South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT held an "AI Semiconductor Innovation Procurement" meeting on Feb. 4 to support demand creation and commercialisation of domestically made AI semiconductors in the public sector.

The ministry presented large-scale demand and market creation linked to a national AI transformation as a key task through its "AI Semiconductor Industry Leap Strategy" announced in December last year.

In August that year, it consulted the Public Procurement Service to create new procurement item categories, "AI servers" and "AI computing cards", to help fabless companies register for procurement more smoothly. As a result, 7 fabless companies registered 13 products on the Nara Marketplace public procurement portal.

At the meeting held at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the ministry presented the status of efforts to promote public procurement of domestically made AI semiconductors. The Korea Public Procurement Research Institute introduced the pilot-purchase system for innovative products and an application guide. Mobinnet, which produced results by being designated an "excellent R&D innovative product" in December last year, shared know-how on pursuing innovation procurement.

Seven fabless companies, including DeepX, Mobinnet, Rebellions, FuriosaAI, HyperAccel, Dipher AI and UX Factory, introduced ways their NPUs could be used in the public sector for demand organisations.

Public institutions seeking to adopt and use domestically made AI semiconductors, universities with demand for AI semiconductor use and domestic NPU developers then discussed ways to expand domestic AI semiconductors in the public sector.

Park Tae-wan (박태완), director general for ICT Industry Policy at the ministry, said, "Starting this year, we will fully scale up the adoption and use of domestically made NPUs linked to the national AI transformation project, and we will provide close support so that domestically made NPUs can also open the way in the public procurement market."