AI Now Runs the Factory: 'Autonomous Plants' Shake Up Manufacturing

*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. 11.67 Million Tons of Process Data Secured Across Steel, Oil Refining, Cement...AI Autonomously Operates Factories

- Key Summary: INEEJI, a participant in the M.AX (Manufacturing AI Transformation) AI Factory Alliance of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, is expanding the application of AI autonomous operation technology by securing a total of 11.67 million tons of process data in continuous process industries such as cement, oil refining, and steel. Its AI autonomous operation solution "Infinite Optimal Series," trained on this data, is evaluated as being at a level comparable to Level 3 autonomous driving in automobiles, as a single agent performs everything from detecting process anomalies to root cause analysis and control value recommendations. Accordingly, the technology has already led to contracts with Japanese steel and cement companies, and its potential to spread to precision manufacturing processes such as semiconductors, secondary batteries, and bio is also being mentioned. Meanwhile, the government said it plans to increase the number of AI factory leading projects through the M.AX Alliance to 200 by 2027 and 500 by 2030.

2. [Exclusive] F&B M&A Heats Up...Frank Burger Up for Sale

- Key Summary: As Frank F&B, the operator of premium handmade burger brand Frank Burger, is put up for sale, the M&A market in the F&B (food and beverage) industry is heating up following Burger King and Mom's Touch. The side of founder and Chairman Sim Woo-chang has selected Samil PwC (032280) as its lead manager and is pursuing a management rights sale of nearly 100% of its shares, with the enterprise value estimated at around 50 billion won. Frank Burger, which started with its first store in Mokdong, Seoul, in 2019, has surpassed 600 stores and recorded 104.4 billion won in revenue in 2023. The market is paying attention to its potential for overseas expansion in light of the overseas advances of Mom's Touch and Burger King Japan. In addition, Korea's burger market, estimated at around 2 trillion won in 2014, is projected to exceed 5 trillion won this year, making it the fastest-growing segment in the restaurant industry over the past decade.

3. Beyond Sales to Installation, Management, Subscriptions...Companies Growing 'Services'

- Key Summary: Home appliance, furniture, and platform companies are cultivating service businesses such as installation, maintenance, and subscriptions as a new growth axis beyond product sales. Kyowon Wells launched "Wells Coating 365," which expanded its mattress-focused home care service to bathrooms, and sales rose 355% in the second month compared to the first month after launch. Bodyfriend's massage chair on-site management service "The Care" saw usage in the first half of this year increase 707% year-on-year. Fursys offers an office furniture subscription service, and Ohou is expanding its "Responsibility Guarantee System" in the construction field to include moving services, as the introduction of service-type models continues. Lee Eun-hee, a professor of consumer science at Inha University, explained that while product sales result in one-time revenue, services can secure both recurring revenue and customer touchpoints at the same time.

4. "Can't Survive on One Well"...Business Territory Expands Infinitely into Distribution and Curation

- Key Summary: As K-beauty expands its export regions beyond Asia and North America to Europe, individual companies are broadening their business areas beyond product sales into distribution, platforms, and curation. Goodai Global acquired distribution specialist Hansung USA in February to launch Goodai Global USA, and established Goodai Global Japan in April, expanding its business into a "global beauty platform" that handles the global distribution of other brands beyond its own. Silicon2 (257720) operates the K-beauty select shop "Moida," strengthening its offline B2C (business-to-consumer) business, and plans to increase the number of stores from 16 at present to up to 40 by the end of the year. Meanwhile, CJ Olive Young (001040) has partnered with Sephora to introduce a "K-Beauty Zone" in Sephora stores starting in the second half, strengthening its role as a curator beyond being a sales channel.

5. 40 Hours of Conversation with a Character in a Month...Moves to Regulate AI Chat Overuse

- Key Summary: As users of AI character chat services rapidly increase and concerns over overuse grow, discussions on introducing regulations are gaining momentum, led by the political sphere. The National Assembly Research Service released a report pointing out the risks of character-based AI chat services such as Zeta, Crack, and Babechat, and according to Mobile Index, Zeta's average monthly usage time per user reaches 40 hours. In response, Rep. Cho In-chul of the Democratic Party of Korea proposed a bill allowing guardians of child and adolescent users to request usage time limits and access to conversation content, and plans to hold a related debate in September. The industry agrees on the need to protect users but takes the position that the system should be designed in a direction that does not hinder industry growth and innovation.

6. DeepSeek Breaks the Weight Class...Surpasses an AI Model Eight Times Its Size

- Key Summary: DeepSeek, a Chinese AI model developer, is drawing attention as its newly unveiled lightweight model surpassed the performance of its own flagship model through post-training alone. DeepSeek unveiled the official version of its new model "DeepSeek V4 Flash" on the 31st of last month, outperforming "V4 Pro Preview"—which has about eight times the number of parameters—with a score of 82.7 on Terminal Bench 2.1, a coding capability evaluation metric. Its price was also found to be significantly lower at $0.28 per million output tokens, compared to Claude Opus 4.8 ($25) or the low-cost GPT-5.6 model "Luna" ($1.2). Meanwhile, as Chinese companies successively release high-performance, low-cost models such as Moonshot AI's "Kimi K3" and Zhipu AI's "GLM-5.2," assessments are emerging that the technology gap with the United States is narrowing.