MakinaRocks Wins $1.45M Defense AI Platform Contract from South Korea’s ADD

Industry-specialized AI company MakinaRocks has secured a ₩2 billion (approximately $1.5 million USD) contract to develop a secure AI operations platform for the Agency for Defense Development (ADD). Announced on August 19 (KST), the project will support the creation of an MLSecOps (Machine Learning Security Operations) environment to safely integrate advanced AI technologies into the country’s defense systems while maintaining strict data security standards.

The one-year project will be carried out within ADD’s Defense Intelligence Data Center and is part of a broader strategy to systematically introduce AI across all domestically developed weapons systems. A key challenge addressed by the initiative is enabling the use of open-source software and external libraries in secure, closed-network environments. MakinaRocks was officially awarded the contract on August 12, after being selected as the preferred bidder on July 19 following a top technical evaluation score.

At the heart of MakinaRocks’ proposal is its proprietary AI platform, Runway. The platform was the only Korean solution listed in CB Insights’ 2024 Machine Learning Operations Market Map under the “AI Development Platforms” category, alongside global leaders such as Databricks, Dataiku, Scale AI, and Hugging Face.

Runway will enable the military to build a scalable, secure AI development and deployment pipeline even within highly restricted networks. The platform offers end-to-end support for AI data collection, cleansing, version control, automated experimentation and result tracking, staging environments, model performance monitoring, continuous retraining, CI/CD, and open-source security compliance—components deemed critical for national defense AI infrastructure.

“In the defense sector, where closed networks are the norm, a stable and scalable AI platform is essential,” said Sung-ho Yoon, CEO of MakinaRocks. “Runway’s technical capabilities form the backbone of this project.”

MakinaRocks is the only company among the 62 members of South Korea’s “Top 100 Defense Innovation Companies” initiative to offer a proprietary AI platform. Runway is already deployed across multiple sectors, including Hyundai Motor Company, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Korea Water Resources Corporation, the Korea Insurance Development Institute, and ADD itself.