The Ministry of Science and ICT has decided not to hold a competitive elimination among consortia in the 'Everyone's AI' project, which aims to provide free artificial intelligence (AI) services to all citizens. However, an annual evaluation in March will assess actual service usage and adjust funding based on performance.
Kim Kyung-man, head of the AI Policy Division at the Ministry, stated during a briefing following the launch event for Everyone's AI at the Korea Press Center in Jung-gu, Seoul, on September 4, "We want steady growth through collaboration rather than competition," adding, "We will examine which consortium has the highest actual usage around March next year." He noted that consortia attracting more users and demonstrating higher activity will receive larger budgets.
The Ministry has allocated 250 billion won for the Everyone's AI project next year, which will be distributed for service operation and infrastructure and ecosystem expansion. Of this, 170 billion won will be used to support the use of graphics processing units (GPUs) like NVIDIA's B200. Each of the three consortia will receive 10 billion won directly for service operations, while the remaining 50 billion won will be invested in expanding the AI agent ecosystem.
Kim emphasized that the goal of the Everyone's AI project is to enable every citizen to have their own AI agent, highlighting the significance of expanding specialized services.
The government also plans to use Everyone's AI as an opportunity to validate domestic AI semiconductors. As the number of users increases, so will the demand for AI service inference and token usage, which could enhance the practical application of domestic neural processing units (NPUs) in real service environments.
Kim stated, "Using Everyone's AI will naturally increase inference demand," adding, "In some respects, this project opens up opportunities for domestic AI semiconductors to be validated." Baek Jun-ho, CEO of FuriosaAI, remarked, "We will do our best to ensure that citizens can utilize the high performance of domestic NPUs without inconvenience," and pledged that a significant portion of token consumption would be centered around domestic NPUs.
Plans for joint marketing under a single 'Everyone's AI' brand among the three consortia are also under discussion. Kim noted, "We have shared opinions on joint branding and marketing with the three consortia, but currently, we are emphasizing the unique characteristics of each platform," and stated that further consultations with the operators will lead to more concrete plans in the future.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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