NHN, KT, Naver to jointly build AI semiconductor farm

Three large cloud service providers (CSPs) in South Korea will participate as a team in the project K-Cloud pursued by the government to verify domestically developed artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors.

Information and communications technology sources on Monday said the nation's "Big 3" CSPs -- NHN Cloud, KT Cloud and Naver Cloud ​-- ​will set up and verify an "artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor farm" among cloud projects promoted by the Ministry of Science and ICT. Domestic AI chip companies Sapion Semiconductors, Rebellions and Furiosa AI will also join.

They will also build and verify a commercial cloud data center with large-capacity and high-performance computation. The goal is to create two places for the center including in Gwangju, but only one to be formed by the private sector is expected to receive the coalition's support.

NHN Cloud was previously structured to collaborate only with companies with investment in or business relationships with Sapion, and the same went for KT Cloud with Rebellions and Naver Cloud with Furiosa AI.

Stressing the need for expanded collaboration to enhance the competitiveness of domestic companies, the government also required many companies to join its project Team Korea.

A notice released on Feb. 16 said applicants for the project must include at least two each of CSPs, AI chip companies and AI service providers.

“Predicting which companies will survive given the current market is difficult, and if certain companies fail to cooperate, they could lose all of their know-how,” a ministry source said. “(K-Cloud) was intended to form a wide range of cooperative relationships and set conditions for absorbing other teams even if failures occur.”

Write to Sang-Eun Lee at selee@hankyung.com