AI Agent Era Dawns as Won-Backed Stablecoins Take Center Stage

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an "AI-based personalized news recommendation and summarization service" developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items by reader type.

1. KIBO Launches Dedicated R&D Commercialization Guarantee… "Crossing the Valley of Death"

- Key Summary: The Korea Technology Finance Corporation (KIBO) has launched the "R&D Commercialization Project Guarantee," a dedicated financial support product for companies commercializing government research and development (R&D) outcomes, and has begun full-scale support. The product was prepared in line with the recently enacted amendment to the "Act on the Promotion of Technology Innovation of Small and Medium Enterprises," and companies can receive up to 10 billion won each, including facility funds. It raises the guarantee ratio from the existing 85% to up to 100% and reduces guarantee fees by up to 0.5 percentage points, focusing on support that spans all commercialization stages, including prototype production, production facility construction, and market development. KIBO also plans to introduce a follow-up product, the "R&D Commercialization Liquidation Guarantee," in July to supply 800 billion won, bringing this year's total guarantee scale to an expected 340 billion won.

2. Robots, Self-Driving Cars, Cloud… Follow "AI Godfather" Jensen Huang's Path to See the Future

- Key Summary: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang visited Korea after about seven months, holding successive meetings with SK Group Chairman Tae-won Choi, LG Group Chairman Kwang-mo Koo, and Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin to build next-generation AI ecosystem partnerships. This visit expanded beyond inspecting the supply chain for HBM (high-bandwidth memory) used in GPUs (graphics processing units) into all-around infrastructure cooperation to jointly solve power and heat issues at AI data centers. Meanwhile, in his meeting with Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Euisun Chung, CEO Huang is expected to discuss a roadmap for building a 3 billion-dollar AI technology center and physical AI application center, and a robotics alliance with Doosan Robotics (454910) is also expected to materialize. As the final item on his visit, he is holding a closed-door meeting with promising domestic startups such as Upstage and Nota, expanding NVIDIA's software ecosystem.

3. The Next Decade Belongs to "A2A"… Won Coin Is the Core Infrastructure

- Key Summary: A forecast has emerged that A2A (Agent to Agent), transactions between AI agents, will rise as a core economic activity surpassing business-to-business and person-to-person transactions over the next decade. Kim Seo-jun, CEO of Hashed, stressed at "Bitcoin Seoul 2026," hosted by Seoul Economic Daily and Decenter, that stablecoin transaction volume has already surpassed three times that of Visa cards, and that within two to three years an era will arrive in which everyone uses AI agents. Accordingly, Lim Jong-gyu, head of LayerZero Asia-Pacific, advised that South Korea is a leader in open banking and a country with the world's highest level of AI service usage, and that actual issuance of a won stablecoin is needed. Lee Se-hoon, Senior Deputy Governor of the Financial Supervisory Service, said digital assets are serving as a catalyst accelerating the digital transformation of the entire financial industry, and stated that he would support the sound development of the ecosystem in cooperation with the government and related institutions.

4. With Olive Young's U.S. Entry, a Jackpot in the Making… Harvest EP Pursues Investment in K-Beauty Distributor A-One

- Key Summary: Domestic private equity fund (PEF) manager Harvest Equity Partners is pursuing a plan to invest up to 80 billion won in A-One B&H, a K-beauty specialty distributor. A-One is a K-beauty distribution intermediary platform connecting cosmetics manufacturers and brands with sellers such as CJ (001040) Olive Young, and it posted record-high results last year with revenue of 124.3 billion won and operating profit of 16.1 billion won. These figures represent a sharp increase of 70.5% in revenue and 283.3% in operating profit compared to 2024, with A-One's enterprise value currently known to be in the mid-100 billion won range. A strategy of preemptively building a local supply chain in line with CJ Olive Young's opening of its first store in Los Angeles is cited as the background for this investment, and Harvest Equity Partners is expected to lay the groundwork for securing a controlling stake through means such as acquiring convertible bonds (CB).