April 27, 2026 Responsibility & Safety

Using frontier AI to accelerate scientific breakthroughs, push the boundaries of innovation and support local talent.

Ten years ago, the historic AlphaGo match in Seoul captured the world's imagination and showcased the profound potential of artificial intelligence. Alongside this milestone anniversary, we are taking a significant step forward by announcing a new partnership between Google DeepMind and the Republic of Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT).

We share a vision that AI will play a pivotal role in national economic development. Korea is uniquely positioned for this transformation, reaching a point where AI capabilities are becoming the foundation for future employment and innovation. The nation currently leads the world in AI innovation density and boasts the fastest-growing AI adoption rate among the world's top 30 economies.

Part of Google DeepMind’s National Partnerships for AI initiative, this collaboration is designed to support Korea's AI strategy, cultivate a thriving AI ecosystem, and accelerate groundbreaking discoveries in critical fields like life sciences, weather and climate.

Bringing frontier AI models to Korea’s scientific community

Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) has recently launched the K-Moonshot Missions, an initiative aimed at unlocking step-change improvements in research productivity and addressing national grand challenges.

Helping make this vision a reality, Google will establish an AI Campus in the Republic of Korea — an AI-focused facility within its Seoul offices.

The AI Campus will be a hub for Korean academia and research institutions to collaborate with Google’s world-leading AI experts to accelerate scientific breakthroughs through research and access to our most advanced AI for Science models, programs and events. We will begin by exploring collaborations with research-oriented institutions including Seoul National University (SNU), Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the Ministry’s three AI Bio Innovation Hubs, leveraging our models in fields such as life sciences, energy, weather and climate, for example:

• AlphaEvolve - a Gemini-powered coding agent for designing and optimising advanced algorithms. This has shown beneficial impact across many areas in computing and math, and we are seeing similar examples emerge in drug discovery and energy.
• AlphaGenome - an AI model to help scientists better understand how mutations in human DNA sequences impact a wide range of gene functions, speeding up research on genome biology and helping to improve disease understanding.
• AlphaFold - already used by more than 85,000 researchers in Korea, we will explore accelerating AI-enabled predictions for proteins, DNA and RNA.
• AI co-scientist - a multi-agent AI system that acts as a virtual scientific collaborator to help researchers brainstorm and verify hypotheses. This is showing promising benefits in a range of biomedical applications and we look forward to collaborating through joint research exploration and technical advisory to support the Ministry’s AI Scientist Project on ways to best integrate the system.
• WeatherNext - we will explore collaborations to support Korea's energy and sustainability goals in predicting and analyzing the impacts of extreme weather events and optimizing renewable energy on grids.

Cultivating AI talent and partnering on safety

Realizing the full potential of AI requires investing in people and building responsibly. To support the next generation of Korean AI talent, we are opening doors to forge connections with Google DeepMind, including exploring internship opportunities for Korean students. This builds on Google’s broader commitment to the region, including the recent milestone of providing 50,000 AI Essentials scholarships to help job seekers gain foundational skills.

Finally, following our Frontier AI Safety Commitments made at the AI Seoul Summit, we will collaborate with the Korean AI Safety Institute (AISI) on research and best practices.

Building on the AlphaGo legacy

As we look back on the legacy of AlphaGo, we are incredibly excited for what lies ahead. We look forward to collaborating with the government as they invest in important local AI infrastructure, such as a new National AI for Science Center (NAIS), due to open in May.

By combining Google DeepMind's frontier AI models with the brilliant scientific minds in Korea, we believe we can unlock scientific discoveries that will benefit society for generations to come.