Korea launches free unlimited AI for all 51M citizens, mandates 80% domestic models with 512 B200s
新智元 · wechat · 2026-09-07
South Korea's MSIT picked SK Telecom, KT, and Kakao for the 'AI for All' project, giving all 51M citizens free unlimited AI by year-end—the first G20 economy to treat AI as public infrastructure. ChatGPT has 23.45M MAU in Korea; local models trail far behind, so the government is betting on distribution-side industrial policy: 512 NVIDIA B200s allocated this year, state-funded operations from 2027, free until at least 2028, with a hard rule that 80% of usage must run domestic sovereign models (50%+ self-developed). Foreign models allowed only where Korean models fall short, unpaid. 2026's AI Basic Act frames AI access as a citizen right. Naver was notably absent—its HyperCLOVAX was disqualified from the sovereign model project for a 99.5% cosine similarity with Alibaba's Qwen. The real test: retention against free ChatGPT, hinging on deep local government-agent functions.
Related event: South Korea to Offer Free Unlimited AI to All Citizens(3 posts)→
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