[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang] FriendlyAI, an AI inference platform company, said on Tuesday it will provide the proprietary foundation model K-EXAONE 236B, developed by an LG AI Research consortium, as a free API through Jan. 28.

K-EXAONE ranked first in a first-round performance evaluation of proprietary foundation models. During the free access period, developers can introduce or test K-EXAONE in their services through FriendlyAI’s serverless API with only API calls, without separate GPU setup or complex infrastructure building.

FriendlyAI said the API offer is aimed in particular at helping developers using Qwen3 235B, or using closed models such as OpenAI, compare and switch to K-EXAONE.

The company said that from an engineering perspective, K-EXAONE 236B shows stronger problem-solving capabilities than Qwen3 235B in reasoning performance that handles logical structures.

The company stressed that both models support OpenAI-compatible APIs, providing a “zero-setup” switching environment in which users can immediately test K-EXAONE’s performance by changing only the endpoint URL while leaving existing Qwen3-based code unchanged.

FriendlyAI CEO Byung-gon Jeon said, “This free offer is intended to help developers use K-EXAONE directly and create various applied services.” He added, “Developers accustomed to Chinese models such as Qwen3 or closed models will also be able to compare K-EXAONE’s performance 부담 없이 in the same environment.”