▲AI PRISM* Customized Economic Briefing
*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an "AI-based personalized news recommendation and summary service" developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items for each reader type.
[Key Issue Briefing]
■ Samsung's All-Out AX Push: Samsung Group declared an AI transformation (AX) across all affiliates, holding its first-ever "AX Bootcamp" for about 50 top executives at the Samsung Human Resources Development Institute. The group plans to complete AI training for some 2,300 executives by August and all 280,000 employees within the year, while introducing external generative AI services including Google Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Anthropic's Claude across all affiliates this month.
■ National Physical AI Project: The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) and the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) have launched the development of 34 billion won worth of leading physical AI technology, together with 10 industry-academia-research consortiums including LG Electronics (066570), Robotis (108490), and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The goal is to collect 110,000 hours of validation data over two years to develop a robot foundation model (RFM), and to raise the task success rate by more than 20 percentage points—surpassing the 14.5 percentage point improvement of OpenGVLab, currently the world's best level.
■ AI Company Mega-IPO Rush: OpenAI has filed its preliminary registration statement (S-1) confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), beginning the initial public offering (IPO) process after Anthropic. OpenAI's current valuation is $852 billion (about 1,289 trillion won), and an IPO is expected to push it past $1 trillion and raise $60 billion (about 91 trillion won) in public offering proceeds.
[News of Interest to Startup Founders]
1. Samsung Group Declares 'AI Grand Transformation'…Overhauling Work and Organizational DNA
- Key Summary: Samsung Group has declared an "AI Grand Transformation" to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) across the work of all affiliates, launching an all-out AX push under the direction of Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee. This month it held its first-ever "AX Bootcamp" for about 50 top executives, and plans to train some 2,300 executives by August 12, then complete AI training for all 280,000 employees within the year. It will also introduce external generative AI services including Google Gemini, OpenAI's ChatGPT, and Anthropic's Claude across all affiliates this month, making Samsung the first major conglomerate to fully adopt external AI across the work of all affiliates. Samsung's policy is to apply AI across eight core business areas—development, procurement, manufacturing, logistics, marketing, sales, services, and management support—to transform productivity and even decision-making methods.
2. "Digital Twin Manufacturing Innovation…New Car Development Time Cut by 67%"
- Key Summary: Rahul Kunju, Senior Vice President at Siemens, said in an interview with Seoul Economic Daily that digital twins—technology that recreates products and factories in virtual space for real-time simulation—are emerging as key infrastructure that will determine manufacturing competitiveness in the AI era. Global automakers have already used AI engineering technology to cut new car development time by 67% and improve the speed of noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) analysis by 100 times, while in the aerospace sector there have been cases of boosting avionics system reliability by 600%. Kunju cited "Agentic Automation"—a structure in which "AI agents perform repetitive tasks and human engineers focus on solving higher-order problems"—as the biggest change in manufacturing over the next five years. Meanwhile, he stressed that Korea, which holds world-class manufacturing capabilities in semiconductors, automobiles, shipbuilding, and batteries, would gain the assets to lead the next industrial revolution if it fuses field data with industrial AI technology.
3. "Prepare Bottled Water for Next Month's Heat Wave"…Coupang Prevents Stockouts with AI
- Key Summary: Coupang has begun building a system that uses AI to forecast product demand and link it with suppliers' production and delivery plans, with the related technology filed as a divisional patent last month. The system analyzes users' past order histories and data on seasons, weather, regions, and special events such as the World Cup using machine learning to predict future demand, and provides this to suppliers as a basis for establishing delivery plans. It can also reflect suppliers' past delivery records in the system, refining supply chain management by replacing companies that repeatedly fail to meet delivery deadlines with others. This is a response measure after Coupang Inc Chairman Bom Kim cited "inventory cost burden" as one of the backgrounds behind a 350 billion won loss during the first-quarter earnings conference call. Coupang said the technology is currently at the patent application stage and that the timing of actual commercialization is undecided.
[Reference News for Startup Founders]
4. "Easily Building Marketing Chatbots"…Women CEOs Hooked on AI Classes
- Key Summary: The Korea Association of Women Business Owners (KAWBO) drew about 80 women chief executive officers (CEOs) to the AI Digital Transformation (ADX) basics course of its "Women CEO Jump-Up Class," newly established with support from the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, with the application competition ratio reaching 7-to-1. The class introduced AI applications immediately usable in practice, such as how to build marketing chatbots for Instagram and how to use customer service bots and detail-page creation bots. Kim Da-sol, CEO of Present Lab, who led the training, said, "For a company's AI transformation (AX) to succeed, it is important for leaders to use AI directly and feel how far adoption is efficient." KAWBO is also providing networking programs along with support measures such as management consulting and corporate introduction video production for CEOs who complete the training.
5. Securing 110,000 Hours of Data…Building Korean-Style Physical AI
- Key Summary: The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) and the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP) have formed a consortium with 10 industry-academia-research institutions, including LG Electronics, Robotis, Maum AI, KT, KAIST, and Seoul National University, to launch a 34 billion won leading physical AI technology development project. At the core of this project is the development of a world model (a platform that mass-generates synthetic data to replace real-world validation with virtual simulation) and a robot foundation model (RFM) so that AI-based robots can stably perform tasks in the variable-heavy real world. The consortium aims to collect 110,000 hours of validation data over two years and improve the task success rate by more than 20 percentage points—surpassing the 14.5 percentage point improvement of OpenGVLab, currently the world's best level. It also plans to share the development results in an open-source system so they can be used at small and medium-sized enterprises' industrial sites.
6. After Anthropic, OpenAI Throws Its Hat In…The '$4 Trillion Money War' Begins
- Key Summary: OpenAI has filed its preliminary registration statement (S-1) confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), beginning the initial public offering (IPO) process after Anthropic. OpenAI, currently valued at $852 billion (about 1,289 trillion won), is expected to surpass $1 trillion at listing and raise $60 billion (about 91 trillion won) in public offering funds, while the combined valuation of the three companies—including Anthropic ($965 billion) and SpaceX ($1.75 trillion)—approaches $4 trillion. In addition, SpaceX plans to raise a total of $75 billion (about 113 trillion won) ahead of its Nasdaq debut on the 12th. Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) warned that the IPO boom of unproven profitability is reminiscent of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, while Arnaud Coohanatan, head of research at Allianz Trade, assessed that "such a volume pouring out in such a short period is unprecedented."
