LG Offers Free AI Education to 33,000 People Annually, Expanding Talent Pipeline

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

1. LG EXAONE Goes to the Classroom: Free AI Education for 33,000 People Annually

Key Summary: LG Group established LG Discovery Lab, an experiential AI education institution, in Busan in 2021 and in Magok, Seoul, in 2022, providing fully free education to more than 33,000 middle and high school students annually. Affiliate technologies and personnel are directly deployed in the education, including LG Electronics' CLOi GuideBot (robot intelligence), LG CNS' machine learning and deep learning platform (data intelligence), and LG AI Research's EXAONE (language intelligence and AI Human). For young people, LG also operates LG Aimers, an AI hackathon program, and LG AI Graduate School, an in-house master's and doctoral program accredited by the Ministry of Education. As a company-led systematic AI talent pipeline gets underway, AI education records and practical project experience are emerging as key variables that determine employment competitiveness.

2. Gyeongnam Targets 'World's No. 1 in AI Manufacturing': A 21 Trillion Won Gamble

Key Summary: Gyeongnam Province announced it will invest a total of 21.0164 trillion won by 2035 to build a global No. 1 ecosystem in physical AI (AI combined with robots and machinery). Based on manufacturing infrastructure that concentrates 3,014 smart factories—the second-largest number in the country—and strategic industries such as shipbuilding, defense, aerospace, and machinery, the province will sequentially pursue AI foundation model development (1.2496 trillion won), the creation of a manufacturing AI and robotics valley (2.1176 trillion won), and the construction of six or more AI data centers. As a talent development plan, the province will jointly form a system with universities, research institutions, and companies to produce 3,000 AI convergence talents annually, including 500 top-tier research personnel and 2,500 practical personnel on industrial sites. With goals presented to cultivate 200 physical AI validation companies, 500 AI factories, and 1,000 AI solution companies, this creates a structure in which practical employment demand opens up for job seekers in the region.

3. European Distributors Compete to Court K-Beauty

Key Summary: In the first half of this year, cosmetics exports to Europe surpassed North America for the first time on a half-year basis, and European exports nearly doubled in two years, jumping from $1,091.56 million in 2023 to $2,049.05 million last year. Major European distributors are accelerating strategies to make K-beauty their offline differentiation content, with the UK's John Lewis opening a K-beauty exclusive shop-in-shop and Germany's Douglas running a Beauty of Joseon standalone pop-up. APR (Medicube) has entered around 450 Sephora stores across 17 European countries, and Dalba Global's first-quarter European sales surged 214% year-on-year. As the transition to the K-Beauty 3.0 era accelerates, demand for personnel in global marketing, overseas sales and distribution, and brand planning is expanding as well.

4. Seoul City Launches AI Care Industry Growth System

Key Summary: In response to entering a super-aged society, Seoul City has decided to develop an AI care industry growth system—spanning from R&D to hospital validation and public procurement—as a core task of the G3 Seoul Plan. Seoul's population aged 65 and over rose from 930,000 in 2010 to 1.84 million this year and is expected to reach 2.75 million by 2040, so care demand is projected to continue expanding. Since 2023, a total of 25 R&D and field validation projects worth 6.47 billion won have been supported, including 12 Seoul-type R&D projects (2.8 billion won) and 13 Test Bed Seoul projects (3.67 billion won). Commercialization cases are emerging, such as Hurotics, a walking rehabilitation robot developer, which won a CES Innovation Award on the back of this support. As the AI care and rehabilitation robot field expands its market foundation under public leadership, employment opportunities in the healthcare and welfare technology fields are opening up as well.

5. BMW Carries Out 8,000 Voluntary Retirements in Germany

Key Summary: BMW has agreed with its union to cut 8,000 jobs—about 5% of its total workforce—from October through 2027, with headquarters function departments such as R&D and planning in Germany as the main targets. The result of a combination of factors including a sharp drop in China sales, U.S. tariffs, and high production costs in Europe, the wave of restructuring is intensifying across the German automaker industry, following Volkswagen (pursuing cuts of up to 100,000) and Porsche (reducing 5,000 by 2035). BMW employed 87,436 people in Germany as of the end of last year, already a 2.3% decrease from the previous year. As restructuring in the global automaker industry spreads to R&D and planning positions, job seekers preparing to work at overseas automakers should closely examine changes in the recruitment environment by job function and region.

6. Shinhan Securities Makes Sole Investment in German AI Defense Unicorn

Key Summary: Shinhan Investment & Securities invested about 20 billion won as the only domestic institution in the Series D funding round (totaling $1.2 billion, or about 1.7 trillion won) of Quantum Systems, a German defense deep-tech company. Quantum Systems develops AI-based unmanned systems, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and autonomous operation software, and its corporate value surged eightfold in one year after the investment, reaching about $8 billion. Having completed real-combat validation by performing more than 19,000 missions in Ukraine alone last year, it is expanding its supply chain to Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. As global defense investment flows have shifted from large weapons systems to AI-based autonomous systems and software since the Russia-Ukraine war, overseas defense technology investment by domestic financial firms is emerging as a new area for expansion.