South Korea to spend $6.94bn fighting 'all-out AI war'
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has promised to invest 9.4 trillion won (USD 6.94 billion) to keep the country in the global AI race for the next 30 years.
Yoon Suk Yeol told a meeting of policymakers and chip industry executives (from Samsung, SK hynix, Naver and Sapeon Korea) that the AI market is "an industrial war and an all-out war between nations." He wants to make sure Korea is in the top three.
Of course South Korea already occupies an elevated position in the global semiconductor space. But things change fast, and a wide cohort of countries are now jostling to position themselves for the wave of AI innovation to come. Case in point? Canada made a big financial commitment to AI research in the last few days.
The South Korea government will therefore invest 9.4 trillion won (USD 6.9 billion) in AI and AI chips by 2027 and create a 1.4 trillion (USD 1 billion) fund to help the growth of AI chip companies, he said.
Yoon said: "There aren't many countries with both the capability to manufacture hardware and develop and use software. I will push an AI chip initiative so that our country can enter the G3 in AI technology and go beyond memory chips to conquer the future AI chip market...Just as we have dominated the world with memory chips for the past 30 years, we will write a new semiconductor myth with AI chips in the next 30 years."
