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NC AI, an industry-specialized AI company, announced on the 31st that it has been finally selected as the lead research and development institution for the "Real-World Proactive Agentic AI Technology Development Project" overseen by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP). Through the project, NC AI aims to develop executable agentic AI technology that understands goals and carries out the full process from planning to execution and verification, securing core technology to transform AI from a simple assistive tool into a digital colleague.

The project is a national R&D initiative aimed at securing industrial competitiveness in next-generation AI technology. It will run for four years, from 2026 to 2029, with a total budget of about 49.375 billion won (39.5 billion won from national funds), targeting the development of executable agentic AI technology applicable in industrial settings. It is positioned as a key national initiative to lead the development of an autonomous AI ecosystem capable of independent judgment and action.

NC AI will carry out the project's "Goal-Oriented, Long-Context Reasoning-Based Enterprise-Wide Work Innovation Agentic AI Technology Development" task as part of a consortium with Gabia, Korea University, and Yonsei University. The goal is to develop agentic AI technology that can continuously understand an organization's goals and complex work context and consistently carry out entire workflows.

The core of the R&D effort is to build AI capable of integrated understanding of work information and processes scattered across multiple systems, learning corporate work regulations and individual user work patterns to make context-appropriate decisions and carry out tasks. To this end, the plan is to build an AI-based work execution system that organically links various work systems and data, and autonomously establishes the optimal execution method depending on the complexity and context of the task.

The agentic AI being developed will autonomously handle repetitive tasks and coordinate work processes, freeing employees to focus on core work such as planning, decision-making, and approvals. Through this new form of collaboration in which AI and people divide roles, the technology is expected to boost corporate productivity and operational efficiency.

In particular, the project aims to implement a "governance co-evolution" system, in which experience and knowledge accumulated during AI operation continuously improve the organization's work regulations and authority structures, while the resulting changes in the work environment are in turn reflected back into the AI's decision-making. Through this, the goal is to complete an autonomous enterprise AI environment in which AI and the organization learn and continuously develop together.

In this project, NC AI will oversee the overall R&D process, including architecture design optimized for enterprise environments, agent training and tuning, and building the execution engine. It will also integrate various work systems and implement the research outcomes in forms applicable to actual work environments. Drawing on its experience in developing domestic AI models, operating commercial AI services, and system integration, NC AI will play a central role connecting models, systems, and industry-wide adoption.

Based on the agentic AI technology secured through this project, NC AI plans to expand the autonomous execution technology validated in digital work environments into the field of physical AI. The strategy is to apply AI technology that understands goals and carries out planning, reasoning, and execution to real-world industrial settings such as manufacturing and logistics, strengthening core physical AI technology capable of autonomous judgment and action in the real world.

NC AI CEO Lee Yeon-su said, "This project is research that presents a new paradigm in which AI goes beyond simply providing answers to work alongside companies on their tasks," adding, "Based on agentic AI technology validated in real corporate environments, NC AI will lay the foundation for next-generation AI technology that extends from digital work innovation to physical AI in the future."

                                                                                                        Son Kang-hoon