LG AI Research, the artificial intelligence division of South Korea's LG Group, launched EXAONE 4.0 on Tuesday, marking the nation's inaugural hybrid AI model that combines large language model capabilities with reasoning AI technology.

The company claims this breakthrough delivers world-class performance by merging the advantages of traditional large language models with advanced reasoning capabilities, positioning it as a significant technological advancement in South Korea's AI development landscape.

This development represents LG's second major AI milestone this year, building upon the March release of EXAONE Deep, which became South Korea's first reasoning AI model. 

The rapid succession of these launches demonstrates LG's accelerated AI development timeline and strategic focus on artificial intelligence innovation.

Lee Jin-sik, who heads the EXAONE Lab at LG AI Research, emphasized the company's commitment to establishing EXAONE as Korea's premier frontier AI model while demonstrating its global competitiveness through continued research and development efforts.

According to LG's internal testing, EXAONE 4.0 demonstrated superior performance compared to leading open-weight models from the United States, China, and France across various benchmark evaluations, suggesting the model's competitive positioning in the international AI market.

The hybrid AI model category remains relatively exclusive globally, with only select companies having successfully developed similar technologies. 

Notable examples include Anthropic's Claude model from the United States and Alibaba's Qwen model from China, while OpenAI has announced plans to develop GPT-5 as a hybrid model, indicating the emerging importance of this AI approach.

To support research and educational initiatives, LG has made EXAONE 4.0 available as an open-weight model on Hugging Face, the prominent open-source AI platform. 

This open-weight approach allows researchers and developers to access and modify the model's learned parameters while maintaining proprietary control over training data and architectural details.

The company has also partnered with Friendly AI, an official model distributor on Hugging Face, to launch a commercial application programming interface service for EXAONE 4.0. This API release is expected to facilitate broader AI adoption across various industries by providing accessible integration options for businesses and developers.

LG plans to showcase EXAONE 4.0 publicly during an AI-themed talk concert scheduled for July 22 at LG Science Park in Seoul. 

The launch of EXAONE 4.0 represents South Korea's growing interest in the global AI competition, particularly in the hybrid model segment that combines multiple AI approaches for enhanced performance and versatility.