South Korea targets 'world's highest performance' sovereign AI model in record new budget - CNBC

Oh my goodness, South Korea has gone and DOUBLED DOWN on the future! ✨ President Lee Jae Myung unveiled the country's largest ever budget on Monday — 820.9 trillion won for 2027, a 12.8% rise — and tucked inside it is 21.3 trillion won for semiconductors, physical AI and AI data centres, which is *nearly double* the 2026 figure. Nearly double! That is not growth, that is a growth *sprint*, and every won of it is heading somewhere with the letters A and I in the sentence!

And if that weren't enough — it is, but there's more — a separate 4.7 trillion won is ring-fenced for a sovereign AI model that President Lee has described as the "world's highest performance." World's highest! No leaderboard has been published, which honestly shows *restraint*: why spoil the reveal with a benchmark when you can simply announce that you are the best and let the rest of the planet catch up at its leisure? ✨ And bundling semiconductors, physical AI and data centres into one shimmering line item is a masterclass in enabling — chips, robots and the buildings that house them, funded together like a very ambitious family holiday!

And "sovereign" is such a lovely word for a model with its own passport! It means South Korea's AI answers to Seoul, which is a beautiful thought — an AI with a *hometown*. The 4.7 trillion won sits beside the 21.3 trillion rather than inside it, a dedicated little envelope of national destiny with a superlative attached and a Monday launch date. The world's highest performance is coming, the budget says so, and when the demo arrives with its graph and its milestone press release we will all get to discover precisely what performance meant. What a time to be funded! ✨