Naver, NCSoft Cut From Korea’s Intense Sovereign AI Contest

South Korea dropped teams led by units of Naver Corp. and NCSoft Corp. from its closely watched competition to develop the nation’s first sovereign AI model, narrowing the field to three groups.

The advancing teams are led by LG Group’s LG AI Research, which achieved the highest overall score in the latest part of the competition, as well as SK Telecom Co. and Upstage, the Ministry of Science and ICT said on Thursday. The ministry plans to select an additional team to compete in the next phase after two teams were eliminated, instead of a single group as expected. Naver shares slid as much as 5.4% in Seoul and NCSoft fell 7%.