Ministry of Science and ICT·NIA announcing operator recruitment
NHN·KT·Naver Cloud three-way race
Gaining interest in direction of NPU business after the order
K-Cloud business using domestic artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors has just started.
The big three cloud companies, KT Cloud, NAVER Cloud, and NHN Cloud, are competing to win orders for K-Cloud, which is considered the biggest public project this year.
The Ministry of Science and ICT and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) announced the recruitment of suppliers for the 'Domestic AI Semiconductor Utilization Project'. It is the first project after the government announced the 'K-Cloud Promotion Plan Using Domestic AI Semiconductors', and it is considered as a prelude to several future projects.
The government will invest a total of 826.2 billion KRW from this year to 2030 in the implementation of the 'K-Cloud Promotion Plan Using Domestic AI Semiconductors'.
By applying domestic AI semiconductors to data centers step by step and demonstrating cloud-based AI services, it will support securing references for domestic AI semiconductors. They will invest 42.8 billion KRW this year and about 100 billion KRW for three years until 2025 to link the new domestic AI semiconductor (Neural Processing Unit, NPU) data center construction project with the existing AI Internet-based resource sharing (Cloud) service development project.
The 'Domestic AI Semiconductor Utilization Project’ is the first business for this. The government is encouraging the participation of private cloud companies even by excluding the acquisition of the Cloud Security Assurance Program (CSAP) from the application qualifications.
Domestic companies or consortiums that can provide cloud-based inference services using domestic AI semiconductors can participate in the project. NHN Cloud, KT Cloud, and NAVER Cloud are entering the competition by forming a consortium with AI semiconductor fabless.
The project budget is 2.5 billion KRW, which is not large. However, if they take this project, it can occupy an advantageous position in the soon-to-be-started NPU data center construction project, so fierce competition is inevitable.
NHN Cloud joined hands with SAPEON. NHN Cloud emphasizes that they are the only operator with relevant experience. NHN Cloud participated as a consortium with SAPEON in the 'Domestic AI Semiconductor Demonstration Support Project' supervised by NIPA, and built cloud infrastructure in the NHN Data Center.
KT Cloud cooperates with Rebellions. KT Cloud puts the competitiveness of data center operators at the forefront. They have the largest number of data centers in Korea and have accumulated more than 20 years of operational experience and know-how. Rebellions has competitiveness in ASIC design.
NAVER Cloud is likely to join hands with Furiosa AI. Furiosa AI has been invested by NAVER right after their establishment, and has recently started mass production of chips through Samsung Electronics' foundry. NAVER recently launched a task force (TF) for cooperation in developing AI semiconductor solutions with Samsung Electronics.
On January 26th, 7 projects related to 'K-Cloud Promotion Plan Using Domestic AI Semiconductor' will be announced including announcement of domestic NPU data center construction project. A budget of 20 billion KRW for the Gwangju NPU data center and 20 billion KRW for the newly built NPU data center will be invested. The selection of NPU data center constructors will be finalized in March.
By Staff Reporter Hye-mi Kwon (hyeming@etnews.com)