Maekyung Media Group signs strategic partnership with FLock.io, joining as validator

Maekyung Media Group, one of South Korea's leading comprehensive media groups, has formed a strategic alliance with FLock.io, a UK-based artificial intelligence and blockchain company, to cooperate on blockchain and AI businesses. The group announced the partnership on September 1.

Gu Ja-gyeong, head of Asia-Pacific at FLock.io, and Kim Jung-wook, CEO of M Block Company, a Maekyung affiliate, signed a memorandum of understanding at the Maekyung Media Center. The two companies said they will carry out a range of projects to expand their AI and blockchain businesses globally.

Through the partnership, FLock.io plans to strengthen its credibility in the Korean market and expand into sectors where data security is critical, including healthcare, finance and the public sector. Maekyung Media Group plans to support FLock.io's expansion by having M Block Company participate as a validator and by leveraging the group's media network.

FLock.io builds on federated learning, a technique that allows AI models to be trained without collecting data in one place. The company says this creates practical value by securing data sovereignty and protecting privacy, with participants in AI training and verification rewarded based on their contributions and the process recorded on the blockchain. FLock.io was founded in London in 2022 by researchers from the University of Oxford.

Its main services include AI Arena for model training and evaluation, FL Alliance for joint AI development by companies and institutions, and an API platform that helps developers put AI models into real-world services. The company says it is currently a key technology partner in a project to build a sovereign national AI system in Sarawak, Malaysia, where it is training indigenous language models on the state government's distributed hardware. It also says it works with UNDP, Alibaba Cloud and HKGAI, and has applied its technology at NHS hospitals.

Maekyung Media Group operates Maeil Business Newspaper, founded in 1966, along with the general programming channel MBN and economic news broadcaster Maeil Business TV. Its affiliate M Block Company has been playing a leading role in blockchain and digital assets based on its media expertise, content capabilities and institutional network.

The deal is a notable case of a mainstream media group putting institutional weight behind decentralized AI infrastructure: M Block's validator role ties Maekyung's credibility directly to FLock.io's network. What to watch next is whether the partnership helps FLock.io win data-sensitive clients in Korea's healthcare and public sectors, and whether other media groups follow into validator roles.