The honor of receiving Presidential Citation! Leading software innovation with EXAONE

We are delighted to share some very exciting and honorable news here at LG AI Research. Jinsik Lee, Leader of the EXAONE Lab, has been awarded the Presidential Citation for Meritorious Service to the Software Industry in recognition of his contributions to the advancement of the software industry.

This award holds special significance, as it formally recognizes the innovative efforts LG AI Research has pursued to secure the independence of domestic AI technology and expand an open ecosystem. We will introduce the key contributions of Lab Leader Jinsik Lee and the transformation spearheaded by EXAONE.

Key achievements: EXAONE's innovative footprint

LG AI Research’s EXAONE Lab has pioneered the development of South Korea's first large scale AI model, EXAONE, and has continuously advanced its capabilities and models. This achievement has been recognized as a major contribution for expanding the potential of the Korean AI industry and strengthening global competitiveness. Additionally, the research activities and accomplishments of Lab Leader Jinsik Lee have also received high praise.

1. Activating the Korean AI ecosystem and securing technological sovereignty

1. Korea's First Open-Weight Large-Scale AI Model Released: By transitioning EXAONE 3.0 to open weight, we provided opportunities for diverse entities including academia, research institutions, and startups to leverage the latest generative AI technology.

2. User satisfaction achievements: The EXAONE model series has demonstrated global trust and tangible value by achieving the highest number of downloads (8.6 million as of December 2025) and derivative models (312 as of December 2025) among Korean models on Hugging Face, the world's largest open-source AI community.

3. Securing technological sovereignty: EXAONE 3.0 demonstrated outstanding performance in both Korean and English when compared to models from global big tech companies (such as Meta's Llama 3.1 and Google's Gemma 2). This validated Korea's capability to develop its own independent AI foundation model.

2. Securing global competitiveness and marketability

1. Expanding the AI ecosystem: EXAONE 3.5 has released three models: 2.4B (2.4 billion parameters, for on-device use), 7.8B (7.8 billion parameters, for general use), and 32B (32 billion parameters, for expert use), providing researchers and developers with a foundation to select models suited to diverse environments. This has significantly contributed to the qualitative and quantitative expansion of the AI ecosystem.

2. International recognition of technology: The EXAONE 3.5 32B model has been named to the list of “Notable AI Models” selected by the U.S. non-profit organization Epoch AI. It has also gained international recognition by being selected as the sole Korean model among 62 globally notable AI models in the “AI Index 2025” report by Stanford University's HAI

3. Leading the agentic AI era (EXAONE Deep & EXAONE 4.0): EXAONE Deep, Korea's first self-developed Reasoning Model, embodied autonomous thinking and high-level reasoning capabilities, the core concepts of agentic AI, and pioneered the era of agentic AI with its complex problem-solving abilities. The subsequently released EXAONE 4.0 became Korea's first reasoning Model/Non-resoning model, demonstrating world-class performance in high-difficulty fields such as mathematics, science, and coding. It further solidified its position in the global market by ranking 11th overall (1st among Korean AI models) in Artificial Analysis' intelligence index evaluation.

4. Expanding the AI research ecosystem: Based on research experience in graduate schools and industry, we have published over 20 papers at both domestic and international artificial intelligence conferences and released a technical report for the EXAONE model, contributing to the expansion of the research ecosystem for large-scale AI models.

We at LG AI Research are reflecting on the significance of this Presidential Citation, and will continue to lead the advancement of the software industry centered around EXAONE. Furthermore, we will relentlessly innovate to ensure Korea's AI technology leads in global competitiveness and persist in our challenge in “Advancing AI for a Better Life.”