NAIRL–Corca Conduct Alpha Test of AI-Native Research Collaboration Platform “Craken”

National AI Research Lab (NAIRL) recently conducted an alpha test of “Craken,” an AI-native research collaboration platform, together with its partner company Corca. Through this test, NAIRL carried out its role as a coordinator between academia and industry in practice, while participating researchers gained experience applying AI agents to real research workflows.

Craken is an AI-based collaboration platform that supports the entire research process. Built around researchers’ own papers and data, it provides customized AI agents and is being developed as a new research productivity tool that supports the accumulation and sharing of research knowledge. The platform is designed to bring AI assistance, team communication, file sharing, and knowledge management together within a single environment. Corca, the developer of Craken, is a Korean AI startup participating as a service partner of OpenAI.

Researchers from the labs of Professor Kee-Eung Kim and Professor Tae-Hyun Oh at KAIST took part in the test, using the service in their actual research environments and sharing a wide range of feedback. Participating researchers worked with Craken’s AI agent to summarize papers into structured wiki documents, survey related literature, and organize the results into interconnected knowledge pages, exercising the platform’s core capabilities in real-world conditions.

Conducted at an early alpha stage, the test focused on validating real-world usability in research settings and on drawing out directions for improvement through researchers’ concrete feedback. In the process, Corca gathered in-depth feedback comparable to detailed user interviews, and a wide range of views on the labs’ actual workflows and collaboration practices were shared. These insights are now feeding directly into the product’s further development.

In that a research institution and an industry partner together tested a new mode of research collaboration and explored directions for its development, the test marked a meaningful first step toward identifying where the two sides can collaborate next.

National AI Research Lab extends its thanks to the members of Professor Kim’s and Professor Oh’s labs who shared their time and insights. NAIRL will continue to expand industry-academia collaboration to build AI research infrastructure and a collaborative ecosystem that reflect the real needs of the research field.