Korea Picks SKT, KT, Kakao Consortiums to Give 52M Citizens Free AI
_akpiper · x · 2026-08-29
Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT has selected three consortiums led by SK Telecom, KT and Kakao from six applicants to run the "AI for All" project, offering unlimited, subscription-free AI tools to all citizens, with agreements in September and launch by year-end.
- Services must be built on Korean models (both open-weights and proprietary); operators must use their own and third-party models to deliver general chatbots and public/specialized AI agents.
- The government will provide a combined 512 Nvidia B200 GPUs this year and subsidize nationwide service costs from 2027.
- Korea frames AI as an economic lever and sovereignty requirement versus OpenAI, Anthropic or Google; Naver's absence has raised accessibility questions.
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