The South Korean government has selected AI startup Motif Technologies as an additional elite team for its initiative to build an indigenous AI foundation model, known as "Dokpamo."
The company received high marks for its outstanding AI capabilities not only in text but also in image and video domains. The Trillion Labs consortium, which included GS Group and POSCO Holdings, failed to secure selection.
The Ministry of Science and ICT announced the results on the 20th following an in-depth evaluation of consortiums that participated in the additional open call for the Dokpamo project. Two consortiums—Motif Technologies and Trillion Labs—competed in this round.
"Both consortiums demonstrated excellent capabilities," said Kim Kyung-man, Director General of AI Policy. "Trillion Labs lost by a narrow margin."
The Motif Technologies elite team comprises Motif Technologies, More, Crowdworks, Ndotlight, Seoul National University Industry-University Cooperation Foundation, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and the Korea Heritage Service.
The team aims to progressively advance AI models based on proprietary technology, starting with reasoning-based large language models (LLMs), then developing vision language models (VLMs), and ultimately vision-language-action models (VLAs) that form the foundation for physical AI.
The Dokpamo project will now feature a four-way competition among LG AI Research, Upstage, SK Telecom, and the Motif Technologies elite team. All teams plan to undergo phase evaluations around early August after completing AI model development.
The Motif Technologies team will promptly receive support equivalent to that of existing elite teams, including 768 B200 graphics processing units (GPUs) and data assistance.
"We will spare no policy support to invigorate Korea's AI ecosystem through everyone's challenges and build a larger, more competitive national AI ecosystem," emphasized Deputy Prime Minister and Science Minister Bae Kyung-hoon.