SEOUL, August 07 (AJP) - SEOUL, August 07 (AJP) - A proposal to form a corporate consortium that would fund dedicated admission seats in artificial intelligence and software was raised at Kookmin University on July 24, at the launch of an industry alliance the Seoul school is building with 10 technology companies.
Contract-based quotas let companies pay for places at a university under an agreement that links admission to employment with the sponsoring firms. The university's account of the meeting did not name who made the proposal, set a timeline, or say whether any company had committed to it.
Kookmin University said Thursday that its College of Software Convergence has hosted the launch at the main administration building. The alliance is called the KMU AX Innovation Alliance, taking its name from AI transformation, the term used in South Korea for applying AI across an organization's existing operations. Son Jin-sik, the university's vice president for planning, and Hwang Sun-tae, dean of the software college, attended.
Participants discussed joint projects, field training, internships, hiring pipelines and jointly operated courses, the university said.
KT, NHN Cloud, TmaxTibero, Hancom InnoStream, Innogrid and Maum AI were among the companies represented, drawn from cloud computing, data, enterprise software, security and applied AI. The university did not say whether the firms had joined the alliance as members.
Kookmin has held a government software designation since 2022, when the Institute of Information and Communications Technology Planning and Evaluation selected its software college for funding of up to 2 billion won a year. Fifty-eight universities hold the designation.
The Ministry of Science and ICT began converting those schools this year into what it calls AI-centered universities, a program paying 3 billion won a year for as long as eight years. Seven were named on May 5. They were Gachon, Korea, Sogang, Sungkyunkwan, Soonchunhyang, Soongsil and Yonsei universities. Kookmin was not among them.
The ministry said then that it would select three more in June from universities outside the software program. On July 2 it announced a separate expansion of eight additional places, restricted to software-designated universities outside the capital region. Kookmin, in Seoul, was not eligible for that round. The government has said it wants 30 AI-centered universities by 2030.
The national AI action plan for 2026 through 2028, issued in February by the National AI Strategy Committee and the science ministry, calls for converting the software-designated universities into AI-centered ones and for expanding contract departments and other industry-demand-based training.
Kookmin marks its 80th year in 2026 and has named eight priority fields under a long-term development plan. One of them is AI+X, the pairing of AI with other disciplines, and the alliance sits under that field.
The university said it would hold regular exchanges and follow-up working-level consultations with the participating companies, and would keep expanding the network to firms in cloud and AI infrastructure, generative AI and AI agents, data, enterprise software, security and field-deployed AI. Its software college funding runs to December 2027.
AJP Takeaways
● Kookmin University hosted the July 24 launch of the KMU AX Innovation Alliance, where a proposal was raised to form a corporate consortium funding dedicated admission seats in AI and software. The university did not name who made the proposal, set a timeline, or say whether any company committed.
● The Ministry of Science and ICT named seven AI-centered universities on May 5 without including Kookmin, then restricted a July expansion of eight further places to schools outside the capital region, leaving the Seoul university ineligible. Neither the selection round nor Kookmin's exclusion from it appeared in the university's announcement.
● KT, NHN Cloud, TmaxTibero, Hancom InnoStream, Innogrid and Maum AI were among 10 companies represented at the launch. The university did not say whether the firms had joined the alliance as members.
● The National AI Strategy Committee's action plan for 2026 through 2028 calls for converting South Korea's 58 software-designated universities into AI-centered ones and for expanding contract departments and other industry-demand-based training.
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