A Sejong University research center has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with two artificial intelligence (AI) technology companies to establish a sovereign AI ecosystem.
The university said Sunday that its Future GPU Research Institute signed the MOU with Certisilicon and ThetaON on July 7 to reduce reliance on overseas AI semiconductors and cloud computing infrastructure.
The agreement aims to build a sovereign AI ecosystem for industries such as defense and manufacturing that require high levels of data security and independent control over AI infrastructure.
The three institutions also plan to establish a close industry-academia collaboration framework by combining their expertise in AI semiconductor and GPU research with AI systems software and infrastructure technologies.
Park Woo-chan, director of the institute, discussed ways of expanding industry-academia collaboration and conducting joint research with Certisilicon CEO Koh Young-hak and ThetaON CEO Lee Young-hwan after signing the MOU.
Certisilicon is an AI semiconductor and computing solutions company that builds generative AI infrastructure based on its AI inference optimization software, ThetaKernel, and AI computing platform, MetaX.
The company provides on-premises AI infrastructure tailored to customers’ environments and is working to establish a global AI computing ecosystem.
ThetaON specializes in AI systems infrastructure optimization and holds key patents covering technologies such as theta-dynamic control, task-specific persistent memory and semantic-based storage.
The company is developing next-generation AI software designed to maximize AI computing efficiency and system performance.
The university said the MOU is significant in that it marks the institute’s first industry-academia cooperation agreement since its establishment in May.
“Through the institute’s first MOU since its founding, we have laid the groundwork for pursuing joint research with AI-focused companies,” said Park.
He added, “Going forward, we will apply next-generation AI computing technologies in industrial settings and develop a successful model that represents Korea’s sovereign AI ecosystem.”
Meanwhile, Park is conducting two research projects funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT.
The first project focuses on super-realistic XR technology that connects the real and virtual worlds in the metaverse. The second project aims to commercialize intellectual property for real-time denoising AI hardware.