International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) to launch its Watson AI in Korea through a partnership with a Korean IT service provider called SK Holdings C&C.

The two firms will work together to make Watson available to the locals in Korean before June 2017. The partnership between the two firms also means they have to set up the right infrastructure for the AI together with introducing promotional projects to market the service. The presence of Watson in the country will also allow for the development of solutions for data analysis solutions in Korea through natural language semantic study and machine learning technology. SK revealed that the technology will be made available next year.

The project will involve a cloud platform

The partnership will work on setting up a cloud platform for Watson. It will be positioned at the SK data center located in Pangyo. The cloud platform will allow IT managers and developers to gain access to the service which will be of great help in developing new apps. Apart from the initiative for a Korean Watson, the two firms will also launch a venture fund to help AI startups in Korea. SK C&C Executive Park Jung-ho stated that the aim of the initiative is to help South Korea become a global leader in services through the development of a strong industrial environment for AI.

A spokesman from SK C&C stated that the partnership will work on coming up with a robust AI ecosystem in the country in the hope that it will lead to the development of global services. Deep learning, artificial intelligence and machine learning are the current trends in the Korean tech space. The features were popularized by the epic battle between an AI from a local tech firm and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) DeepMind AI.

Samsung also got into the Deep Learning game recently with a new sonogram device that helps medical practitioners to detect breast cancer. IBM hopes that the initiative will be a stepping stone towards boosting Korea’s competitive capacity in the tech world.