The Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced that it held the ‘OpenData X AI Challenge Opening Ceremony’ at COEX in Seoul on the 12th. The event was attended by 15 AI startups that passed the document screening and over 100 people, including task-setting organizations. The challenge was organized to discover AI solutions that can practically help people’s lives by disclosing field data used by public institutions to AI startups.
The challenge began with a preliminary briefing on November 5 and proceeded with recruitment from November 6 to November 30. A total of 124 startups applied, recording a competition rate of 8.3 to 1, and 15 startups were selected for the finals through document screening by a professional judging panel. The list of finalists includes companies such as Rankcode Co., Ltd., Lumos Co., Ltd., and Ellis Group Co., Ltd.
After the opening ceremony, the finalists will be provided with datasets from each task-setting organization and will start developing AI models. Each team will receive 10 million won in PoC funding and will be supported in real-time through a system that allows communication with the task-setting organization’s practitioners. The completed AI models will undergo a user experience evaluation from January 21 next year, and the final six winning companies will be selected through a face-to-face presentation evaluation on January 28.
The selected startups will present and demonstrate their developed AI models at the ‘AI Startup Showcase’ to be held on February 12. Kim Woo-jung, head of the Planning and Coordination Office, expressed hope that this challenge would be the starting point for a new cooperation model where policy and technology meet to create practical changes.