LG AI Research opens its 750B K-EXAONE 2.5 model to developers through a free API

The platform's changelog says EXAONE foundation models are now available through the API and that the service is currently free of charge[1]. Two models are listed: K-EXAONE 2.5, which LG describes as its sovereign AI language model, and EXAONE Tabular, a small model for predictions on structured data[1][2].

According to LG's model card, K-EXAONE 2.5 has 750 billion parameters with 31 billion active, handles text only in Korean and English, and has a 512K token context window with a January 2026 knowledge cutoff[2]. It supports chat, tool calling, structured outputs, code generation and streaming[2].

The endpoint is OpenAI compatible, so existing client code can point at it with the model name k-exaone_v2.5[3]. The combined input and output budget is capped at 524,288 tokens, and a reasoning_effort parameter set to low, high or max (the default) controls how much the model thinks before answering[3].

K-EXAONE 2.5 is a technology validation model built by further training the second-generation model LG released in August[4][5]. LG compares it with DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and GLM 5.3 on four agentic benchmarks[2]:

The scores are self-measured on open datasets[4]. Kim Eul-jeong, head of LG's Exaone Lab, said internal analysis across 24 evaluation metrics showed overall performance up more than 70% on the August model, achieved in about eight weeks[4].

LG frames the free API as real-world validation ahead of its next model. Co-head of research Lim Woo-hyung said the team is concentrating on a third-generation model and aims to complete an EXAONE model with frontier-level performance by January[4]. LG is also considering NVIDIA's Dynamo inference software to improve serving efficiency, and NVIDIA has already published a Dynamo guide for K-EXAONE[4].

Free access to a 750B model with a half-million-token context is an easy way for developers outside Korea to try a non-US, non-Chinese frontier contender. The benchmark claims still need independent checks, and LG has not said how long the free period will last or what limits will apply once it ends[1].