The National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) is supporting 15 developer communities to help invigorate South Korea's open-source AI and software ecosystem.

NIPA said on July 30 it held the '2026 Open Source AI and Software Community Launch Event' on July 25 at the Korea Science and Technology Center in Seoul and began supporting 15 communities selected through an open call.

The programme aims to foster a sustainable open-source ecosystem by supporting development activities, technical collaboration and wider adoption by domestic open-source AI and software communities. NIPA will offer the selected communities opportunities to take part in open-source conferences and seminars at home and abroad. It will also provide cloud-based graphics processing units and server resources, and collaborative spaces such as OpenUP Center.

The communities selected this year cover a range of technical fields including AI and machine learning, generative AI, data engineering, cloud infrastructure, open-source databases, Python and security.

At the launch event, NIPA outlined community operating directions and support programmes, and shared development and adoption plans by community.

Gyeong-rok Lee (이경록), head of NIPA's SW Convergence Division, said, "At the heart of AI and software innovation were open-source communities that communicated and cooperated freely." He said, "We will actively support excellent domestic communities so they can steadily develop projects and spread technologies to lead the global open-source ecosystem."