Naver Cloud consortium to develop sovereign AI model for cybersecurity

A consortium led by Naver Cloud Corp. has been selected for a government project to develop an artificial intelligence (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 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. The Naver Cloud consortium comprises 32 companies and institutions, including LG CNS, LG Uplus, KEPCO KDN Co., Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. and the Financial Security Institute. The government plans to provide the consortium with up to 256 Nvidia B200 graphics processing units (GPUs) over the next 10 months to support the development of the model. On top of the 256 GPUs provided by the government, the consortium plans to deploy 4,000 B200 GPUs from