Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) has been selected to lead a government-backed defense project to develop on-device artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors and validate their performance on unmanned aerial vehicles. KAI announced on July 31 that it was named the preferred bidder in the defense segment of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources' K-On-Device AI Semiconductor Technology Development Program. The project has a total budget of 95.3 billion won and will run for five years. The program aims to develop a defense-grade system-on-chip (SoC) and an autonomous control system (ACS), then integrate them into an unmanned aircraft platform for performance verification. The project consists of three subprograms, with KAI serving as overall coordinator and leading the first and third, which include development of a high-speed expendable unmanned aerial vehicle, autonomous control systems, system integration and flight testing. The second subproject, focused on AI semiconductor development, will be led by a domestic fabless semiconductor company. The consortium includes South Korean AI semiconductor developers, AI model companies and research institutions, with Samsung Electronics responsible for semiconductor manufacturing. KAI plans to incorporate the AI chip into its proprietary AI pilot system, K-AILOT, and expand the technology to satellite applications for real-time onboard data analysis. KAI signed a memorandum of understanding with Samsung Electronics last year and another with Team Naver—comprising Naver and Naver Cloud—earlier this month, pursuing a sovereign AI framework combining AI semiconductors,