PNN
Bengaluru (Karnataka) [India], April 2: KRAFTON, Inc. has launched Raon, its first open-source AI model family, and released its first four models on the global AI platform Hugging Face. The name Raon comes from a Korean word meaning “joy,” while also incorporating letters from “KRAFTON.” It reflects the company’s belief that AI can help create new kinds of gaming experiences.
The launch demonstrates KRAFTON’s ability to build advanced AI models in-house, from collecting and preparing data to training, evaluating, and publicly releasing them. This marks an important step in strengthening KRAFTON’s long-term global AI capabilities through Raon. The initial Raon lineup includes Raon-Speech, Raon-SpeechChat, Raon-OpenTTS, and Raon-VisionEncoder. Among other possibilities, these models provide a foundation for future gaming experiences that can support more natural voice interaction, smarter AI characters, and AI systems that can better understand voice, text, and images together.
Raon-Speech is a speech AI model that can understand spoken language and generate speech in response. With a size of 9B, it ranked first globally in both English and Korean among public speech language models under 10B based on evaluations across seven core speech tasks and 40 benchmarks, including speech recognition, speech generation, and speech-based question answering.
Raon-SpeechChat is designed for more natural real-time conversation. It uses full-duplex technology, which allows it to begin responding even while the user is still speaking. It is the first real-time full-duplex speech model announced in Korea and ranks in the top tier globally across three benchmarks and 13 key tasks, including backchanneling, interruption handling, response latency, and safety.
Raon-OpenTTS is a text-to-speech model trained entirely on publicly available speech data. KRAFTON also released a curated training dataset alongside the model. In listening tests evaluating how natural generated speech sounds, the model demonstrated top-tier performance against global research-grade TTS models trained on non-public data.
Raon-VisionEncoder is a vision encoder developed in-house from scratch using publicly available data. It helps AI systems interpret and work with visual information. KRAFTON has shared the full development process, including data curation and training methodology. In evaluations on image classification tasks, the model achieved 90.6% of the performance of Google’s SigLIP2 vision encoder.
Alongside the models, KRAFTON also released three technical papers and details on how the models were trained to support the broader global AI research community.
“The release of the Raon model family is an important milestone in our journey to build AI capabilities,” said Kangwook Lee, Chief AI Officer, KRAFTON, Inc. “By sharing large-scale training data and core models as open source, we hope researchers and developers can use them freely. We also look forward to contributing to the advancement of multimodal technology and the growth of the domestic AI ecosystem.”
KRAFTON has continued expanding its AI efforts in recent years, including the introduction of KIRA, a personal AI assistant, and the open-source release of Terminus-KIRA, a technology designed to improve AI agent performance. Moving forward, KRAFTON plans to continue expanding its work in both AI model development and AI agent research.
More information about KRAFTON can be found at https://krafton.com/en.
About KRAFTON, Inc.
Headquartered in Korea, KRAFTON, Inc. is a global game developer and publisher dedicated to pioneering unforgettable worlds for players everywhere. Founded in 2007, KRAFTON brings together a diverse portfolio of studios including PUBG STUDIOS, Striking Distance Studios, Unknown Worlds, Neon Giant, KRAFTON Montreal Studio, Bluehole Studio, RisingWings, 5minlab, Dreamotion, ReLU Games, Flyway Games, Tango Gameworks, inZOI Studio, JOFSOFT, Eleventh Hour Games, OmniCraft Labs, Olivetree Games, Loonshot Games, and 9B STUDIO. Each is united by a commitment to bold imagination and breakthrough game-making.
KRAFTON’s franchises and titles include PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS, PUBG MOBILE, PUBG: BLINDSPOT, inZOI, Subnautica, MIMESIS, Hi-Fi Rush, Dinkum, TERA, My Little Puppy, and more. Guided by its vision to pioneer the path to players’ dreams, KRAFTON is focused on building franchises that last and delivering experiences that resonate with players around the world. For more information, visit www.KRAFTON.com.
About KRAFTON India
KRAFTON India is responsible for delivering premier mobile gaming experiences in the country, led by its flagship title BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA (BGMI), which has surpassed 260 million downloads. Its diverse portfolio also includes titles such as Bullet Echo India, Road To Valor: Empires, CookieRun India, and Real Cricket, catering to a wide spectrum of Indian gamers. KRAFTON India has also played a pivotal role in shaping the country’s esports landscape through marquee tournaments such as BGIS and BMPS, setting new benchmarks for development of grassroot talent, competitiveness, and fan engagement, while helping establish esports as a mainstream sporting and entertainment category in India. Beyond publishing games, KRAFTON India is committed to strengthening the digital entertainment ecosystem. Since 2021, the company has invested over $250 million in Indian startups across interactive entertainment, gaming, esports, and technology. The company also actively supports game development talent through the KRAFTON India Gaming Incubator (KIGI), enabling emerging developers with funding, mentorship, and strategic guidance.
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