Sendbird Unveils 'AI Employee' Handling Refunds and Reservations

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an 'artificial intelligence (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. Sendbird CEO Kim Dong-shin: "AI Agent Steward Handles Even Refunds"

- Key Summary: AI communications company Sendbird has unveiled 'AI Agent Steward,' which handles complex customer inquiries by distributing them across multiple sub-agents. While existing chatbots were limited to simple lookups, the new service has AI directly perform tasks such as refunds, flight rebookings, and hotel stay extensions. Sendbird CEO Kim Dong-shin said that proof-of-concept (PoC) results showed the AI agent's voice response speed was under one second, similar to a human, and its accuracy was 15% higher than competitors. Sendbird started in 2013 as a parenting information community, then transitioned into an AI company and became the first Korean startup based in Silicon Valley to surpass $1 billion in corporate value as a unicorn.

2. [Exclusive] Musinsa Advances into Southern China…5th Store in Shenzhen in September

- Key Summary: Musinsa will open a Musinsa Standard offline store in Shenzhen, China, this September, expanding its presence to southern China. Musinsa opened four new stores in China in the first half alone, starting with its first store in Shanghai this January, and plans to open 15 stores in Taiwan over the next five years. As a result, second-quarter transaction volume at Musinsa Standard's China stores grew more than threefold from the first quarter, and transaction volume within Tmall also rose 27%. Meanwhile, domestically, sales to foreign tourists increased 67% year-on-year, and the monthly transaction volume of Musinsa Global Store in June reached a record high of 21 billion won.

3. Seoul Public Delivery 'Ttaenggyeoyo' First-Half Sales Surge 2.5-Fold

- Key Summary: First-half sales this year of Seoul's public delivery service 'Seoul Delivery+Ttaenggyeoyo' increased about 2.5-fold to 81.9 billion won from 32.6 billion won in the same period last year. As of the end of June, cumulative affiliated merchants totaled 62,000 and members reached 2.84 million, up 29.2% and 53.5%, respectively. The Seoul city government cited its policy of maintaining brokerage fees at around 2% and not charging advertising costs as a major growth factor, with the fee savings for small business owners through this estimated at about 16.3 billion won. In addition, Seoul has created a 40 billion won 'Seoul Delivery Win-Win Fund' with Shinhan Bank to provide affiliated merchants with low-interest loans of up to 100 million won.

4. Four Years of Submarine Ultra-High-Voltage Cables Sold Out…Substation Transformers Ordered Five Years Ahead

- Key Summary: A surge in electricity demand driven by AI data centers is deepening the supply shortage of power grid equipment such as transformers. According to Wood Mackenzie, from 2019 to 2025, U.S. demand for generator step-up transformers rose 274% and demand for substation power transformers rose 116%, while the lead time for step-up transformers exceeded 160 weeks (about three years and one month) as of the first quarter of this year. Submarine ultra-high-voltage cable producers such as Prysmian, Nexans, and NKT have orders fully booked through as late as 2029, and transformer costs next year are expected to rise by up to 10% depending on specifications. Wood Mackenzie forecast that U.S. data center power capacity will grow from about 24 gigawatts (GW) currently to 110 GW by 2030.

5. Chinese Humanoid Performs Surgery, Removes Pig's Gallbladder in 30 Minutes

- Key Summary: A research team at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) remotely operated a surgical robot called 'Surge,' based on Chinese company Unitree's humanoid robot 'G1,' to successfully perform a laparoscopic cholecystectomy on a live pig. The research team explained it was the world's first case of completing biological surgery with a general-purpose humanoid robot, and the surgery time was shortened from 56 minutes for the first to 32 minutes for the second. The robot 'Surge' is 150 cm tall and weighs 27 kg, making it lighter and easier to install than existing specialized surgical robots that weigh over 800 kg. However, surgeons who participated in the research pointed out that the robot has limitations in range of motion and force output and requires frequent recalibration.

6. Specify Automatic Material Removal Rights…Prepare for Subcontractor Bankruptcy

- Key Summary: Prime contractors in heavy industries such as shipbuilding use the 'supplied materials' method, in which they directly purchase core materials such as steel and provide them to subcontractors for quality control and cost reduction. Korean law strictly prohibits 'self-help,' the realization of rights by private force without public authority procedures, and if supplied materials are located within a subcontractor's factory site, legal possession is recognized as belonging to the subcontractor. Accordingly, advice was offered that supplied materials should bear a nameplate indicating ownership by the prime contractor, and that contracts should specify automatic removal rights in the event of bankruptcy. It was also explained that when signs of bankruptcy such as wage arrears or power and water cutoffs at a subcontractor are detected, a consent form for delivery and access, attached with a certificate of seal from the CEO, should be secured in advance.