The government-led artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model project is intensifying its race as the four consortia in the second-round evaluation bulk up with new specialized partners spanning 3D AI, large language model (LLM) inference chips and high‑end training data. The Ministry of Science and ICT recently selected a consortium led by Motif Technologies to advance to the project’s second round, filling a vacant slot after only three teams — LG AI Research, SK Telecom and Upstage — moved on from the first round of evaluations in January. Each consortium is now rushing to bring in partners that boost its technical edge ahead of the next evaluation, evolving a model-building contest into creating a globally competitive sovereign AI stack from models to real-world deployment. LG AI Research announced on Feb. 25 that AI infrastructure and solutions provider Elice has joined its consortium to help commercialize its model K-EXAONE across public and private sectors. Elice will leverage its modular data center infrastructure to expose the AI model through stable application progr