Samsung, SK bet big on glass substrates for AI chips

South Korea's top two conglomerates Samsung Electronics and SK Group are speeding up efforts to secure an early edge in glass substrates, a "game-changer" in chipmaking that could drastically boost the data capacity and speed of semiconductors in the era of artificial intelligence. Their leaders recently visited their respective business sites producing glass substrates, renewing their commitment to the burgeoning area that is highly likely to overcome the limits of conventional p

July 8, 2024

SKT, Singapore’s Singtel team up for AI-driven network innovation

SK Telecom announced Monday that it signed a memorandum of understanding with Singtel, Singapore’s largest telecommunications operator, for collaboration on next-generation network technologies. SKT stated that this partnership with Singtel aims to drive AI innovation in the telecom sector and lead advancements in mobile network services and technologies worldwide. Both companies are founding members of the Global Telco AI Alliance, a union of major international telecom companies focused

July 8, 2024

SK chief inspects chip materials, biopharma affiliates in US

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won inspected US business operations of chip materials and biopharma affiliates, the group's top decision-making body SK Supex Council said Sunday. Currently, Chey is staying in the US to oversee the group's business operations and meet with business partners. Since the trip started on June 22, he has met with CEOs of global tech giants, including Open AI, Microsoft, Amazon and Intel. Moving to the East Coast over the past weekend, Chey visited the headquarte

July 7, 2024

LG Electronics ups Q2 earnings guidance on robust sales

LG Electronics said Friday it expected its second-quarter earnings to climb more than 60 percent from a year earlier on robust sales of its main home appliance products and balanced qualitative growth of its business-to-business sector. LG estimated that its operating profit for the April-June period came in at 1.19 trillion won ($863.2 million), up 61.2 percent from a year ago, according to the company’s earnings guidance. The home appliance maker’s earnings guidance for the April-J

July 5, 2024

Samsung projects 15-fold surge in Q2 profit

Samsung Electronics predicted Friday that its operating profit in the April-June period would rebound to exceed 10 trillion won ($7.3 billion), driven by a recovery in demand for memory chips and rising prices on the back of the expansion of the artificial intelligence market. Samsung's second-quarter operating profit is estimated to hit 10.4 trillion won, up 1,452.2 percent from a year ago, according to the company’s earnings guidance. The figure far exceeded the 8.23 trillion won consens

July 5, 2024

SK Square names new CEO to reshape investment portfolio

SK Square, the investment arm of SK Group, is set to reshape its business portfolio to concentrate on the chip industry and divest "non-core" investments, under a new leader. On Wednesday, the company nominated Han Myung-jin, the head of the company's investment support center and former chief strategy officer of SK Telecom, as its new chief executive officer, to take over from Park Sung-ha who was dismissed a week ago. "The appointments committee in the board of directors no

July 4, 2024

[KH Explains] Why Naver, Nvidia are teaming up for 'sovereign AI'

Top executives of Naver and Nvidia met in the US last week and their key agenda was securing “sovereign AI.” Sovereign AI refers to a nation’s capabilities to autonomously develop and produce artificial intelligence models using its own infrastructure, data, workforce and business network. Tech firms have put greater value on the concept as it allows AI models to be more advanced by incorporating cultures, languages and values specific to each region. “Naver and Nvidia wi

July 3, 2024

LG acquires Dutch smarthome specialist to enhance connectivity

LG Electronics is acquiring Athom, a smart home platform based in the Netherlands, as part of its effort to strengthen connectivity for its open smart home ecosystem, the company announced Wednesday. The Korean tech giant said it has acquired an 80 percent stake in the Dutch firm and plans to purchase the remaining 20 percent within the next three years, with the condition included in the agreement. “The acquisition of Athom is a cornerstone for our AI home business,” said Jung Ki-hy

July 3, 2024

Samsung to boost display investments in Vietnam

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong on Tuesday renewed his commitment to boosting investment in Vietnam, where the company remains the biggest foreign investor, during a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Seoul on Tuesday. In the private meeting, the Samsung chief pledged massive investment to set up the tech giant’s biggest display module production base in the Southeast Asian country over the next three years. "Vietnam's success is Samsung's su

July 2, 2024

[Business Diplomacy] Time matters more than money in engineering lobbying prowess

Korean companies should focus on boosting their "still-nascent" lobbying power by spending the time to understand policymakers' needs and by building a strong network regardless of the outcome of the upcoming US presidential election in November, according to legal and trade advisers from Lee & Ko, a prominent law firm in Korea. Companies around the globe are paying keen attention to how US policy directions will diverge depending on who becomes the next US president: the incu

July 2, 2024

Cyber attacks using generative AI on rise: SK Shieldus

Cyberattacks using generative artificial intelligence, or targeting the weak points of the new technology are on the rise, SK Shieldus, a leading security service company in Korea said on Tuesday. In a media seminar, SK Shieldus and EQST, the company's white-hat hackers group, presented its findings on the rising hacking trends using AI and underscored the importance of raising awareness and taking preventive measures to reduce damage. “Large Language Models are being used actively to

July 2, 2024

Global memory chip market picks up amid AI boom

The global memory chip market is picking up on the back of the artificial intelligence boom, with the chip price expected to rise in the second half of this year, according to industry sources on Monday. In the wake of a recovery in demand for server and AI chips, such as High Bandwidth Memory chips, the average sales price of DRAM chips is forecast to increase by 8 to 13 percent in the July-September period when compared to the previous quarter, TrendForce, a Taiwan-based chip market tracker sa

July 1, 2024

SK hynix develops industry's top-spec SSD for AI PCs

SK hynix, the world's second-largest memory chip-maker by revenue, said Friday it had successfully developed the industry's highest performancesolid state drive chip that can significantly enhance the process speed in on-device artificial intelligence. The product, dubbed PCB01, comes with the capabilities of sequential read and write speeds of 14 gigabyte and 12GB per second, respectively, bringing the performance of an SSD to a level unseen before, SK hynix said. The speeds allow the

June 28, 2024

Naver’s top executives discuss sovereign AI with Nvidia CEO

Naver Global Investment Officer and founder Lee Hae-jin and Chief Executive Officer Choi Soo-yeon met with Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, to discuss strengthening their partnership in the rising artificial intelligence technology, according to the Korean internet giant Thursday. Naver’s key executives, including Lee, Choi and Naver Cloud CEO Kim Yoo-won met with Huang at Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California on Tuesday. During their meeting, the executives

June 28, 2024

SK chief meets with big tech CEOs in US

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won is in the US to meet with leaders of big tech firms, including OpenAI and Microsoft, and discuss collaboration opportunities in artificial intelligence. Via social media on Thursday, Chey posted photos of himself shaking hands with Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, taken in separate meetings in the US. "I am traveling in San Francisco and Seattle and meeting with IT leaders every day. They are so welcoming to d

June 27, 2024

Parties rush to roll out competing chip bills with heftier incentives

South Korea’s rival parties are introducing stronger chipmaking support bills to boost the domestic semiconductors industry, sharing the consensus that existing policies are not sufficient for Korean chipmakers to compete against global rivals backed by massive financial grants. On Tuesday, Rep. Kim Tae-nyeon of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea introduced a bill that involves a whopping 100 trillion won ($72 billion) subsidy program. Kim's proposal seeks to extend an exis

June 26, 2024

New Galaxy foldable phones to debut in Paris on July 10

Samsung Electronics plans to unveil its highly anticipated next-generation Galaxy Z series infusing Galaxy AI at the upcoming event titled "Galaxy Unpacked 2024: Galaxy AI is Here” in Paris on July 10. The Korean tech giant released a teaser trailer through its YouTube channel on Wednesday, offering a tantalizing glimpse into the event that will be broadcast globally. The 15-second clip features iconic imagery of the Eiffel Tower, the Galaxy AI logo and a silhouette of Samsung’s

June 26, 2024

Samsung steps up CXL development with Red Hat-certified infrastructure

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest maker of memory chips, announced Tuesday it built the industry’s first certified Compute Express Link infrastructure, a crucial step not just for its product verification, but also for creating an open-source ecosystem. Samsung Memory Research Center, located in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, received the certification from Red Hat, the world’s leading open-source solutions provider, which allows the tech giant to directly verify CXL-relat

June 25, 2024

LG Uplus launches ixi-GEN telecom-specific AI

LG Uplus, one of the top three telecommunications providers in South Korea, launched its self-developed generative artificial intelligence model ixi-GEN on Tuesday. Ixi-Gen is a small language model that learned LG Uplus’ communication and platform data based on LG AI Research Institute’s Exaone, a multimodal AI model capable of bilingual language processing and the bidirectional generation of language and images, developed in 2021. It can be used quickly and cost-effectively and mit

June 25, 2024

LG Innotek eyes W2tr in automotive sensor sales by 2030

LG Innotek on Monday set an ambitious goal of achieving 2 trillion won ($1.44 billion) in automotive sensor sales by 2030. The company said it will speed up efforts to adopt its cutting-edge optical technology to diverse future mobility and automotive sensing solutions. Its strategic focus will be lidar, the light detection and ranging sensors that are crucial for self-driving vehicles. Earlier this month, the company launched a new team solely dedicated to lidar development immediately under th

June 24, 2024