Naver Cloud wins Korea cybersecurity AI project

A consortium led by Naver Cloud has been selected for a government project to develop an AI foundation model specialized in cybersecurity, the Ministry of Science and ICT said Thursday.

The cloud and AI arm of portal operator Naver beat a rival consortium led by SK Telecom, earning high marks for its broad industry-academia-research partnership, technological capabilities and development strategy, among other factors, the ministry said.

The Naver Cloud consortium comprises 32 companies and institutions, including LG CNS and LG Uplus, as well as major domestic universities and research organizations.

The government plans to provide the consortium with up to 256 Nvidia B200 GPUs over the next 10 months to support the development of the model.

The ministry said it plans to sign a contract with the consortium later this month, paving the way for full-scale development.

The project aims to develop a sovereign cybersecurity AI model tailored to Korea's security environment amid growing cyber risks stemming from rapidly evolving AI technologies.

Yonhap