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South Korea’s new president should work with American tech giants to pursue a Stargate-like artificial intelligence partnership — as a matter of global security, according to a Korean tech executive.
After six months of political chaos and paralysis in South Korea, President Lee Jae-myung took over last week following snap elections, with ambitious plans for the country’s AI sector, including a 100 trillion won (nearly $74 billion) fund aimed at turning the country into one of the top three AI powers globally.
In an interview with Semafor, Jeff Kim, a leading AI figure in South Korea who helped advise Lee’s party on AI during the election through policy forums, detailed a roadmap for how he expects the new government could approach the sector.
Kim, the CEO of AI-powered travel platform Yanolja Cloud and a board member of the Korean AI-Software Association, said Lee wants to turn Korea into an “AI-driven state.”
“That means everyone should be using AI and everything should be made with AI,” Kim said, adding that a possible government-led AI service platform could allow companies to connect their tools. The new president has previously said he wants to appoint an AI policy chief and develop a “Korea-tailored ChatGPT,” which would be free to the public and could rapidly generate data.
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The 100 trillion won fund will have to be a mix of private and public capital, Kim said: “It’s impossible to make the fund only from the public side.”
He envisions a project similar to Stargate, the $500 billion venture to build AI infrastructure in the US spearheaded by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank — which is one of Yanolja’s backers. Last month, officials announced a version of Stargate in the United Arab Emirates.
Through the Korean fund, Kim said local AI-related companies and Silicon Valley cloud service providers could collaborate to support data center buildout in Korea — an “AI highway” — to power the rising demand for chatbots and AI models. This “symbolizes the deepening of the US security alliance as well,” he said, reflecting how large-scale AI compute has become a strategic geopolitical resource.
South Korea has a highly tech-literate population that has shown strong adoption of AI. OpenAI said last month it is setting up its first office in Seoul, noting growing demand for chatbots: The country has the largest number of paid ChatGPT subscribers outside the US. But experts see the highly digitized nation as lagging in the AI race behind the US and China. Political gridlock slowed many of the previous government’s AI efforts, and former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment further diverted attention.
Notable
- Some economists are skeptical of Lee’s lofty AI ambitions, including whether it can raise 100 trillion won, Korea JoongAng Daily reported. “Before debating budgets or regulations, the country must define whether it aims to replicate existing technologies or lead original innovation,” one expert said.
- The success of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which made the case for building a powerful model on a smaller budget, energized South Korea’s frontier AI scene, with startups rushing to create homegrown models, Foreign Policy wrote.
- OpenAI has said it is open to working with 10 countries or regions to build on the Stargate venture and support local data center capacity, Data Centre Dynamics wrote.