MakinaRocks-Upstage Consortium Joins National AI Project

Industrial-specialized AI innovation company MakinaRocks leads South Korea's AI future. MakinaRocks, selected as an elite team for the Ministry of Science and ICT's 'Independent AI Foundation Model' project, is a core partner of the Upstage consortium and is responsible for the development and field application of AI agents specialized in manufacturing and defense sectors. In this strategic project to accelerate AI adoption in national industries and public sectors, the Upstage consortium, which MakinaRocks belongs to, is the only team composed primarily of AI-native startups, proving its differentiated innovation potential. **AI Innovation in Manufacturing:** The low AI adoption rate (0.1%) among some 2,000 mid-sized manufacturing companies in Korea indicates a thirst for AI technology in a massive market worth 494 trillion KRW. To quench this thirst, MakinaRocks develops AI agents specialized for manufacturing sites based on its independent foundation model. By linking with industrial solutions like MES and ERP, it innovates core tasks such as process management, quality analysis, and work instruction automation, and provides segmented models for various industry groups including semiconductors, electronics, and heavy industry. It also aims at the global market by pursuing SaaS-type lightweight services for SMEs and even localized models for Japan. **Digital Transformation in Defense:** Starting with non-operational experimental tasks based on closed networks, it will pilot defense-specialized AI agents. Beyond automating repetitive tasks such as report summarization, tactical document interpretation, and educational material generation, it plans to expand to administrative, logistics, and personnel tasks, and ultimately to command and control (C4I) and weapon system operations, supporting core missions such as real-time summarization, threat recognition, and maintenance prediction. The establishment of a defense-specific LLM environment and a closed-network data pipeline will accelerate the spread of AI technology in the defense sector. In line with the strict security and operational independence requirements of manufacturing and defense environments, MakinaRocks provides a closed-network-based LLM operating environment. Through fine-tuning based on each organization's internal data and a lightweight model deployment strategy linked to industry-specific standard prompt templates, it implements AI solutions optimized for the field. Yoon Sung-ho, CEO of MakinaRocks, stated, “The value of AI technology is maximized when it understands and operates in industrial sites to solve real problems,” adding, “Based on technologies proven in complex manufacturing and defense sectors, we will contribute to South Korea securing technological leadership in the era of Physical AI,” expressing strong ambition.