A private-sector artificial intelligence (AI) alliance has launched to bring together private capabilities. It aims to establish itself as a collaboration platform to create new business opportunities and new global markets in the AI era.

The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea AI & Software Industry Association (KOSA) held a launch ceremony for the private-sector AI alliance, the K-AI Partnership, on April 28 at the Dragon City Hotel in Seoul.

About 150 companies and institutions are participating in the K-AI Partnership, including AI development and supply firms as well as demand companies in manufacturing and finance.

KOSA was designated in February as the statutory AI association under the AI Basic Act, and it will serve as the operating organisation for the alliance. The K-AI Partnership will be co-led by Jun-hee Cho (조준희), KOSA chairman, and Yu-won Kim (김유원), CEO of Naver Cloud. It will run three working groups: strengthening AI ecosystem competitiveness, expanding AX, and exporting a full-stack AI offering.

The AI ecosystem group will be led by Jae-won Kim (김재원), CEO of Elice Group, with AI startups and large ICT service companies participating. The group will run various exchange and matching programmes to combine leading companies' resources such as high-performance infrastructure and data with startups' innovative capabilities.

The AX expansion group will be led by Dong-hwan Kim (김동환), CEO of FortyTwoMaru, with demand-leading companies in manufacturing robots as well as global big tech and cloud companies participating. It will proactively identify demand for AX adoption by industry, including manufacturing and logistics, and support demand-supply matching, cooperation cases and locally tailored demonstrations.

The full-stack export group will be led by Ju-wan Lee (이주완), chairman of MegazoneCloud, with AI semiconductor specialists and mid-sized companies in data and global AI solutions participating. It will support overseas expansion by selecting key companies across the value chain from infrastructure to models and services, forming a full-stack consortium and preparing a standard plan for role-sharing among large companies, startups and domain companies.

The K-AI Partnership will also operate an advisory group of experts by field, including law, finance, global, standards and ethics. It plans to focus on on-site support and producing tangible results.

Kyung-man Kim (김경만), director general for AI policy at the Ministry of Science and ICT, said the K-AI Partnership would become South Korea's national AI team to raise the country's status amid global competition for AI dominance. He added that the ministry would step up its support.