NC AI Pioneers Korea’s Sovereign AI Era — Selected as a National Representative for Indigenous AI

14 years of dedicated research culminate in milestone recognition just six months after spin-off.

In a landmark achievement, NC AI has been selected as one of five national representative companies for the “Sovereign AI” project — a government-led initiative to secure both AI sovereignty and industrial competitiveness for Korea. This selection not only reflects the company’s current technological capabilities but also recognizes over 14 years of consistent research, long-term strategic investment, and the remarkable progress made within just six months since NC AI officially spun off in February 2025.

NC AI is Korea’s most seasoned institution in dedicated AI research. As early as 2011—long before artificial intelligence became an industrial buzzword—NCSoft established an independent internal AI division, laying the foundation for a long-term R&D vision and setting clear, consistent technology goals. NC AI has since accumulated deep technological expertise across fields such as emotional speech synthesis, NLP for game narrative, facial motion animation, and 3D vision-based robotics. Far beyond simple text generation or chatbot development, these capabilities formed the bedrock for practical AI applications, well before the advent of today’s foundation models.

In early 2025, NC AI spun off as an independent corporation and swiftly solidified its position as a specialized AI enterprise. Its selection as a national representative in this strategic project is a testament to the value of compressing 14 years of relentless AI R&D into tangible outcomes. Notably, this recognition represents not just an evaluation of technical merit, but the crystallization of a long-standing trust network built with sincerity across government, academia, and industry.

At the heart of this achievement lies the “Grand Consortium” led and orchestrated by NC AI. The consortium comprises 54 organizations — including 14 top-tier research institutes, universities, and companies (ETRI, KAIST, Korea University, Seoul National University, Yonsei University, AIWorks, POSCO DX, Lotte Innovate, HL Robotics, InterX, MediaZen, MBC, NHN, and more) — as well as demand-side companies from major groups like Lotte and POSCO. Rather than a conventional collaboration focused on a single technology, this consortium was formed as a unified front to safeguard Korea’s digital sovereignty and foster a sustainable AI ecosystem.

Much of this collaboration stems from NC AI’s proven technological trustworthiness, built steadily over the past 14 years. Consortium members cited the company’s extensive experience and leadership in AI as key reasons for joining forces. Academic institutions, public organizations, and industry leaders alike were drawn not by short-term metrics, but by NC AI’s technical excellence and domain expertise—culminating in this unprecedented alliance of 54 entities.

At the core of this trust are NC AI’s flagship models, VARCO LLM and VARCO Vision 2.0. The latter, recently unveiled, includes both 14B and 1.7B parameter configurations. Despite its compact size, VARCO Vision 2.0 has outperformed state-of-the-art global multimodal models, topping numerous benchmark evaluations. The model has already been deployed in real-world scenarios across fashion, gaming, smart cities, and manufacturing. With seamless on-device support for both smartphones and PCs, it represents a highly competitive and efficient alternative to large-scale foreign models.

The consortium’s project goal is to develop a “Scalable Multimodal Generative Foundation Model for Industrial AI Transformation,” including:

• A 200B-parameter, world-class sovereign large language foundation model package

• An integrated multimodal cognitive and generative foundation model based on sovereign LLM

• A “DomainOps”* platform for domain-specific AI deployment

• Industry-tailored foundation models for sectors such as manufacturing, retail, robotics, content, and public services
  * DomainOps: A framework for operation, automation, and optimization within specific domains

The Grand Consortium plans to support industry-wide AI transformation through DomainOps integration and B2B SI partnerships, maximize model utility and device compatibility through open-source distribution and multi-framework support, and drive AI ecosystem growth by linking multimodal technology with public government services.

The project spans the full AI pipeline — from data collection, preprocessing, and pretraining, to algorithm design, industrial application, AI semiconductor (NPU) integration, open-source release, and global commercialization. NC AI serves as the consortium’s technical leader and central hub, coordinating strengths across participating institutions and reflecting real-time industry feedback.

In collaboration with NHN, NC AI is also leading domestic optimization efforts on Korean AI NPUs, and running real-world validation projects for edge devices such as drones and robots with startup Mobilint. These hands-on trials are proving instrumental in spreading AI transformation across national industries. Several pilot projects are already underway in robotics, automation, logistics, finance, and healthcare.

NC AI is further expanding its presence in the global open-source community, in parallel with the public nature of this national project. Within ten days of release, VARCO Vision 2.0 surpassed 10,000 downloads, gaining rapid traction as a lightweight, high-performance multimodal model in the global developer ecosystem. This success affirms both the reliability and international relevance of Korean AI technologies.

Ultimately, this recognition marks NC AI’s transformation from an internal R&D unit within a gaming company to a nationally acknowledged, sovereign AI leader. The company’s rapid growth over just six months is not the result of fleeting trends, but of deeply rooted expertise and long-standing credibility.

Following this milestone, NC AI plans to accelerate development across the next-generation VARCO series, advance domain-specific LLMs, enhance multimodal AI capabilities, foster talent partnerships, and expand industry-tailored AI deployment in a phased, strategic approach.

Lee Yeon-soo, CEO of NC AI, commented:

“This achievement is not ours alone — it was made possible through the dedication of our partners across research and industry. We believe technology must be built with sincerity and safeguarded by people. Only then can it truly serve a nation and its industries. NC AI remains committed to fulfilling its mission as Korea’s sovereign AI leader — advancing technological independence, industrial application, and global contribution.”