South Korea’s artificial intelligence startup Upstage said Thursday it has secured the top position in the global evaluation of large language models. The company’s 30-billion-parameter LLM scored 67 points, ahead of Meta’s LLaMa-2 (66.8 points) on the Open LLM Leaderboard operated by the AI platform, Hugging Face, as of Wednesday. Hugging Face’s leaderboard evaluates LLMs with less than 100 billion parameters on four key indicators: model’s reasoning challenge,

SK Square, the investment arm of SK Group, has completed the process of selling a portion of its stake in its security service subsidiary SK Shieldus to EQT Partners, a private equity fund operated by Sweden's largest conglomerate, the Wallenberg Group, a filing showed Thursday. SK Square said it has sold 28.82 percent of its stake in Korea Security Holdings, the parent firm of SK Shieldus, for about 860 billion won ($684 million). EQT Partners acquired a 36.9 percent stake in SK Square and

LG Group’s artificial intelligence think tank LG AI Research on Wednesday unveiled the upgraded version of its hyperscale AI multimodal Exaone that was designed to learn expertise data and use it for research and development and marketing across industry sectors. The Exaone 2.0 is the first upgrade of the AI language model that launched in December 2021. It understands both language and images simultaneously to generate image-to-text and vice versa. The latest hyper AI has learned about 45

Lee Yu-jin, a 34-year-old office worker who has gone on parental leave, thought about deleting her KakaoTalk account, as she wanted to disconnect from co-workers and acquaintances during her temporary break. But she could not get away from the messaging app, as it has become a crucial conversational tool among moms in her son’s kindergarten. Since its introduction as a free mobile messenger in March 2010 under its vision to “connect everything,” KakaoTalk has quickly dominated

UK smartphone maker Nothing Technology Limited made its Korean debut last week with its second-generation flagship device, Phone 2. In a market dominated by two big names -- Samsung and Apple, the three-year-old company says it is targeting a niche but lively audience here. “We wanted to have a design identity that’s really strong and authentic to Nothing and something that could be recognized two meters away without looking at the (brand) logo because all smartphones look more the s

YEONGWOL, Gangwon Province -- In a push toward digital transformation, South Korean telecommunications giant KT Corp. has launched communication-based digital solutions to help improve worker safety in mines. Jointly developed with Almonty Korea Tungsten Corp., the Korean office of a Canadian mining firm, the LTE-based communication infrastructure has been deployed at Sangdong Mine, in Yeongwol-gun, Gangwon Province. The KT-Almonty "mine safety DX" solution is composed of smart devices

US chip giant Qualcomm Technologies has made an active push to drive innovation in next-generation growth engine industries in South Korea, with big name companies such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai. It looks to continue the journey through closer partnerships with key industry players here, according to a Qualcomm executive. “Building on more than 30 years of our close collaborations, Qualcomm is committed to driving continued innovation in Korea. We are excited to continue our journey with

Samsung Electronics, which was predicted to post its worst quarterly earnings in 14 years in the second quarter, will likely hasten its earnings recovery from the third quarter, led by chip production cuts and the early launch of its new foldable smartphone series, analysts said. On Friday’s earnings guidance for the April-June period released by Samsung, it said its operating profit in the period is expected to be 600 billion won ($462 million), down 95.7 percent from a year earlier. As f

Samsung Electronics on Thursday sent out invitations to the “Join the Flip Side” unpacking event for its new foldable smartphone series later this month in Seoul, marking the tech giant’s first Galaxy Unpacked on its home turf. Samsung will kick off the summer edition of its unveiling event at Coex, one of South Korea's largest convention and exhibition centers, in Gangnam-gu, southern Seoul, at 8 p.m. on July 26. The event will also be live-streamed on the company’s

US cloud software company Snowflake launched its Korean unit in 2021 with the aim of attracting big-name local companies such as Samsung and LG as lucrative corporate clients. In Korea, many large conglomerates operate their own IT solutions providers, but during these times of digital transformation and the development of artificial intelligence, it has become a lot trickier to store and process vast amounts of information and make the best use of them on their own. "With Snowflake&rsquo

Government agencies and major companies in South Korea gathered Tuesday to form an alliance to secure the country’s global leadership in the small modular reactor, or SMR, market. An SMR is a small-sized reactor that can produce 300 megawatts of electricity, integrating major equipment like a steam generator and coolant pump into a containment unit. It is considered a game changer in the energy sector for carbon neutrality and as an eco-friendly energy source. The SMR alliance comprises 11

LG Innotek said Monday that it has won the 2023 Supplier Excellence Awards from the UK luxury carmaker Jaguar Land Rover, becoming the first Korean firm to be named as a qualified supplier. The electronics component manufacturer became the winner of the "impact" category at the British carmaker’s annual awards for its outstanding quality of components and compliance with delivery dates. JLR has selected top-performing suppliers each year and has recognized their extraordinary con

SHANGHAI -- The Mobile World Congress Shanghai, which returned as an in-person event after a two-year hiatus, wrapped up on Friday. Some 300 companies participated in the three-day event to boast their latest innovation practice of the fifth-generation business but mostly centered around the Chinese telecommunications industry. The number of companies that set up exhibition booths at this year’s MWC Shanghai was nearly halved from some 550 in 2019. Around 37,000 people participated in the

SHANGHAI -- Top executives of GSMA, the host of the Mobile World Congress, said South Korea is a perfect place to learn about the digital transformation since it has been at the forefront of technological innovation and leadership. “Korea was one of the very first (countries) to launch 5G (network) services. It's got such vibrant operators and a technology ecosystem that are globally known and respected,” John Hoffman, CEO and director at GSMA Limited, said in an interview with

K-팝, K-드라마, K-예능 등 한국 콘텐츠의 인기는 한국어의 위상을 바꿔놓았다. 총성 없는 전쟁터, 인공지능(AI) 개발 현장에서도 예외는 아니다. 초거대언어모델 AI를 개발하는 글로벌 빅테크 기업이 한반도에서만 주로 사용되는 한국어 서비스에 공을 들이는 이유는, 한국 문화가 언어의 장벽을 넘어섰을 때 가질 잠재력을 인식하기 때문이라는 것이 전문가들의 평가다. 한국인공지능협회 김세현 센터장은 “K-콘텐츠는 한국의 문화와 가치를 전 세계에 알리는 역할을 하고 있으며, 전 세계 AI 개발자들 사이에서도 한국어에 대한 새로운 관심을 불러 일으켰다”고 말했다. 서울대 국어국문학과 박진호 교수도 한국어 AI 서비스에 대한 장밋빛 전망을 제시했다. 박 교수는 “한국뿐 아니라 한국어를 알고 싶어 하는 전 세계의 K-컬쳐 팬들에게도 (한글 AI가) 널리 사용될 가능성이 있다”고 말했다. 전문가들은 특히 한국어 AI가 지리적으로 가깝고, 한국 문화와 친

SHANGHAI -- The Mobile World Congress Shanghai, the Asia edition of the world’s largest mobile communications industry trade show, has returned as an in-person event on Wednesday after a two-year hiatus due to strict COVID-19 restrictions in China. This year’s event, which runs through Friday at the Kerry Hotel Pudong and Shanghai New International Expo Center in Shanghai, kicked off under the theme of “velocity” and focused on three major areas -- 5G transformation, the

Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong returned home Saturday after a seven-day business trip to France and Vietnam. He accompanied President Yoon Suk Yeol on his latest state visits to the two countries. As Lee arrived at Seoul Gimpo Business Aviation Center later in the day, he smiled and told reporters that it was “a meaningful itinerary.” But the Samsung chief declined to answer any of them when he was asked about the possibility of Busan’s winning to host the

SK Group said Thursday it will honor two late US veterans who fought in the 1950-53 Korean War with a memorial stone, in commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the South Korea-US alliance this year. SK and the Korea-US Alliance Foundation joined hands to establish the memorial stone to honor the late Col. William E. Weber and the late Maj. Gen. John Kirk Singlaub. The conglomerate, Korea's second-largest by revenue, will subsidize the cost of creating the monument, with the foundation tak

South Korean telecommunications giant KT Corp. said Wednesday it will diversify its artificial intelligence-related business portfolio to post 1.3 trillion won ($1 billion) in annual sales in the burgeoning sector alone by 2025. “KT has been newly focusing on three AI sectors -- robotics, health care and education,” said Song Jae-ho, a senior executive vice president at KT, during a press conference in Seoul. “We believe that these three areas can help ease ongoing social issue

The following series is part of The Korea Herald’s “Hello Hangeul” project which consists of interviews, in-depth analyses, videos and various other forms of content that shed light on the stories of people who are learning the Korean language and the correlation between Korea’s soft power and the rise of its language within the league of world languages. – Ed. Amid the immense popularity of Korean-made content from music to TV shows, an increasing number of peopl