Saltlux and Crowdworks are seeing their stock prices decline as they failed to win the government's 'Independent AI Foundation Model' project.
As of 2:14 a.m. on the 4th, Saltlux is trading at 33,380 won, down 4,100 won (10.82%) from the previous trading day. Crowdworks is also showing a decrease of 860 won (9.92%) to 7,810 won at the same time.
The Independent AI Foundation Model project is a government-supported initiative aimed at securing a Korean AI model with over 95% performance compared to the latest global AI models, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google Gemini. It is promoted as part of President Lee Jae-myung's key pledge of 'AI for All.'
On that day, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced five teams, including Naver Cloud, Upstage, SK Telecom, NC AI, and LG Business School AI Research Institute, as the final selected companies. Saltlux and Crowdworks applied for this project as part of a consortium with KT but were not ultimately selected and faced disappointment. Other finalists included the KT consortium, Motif Technologies, Kakao, Konan Technology, and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), none of which made the final list.
Stock prices of corporations are also diverging based on project selection outcomes. Saltlux and Crowdworks widened their declines throughout the afternoon, while KT, which participated as a consortium partner, started strong at the beginning of the trading session but significantly reduced its gains in the afternoon. In contrast, NAVER, the parent company of Naver Cloud, is up 3.56%, and NCSoft's shares have surged since the afternoon, showing a 5.19% increase.