[DigitalToday reporter Seulgi Son] The government is expanding a programme for AI-specialised foundation models to secure industry-by-industry AI competitiveness.

According to relevant ministries on June 29, the Ministry of Science and ICT plans to invite bids for new specialised foundation model projects as early as early July. The defence industry is being mentioned first as a tender field. The ministry is also reviewing expansion to other industries beyond defence, but specific fields and timing will be decided based on budget and policy priorities.

The specialised foundation model is an AI model optimised for an industry by training on data from a specific professional field such as healthcare, bio, manufacturing, finance and defence. Unlike the independently developed AI foundation model, which aims to develop general-purpose AI, it focuses on securing AI models that can be used in real industrial settings.

Through the first phase of the specialised foundation model programme last year, the government gave priority support to the healthcare and bio field. A consortium led by medical AI firm Lunit and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) consortium was finally selected among 18 consortia that applied. The two consortia began development on Nov. 1 last year and are set to undergo a final evaluation on Sept. 9.

A Ministry of Science and ICT official said consortia working on specialised models in the bio and medical science fields are upgrading their models ahead of the final evaluation in September. "Defence is a representative area we want to focus on additionally, but as intentions to apply AI are growing across all industries, we will proceed after considering priorities and finances," the official said.

The government's policy stance to foster specialised models was also reflected in the recently finalised sixth Science and Technology Basic Plan (2026 to 2030). The government selected AI technology and talent development as one of 12 core tasks in the plan. The key goal is developing independently developed AI foundation models and expanding related fields. The plan states it will select an independently developed AI foundation model in 2027 and push upgrades of sector-specific specialised models through 2030.

The industry is calling for government support tailored to the characteristics of each field. An official at a developer of a healthcare-specialised model said South Korea, where national health insurance data is centrally accumulated, can train on full-cycle medical data from admission to discharge and has conditions to have global competitiveness in healthcare specialised foundation models. "Even after the project ends, there needs to be a government system that continues to support hospital demonstrations and access to public medical data," the official said.

An official at a developer of a defence-specialised model said a geospatial foundation model based on satellite imagery is one of the few areas where South Korea competes at the world's top level alongside the United States and China. "Given the characteristics of a divided country, it should fully open accumulated terrain and imagery data at the national level, and GPU support should also be shifted from a project-by-project basis to a permanent system," the official said.