Sowing the seeds in the AI ecosystem: Introducing HyperCLOVA X SEED, a commercial open-source AI
We proudly introduce HyperCLOVA X SEED, an open-source AI model available for commercial purposes. This landmark release represents more than just a model deployment—it’s a crucial step toward building Korea’s sovereign AI ecosystem. Building sovereign AI is an enormous challenge that cannot be achieved by any single company or nation. NAVER is releasing HyperCLOVA X SEED with the vision of fostering an ecosystem that empowers businesses across the board.
HyperCLOVA X SEED is small yet powerful, designed to be fine-tuned according to specific business needs, enabling customized applications across diverse industry sectors. This release features three models with 3B, 1.5B, and 0.5B parameters respectively—each engineered for specialized applications. Notably, our 3B model offers vision understanding capabilities, enabling developers to build sophisticated applications that process both text and visual information. By making HyperCLOVA X SEED available as open source, we aim to accelerate the innovation and growth of Korea’s AI ecosystem.
HyperCLOVA X SEED 3B
HyperCLOVA X SEED 3B is a multimodal model specifically designed to understand images within Korean linguistic and cultural contexts. This model accurately interprets Korea’s unique cultural nuances and visual data—a core element in creating a sovereign AI ecosystem. While global models have inherent limitations in reflecting Korea’s distinctive characteristics, an AI built upon our own data and cultural contexts holds significant value.
The practical value of HyperCLOVA X SEED 3B becomes evident in real-world scenarios. For example, when asked “Where’s the place in this video? If I were to travel somewhere nearby, what would you recommend?” the model analyzes video content, accurately comprehends Korean cultural nuances, and offers specific travel recommendations. After recognizing the location in the video, it suggests major tourist attractions, unique experiences, local restaurants, and relevant cultural information.
These capabilities extend across domains—from tour guidance and visual content analysis to image-based question-answering systems. Despite its compact architecture, HyperCLOVA X SEED 3B delivers remarkable performance in image understanding compared to competing models, particularly when processing visual data in Korean-language contexts.
▲ Benchmark average: Average of nine vision metrics, including VideoMME-Ko
▲ Comparative analysis of HyperCLOVA X SEED 3B against competitor models in text performance
In text processing, HyperCLOVA X SEED 3B demonstrates competitive results across multiple Korean benchmark tests. The model’s proficiency in understanding and processing Korean language and cultural elements is particularly noteworthy.
Let’s examine the specific performance metrics for image and video understanding:
▲ Comparative analysis of HyperCLOVA X SEED 3B against competitor models in image and video comprehension
HyperCLOVA X SEED 3B outperforms competing models in image and video understanding tasks, especially in visual content comprehension within Korean contexts. This exceptional performance stems from years of accumulated expertise, high-quality training data, and continuously refined methodologies. HyperCLOVA X SEED 3B demonstrates unique strengths in processing both visual and textual data specifically tailored to Korean language and cultural contexts.
HyperCLOVA X SEED 1.5B
HyperCLOVA X SEED 1.5B is an instruction-following language model designed to understand and generate text. This versatile model demonstrates exceptional promise across a wide range of industry applications.
This example demonstrates how HyperCLOVA X SEED 1.5B handles translation tasks between Korean and major languages like English and Japanese. The model skillfully translates messages written in Korean into English, enabling users to express themselves more clearly. This capability serves as a valuable assistive tool for educational materials and business communications.
The model processes complex instructions, including requests for specific output formats (such as JSON) or conversational styles (like casual language). These sophisticated capabilities make HyperCLOVA X SEED 1.5B well-suited for various business applications and specialized chatbot services.
▲ Comparison of HyperCLOVA X SEED 1.5B against competitor models in Korean language understanding evaluation
When evaluated across major Korean-language benchmarks (KMMLU, HAE-RAE, CLiCK, and KoBEST), HyperCLOVA X SEED 1.5B consistently outperforms similarly-sized competitor models, including Qwen2.5-1.5B-instruct and gemma-3-1b-it.
HyperCLOVA X SEED 0.5B
HyperCLOVA X SEED 0.5B is a compact language model that excels at understanding and generating text while maintaining fluent multi-turn conversations with users in Korean. This efficiency makes it ideal for deploying natural-sounding conversational interfaces in resource-constrained environments, including mobile applications, smart home devices, and wearables.
As demonstrated in the example above, HyperCLOVA X SEED 0.5B delivers well-structured responses to everyday user inquiries. When consulted about living room decoration, it provides systematic and practical interior advice—from color selection and lighting installation to furniture placement and decorative accessories. This specific capability makes it invaluable for environments requiring lightweight AI solutions, such as smart home devices, mobile applications, and customer support chatbots.
▲ Comparison of HyperCLOVA X SEED 0.5B performance across Korean language benchmarks
When compared to Qwen2.5-0.5B-instruct, which has the same parameter size, HyperCLOVA X SEED 0.5B consistently outperforms across major Korean benchmarks including KMMLU, HAE-RAE, and KoBEST. Notably, HyperCLOVA X SEED 0.5B leverages quality training data and the high-performance HyperCLOVA X flagship model, enabling it to be trained at just 1/39th the cost of similarly-sized competitor model.
| Training costs (pre-training) | HyperCLOVA X SEED 0.5B | QWEN2.5-0.5B |
| A100 GPU hours | 4,358 | 169,257 |
| Cost (USD) | 6,537 | 253,886 |
How can I use HyperCLOVA X SEED?
On April 24th, we will reveal the Hugging Face link along with additional promotional benefits. You can download the model from our soon-to-be-updated Hugging Face page and take advantage of the special promotional offers we’ve prepared.
NAVER is committed to serving as a trustworthy guide for all partners embarking on their sovereign AI journey. Regardless of geographical location or organizational scale, we will support your efforts to create meaningful achievements. Our mission extends beyond providing tools—we aim to empower every organization with AI innovation capabilities that ensure proprietary competitiveness. With HyperCLOVA X SEED, you can now implement the applications you’ve envisioned.