Government Excludes RSU from Tax Benefits in Final Decision

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

1. After Calling for Talent...RSU Tax Benefits Cut in the End

- Key Summary: It was confirmed on the 28th that the government decided not to include RSU tax benefits in this year's tax law amendment. RSUs are a compensation system that shares corporate stock price gains with employees, widely adopted by global companies such as Google and Microsoft (MS) as a means of retaining key talent. Although a legal basis was established through the 2024 revision of the Venture Business Act, the system has failed to spread on the ground at startups and venture firms because, unlike existing stock options, it offers no tax support such as tax exemption or installment payment. The Ministry of Economy and Finance opposes the introduction, taking the position that "tax support is already in place for stock options," while voices in the business community are growing that bold tax support is needed to attract talent to companies relocating to provincial areas.

2. TSMC's '3.5% Turnover Rate' Secret Is RSU..."Bold Benefits Must Be Given to Provincial Talent"

- Key Summary: Global semiconductor companies such as Nvidia and TSMC are lowering turnover rates to one-third the level of Korean large corporations by leveraging RSUs. As of 2024, Samsung Electronics' annual turnover rate was 10.1%, while Nvidia's was 2.7% and TSMC's was just 3.5%. According to the KDI report, if a Hanwha Aerospace executive had been promised RSUs worth 160 million won, equivalent to 80% of annual salary, in 2021, the payout five years later was estimated to reach approximately 4.6 billion won. Stanford University's 'AI Index 2026' classified Korea as a talent-outflow country in the AI field, and voices in the business community argue that tax support should be introduced first, at least for startups and venture firms, similar to Germany's RSU tax deferral approach.

3. Pioneering the Corporate Security Market...LGU+'s 'Safe AI' Rises

- Key Summary: LG Uplus will launch 'U+ Safe AI,' which combines an AI-dedicated DLP solution with productivity features, in the second half of this year. While existing DLP only blocks the leakage of confidential information through email and USB, this solution detects even the act of inputting text into external LLMs such as ChatGPT and Claude, blocking the transmission of sensitive and personal information in advance. The company completed internal adoption centered on its development department earlier this year and is currently coordinating adoption contracts with multiple firms. The primary target is the financial sector, where banks and securities firms are actively reviewing the solution amid the financial authorities' phased easing of network separation regulations.

4. IT Failures Day and Night, Weekends Too...Solved with AI Agents

- Key Summary: SK AX officially launched 'X-Gentic Wire NPO,' an AI agent-based infrastructure operation service, in April this year, and about 40 companies have currently adopted and are operating it. The service aims to cut response lead time by more than 50% by having AI agents preemptively detect and resolve failures occurring in corporate IT infrastructure. It is designed to distinguish between sections that agents handle alone and sections where humans and agents collaborate, and the company plans to increase the roughly 40 completed agents to about 100. The goal is to expand adoption to finance, gaming, and other sectors to build up references.

5. U.S. Allows Anthropic's 'Mythos 5' for Domestic Companies First

- Key Summary: The U.S. Department of Commerce sent a private letter to Anthropic giving priority approval for use of its top-tier AI model 'Claude Mythos 5' to only about 100 specific companies and institutions within the United States. The measure partially eased regulations limited to domestic companies about two weeks after the Donald Trump administration's export control announcement. Meanwhile, Korean companies including Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and SK Telecom, which had held prior access rights to Mythos predecessors, are expected to be excluded from this approval. Amid criticism that the U.S. administration is arbitrarily controlling access to cutting-edge AI models, Anthropic and the U.S. government are reportedly also discussing the restoration of access rights to 'Fable 5' for general users.

6. Just Working at Kioxia...Hundreds of Employees Become Sudden Millionaires with 10 Billion Won Each

- Key Summary: About 600 employees of Japanese NAND flash maker Kioxia Holdings have come to hold stock valuation gains exceeding 1 billion yen (about 10 billion won) each, thanks to a stock price surge driven by the AI memory boom. The result stems from Bain Capital's 2018 acquisition of Toshiba Memory, when it distributed 7 million stock options not only to management but also to general department-head and section-chief-level employees. Kioxia recorded its year-high of 112,700 yen on the 22nd, with the value of 7 million shares reaching about 790 billion yen. Nikkei described this as "a new landscape of capitalism in the AI era," evaluating that the AI revolution is bringing enormous benefits even to semiconductor component suppliers.