Press Release

Company joins ETRI-led project to strengthen AI agent reliability with RAG-Ops and safety guardrail technologies

SEOUL, South Korea, June 9, 2026 — SURROMIND Inc. (CEO Hayoung Jang) announced that it will participate as a joint R&D organization in the “Development of a Next-Generation Network AI Foundation Model” project led by the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

The R&D project, promoted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and planned, evaluated, and managed by the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP), will run from April 2026 through December 2030. Participants from industry, academia, and research include SURROMIND, KT, HFR, the Korea Communications Agency (KCA), Ewha Womans University, Soongsil University, Sungkyunkwan University, and Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH).

A Network Foundation Model (NFM) is an AI model trained on operational data generated by network equipment and operating systems, including logs and performance metrics, to support root-cause analysis, quality management, and response decisions. The project aims to develop a proprietary NFM based on domestic technology and apply it to an actual network operations environment to conduct a proof of concept (PoC) for autonomous agents.

SURROMIND will develop technologies for operating and validating AI agents powered by the NFM. In particular, the company will apply Retrieval-Augmented Generation Operations (RAG-Ops), which helps large language models use required knowledge as evidence, and Safety Guardrail technology, which checks for risks during execution. Through these technologies, SURROMIND plans to help AI agents assess situations based on trusted data and verify execution stability.

▲ Photo courtesy of SURROMIND

Alongside its participation in the project, SURROMIND was designated an “AI Agent Platform Research Center” by IITP. The company plans to use the designation to strengthen its capabilities in AI agent technologies that can be deployed in industrial settings.

Separately, SURROMIND was selected for the Ministry of SMEs and Startups’ “Development of Multi-AI Agents Specialized for SME Manufacturing (R&D)” project. Under the project, the company will develop AI agents for use across the automotive parts industry value chain.

“AI agents prove their value when they can understand data distributed across industrial sites and reliably support actual task execution,” said Hayoung Jang, CEO of SURROMIND. “We will focus on commercializing AI agents tailored to the operating environments of individual industries.”

SURROMIND develops AI agent technologies and solutions for industrial applications. Its work spans knowledge retrieval, document automation, quality inspection, process analysis, and AI agent solutions. The company supports industrial AI adoption through on-premises deployments built directly within enterprise networks and industry-specific models.

Website: https://surromind.ai/