif 3, folded into a 16-member consortium that also includes Musinsa, BC Card and Zigbang, according to The Elec.\n\nSK Telecom is building around its freshly launched A.X K1, a 500-billion-parameter model the company calls Korea's largest, with partners including Krafton, 42dot and Seoul National University. Kakao is running its own Kanana model, but its consortium leans heavily on LG: LG AI Research, LG CNS, LG Uplus and LG Electronics all joined, bringing LG's EXAONE and K-EXAONE 2.0 models into the mix.\n\nNone of that is optional window dressing. Every operator has to route at least half its user queries through its own certified domestic model, and another 30 percent through a domestic model built by someone else, according to Pebblous and Korean industry reporting. A foreign lab's model cannot power the core service.\n\n[AI Watched a Live Brain Operation in Real Time and Helped Save a Man's Sight](https://startupfortune.com/ai-watched-a-live-brain-operation-in-real-time-and-helped-save-a-mans-sight/)\n\nSurgeons at UCL's National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery used an in-house AI system to analyze live surgical video during a real operation for the first time, helping remove an 11mm pituitary tumour from Rhys Hibbert, 48, without damaging the nerves controlling his eyesight. The AI offered real-time decision support only; surgeons... - [AI assisted brain surgery real time vision preservation](https://startupfortune.com/ai-watched-a-live-brain-operation-in-real-time-and-helped-save-a-mans-sight/) - [live tumor removal surgery guided by artificial intelligence](https://startupfortune.com/ai-watched-a-live-brain-operation-in-real-time-and-helped-save-a-mans-sight/)\n\nNot every Korean giant wanted in. Naver, the country's dominant search engine, competed for an earlier version of this project as recently as August 2025 and then dropped out. The Elec reported that Naver balked at the requirement to route traffic through rival companies' models, weighed against the tight rollout timeline and the investment required. NCSoft and Naver Cloud were cut from the running earlier still. Samsung, which has spent years developing its own Gauss models, is not in the consortiums at all. What is left is a field built by telecoms and a messaging company, not by Korea's most decorated AI labs.\n\nFrankly, the government is not just picking winners. It is subsidizing them. The three operators split a combined 512 Nvidia B200 GPUs from the state this year, with more support for rollout costs promised from 2027, according to The Korea Times.\n\n## The bigger bet is 2027\n\nThe chatbot is phase one. Phase two, due in 2027, swaps the assistant for an agent that reads a citizen's circumstances, works out which welfare payments, scholarships or administrative programs they qualify for, and files the paperwork without being asked. South Korea's presidential office has already called AI access a basic right. Phase two is where that claim gets tested against something concrete: whether an algorithm can actually get a benefit check to someone who never knew to apply.\n\nNo other G20 government has tried this at national scale. Singapore and the UK have built AI tools into individual public services. South Korea is treating an AI assistant less like a product to regulate and more like electricity, something the state hands out because withholding it now counts as a disadvantage.\n\nWhether that bet pays off depends on something the ministry cannot dictate: whether 52 million people actually open the app in September. A free chatbot nobody uses is not sovereignty. It is just 512 GPUs sitting idle.\n\n**Also read:** [China's CXMT Posts an 873% Revenue Surge as the Global Memory Shortage Bites](https://startupfortune.com/chinas-cxmt-posts-an-873-revenue-surge-as-the-global-memory-shortage-bites/) • [Chinese AI Labs Give Away Frontier Models Free, Then Bill Big Tech Later](https://startupfortune.com/chinese-ai-labs-give-away-frontier-models-free-then-bill-big-tech-later/) • [Palantir stock surges as its Pentagon AI program nears $1 billion](https://startupfortune.com/palantir-stock-surges-as-its-pentagon-ai-program-nears-1-billion/)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-korea-picks-skt-kt-and-kakao-to-build-its-free-national-ai-chatbot", "canonical_source": "https://startupfortune.com/south-korea-picks-skt-kt-and-kakao-to-build-its-free-national-ai-chatbot/", "published_at": "2026-08-28 15:11:18+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-28 15:20:14.230530+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Ministry of Science and ICT", "SK Telecom", "KT", "Kakao", "Naver", "LG AI Research", "Upstage", "Nvidia"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-korea-picks-skt-kt-and-kakao-to-build-its-free-national-ai-chatbot", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-korea-picks-skt-kt-and-kakao-to-build-its-free-national-ai-chatbot.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-korea-picks-skt-kt-and-kakao-to-build-its-free-national-ai-chatbot.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/south-korea-picks-skt-kt-and-kakao-to-build-its-free-national-ai-chatbot.jsonld"}}