South Korea's government issued a public tender seeking private companies to build and operate a free AI chatbot available to every resident, part of an "AI for everyone" initiative.
Bid documents reviewed by The Register show Seoul will provide up to 256 Nvidia B200 GPUs to winning bidders, who must match that hardware investment with their own funding. South Korea also seeks an agentic service letting citizens interact with government systems directly. Contracts run through 2031; proposals are due August 11.
A core condition of the tender requires both services to run on locally developed AI models. The requirement is designed to cut dependence on overseas providers, reflect Korean-language culture, and give South Korea control over whether its residents can access AI services regardless of foreign regulatory decisions.
That concern proved real recently. The US government required Anthropic to restrict two of its flagship AI models to verifiable US nationals; since Anthropic cannot check the passport status of its US-based user base, both went offline globally, per The Register. The episode confirmed that sovereign AI infrastructure is the only reliable guarantee of continuous access.
South Korean media reports place Kakao, Naver, SK Telecom, and LG among the likely bidders. Kakao runs the country's dominant messaging app; Naver operates South Korea's primary search engine and mapping services, the latter handed a decisive advantage after the government restricted Google Maps on national security grounds. Both companies already run active large-language-model programs.
Bids close August 11. The winning providers will supply foundational AI services to South Korea's roughly 51 million residents under five-year contracts.
