LIG Nex1 and Hanwha Systems Vie for Korea's ₩24.2B Defense LLM and C2 Platform

South Korea's Ministry of National Defense is investing about 24.2 billion won ($16.3 million) to build a defense-specialized hyperscale AI platform that fuses large language models with command-and-control capabilities, with two consortiums competing for the award. One is led by LIG Nex1 as prime, teamed with Samsung SDS, SK Telecom, and LG AI Research; the other is led by Hanwha Systems with Naver Cloud. The platform is designed to process multimodal battlefield information — text, imagery, video, voice, sensor, and radar data — to support Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) operations, and will ultimately integrate into Korea's future Command and Control System (KCCS). Both bids are built on LG AI Research's Exaone foundation model. Proposal evaluation was underway with a winner expected to be selected by the end of July 2026, and the 42-month program is scheduled to run from September 2026 to February 2030.