KOSPI Hits 7,200 Then Reverses on U.S. Yields, Oil

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summarization service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six tailored news items for each reader type.

1. Foreign Buyers Return Past AI Peak Fears — Now Blocked by U.S. Treasury Yields

- Summary: The KOSPI closed on the 18th at 6,869.83, down 108.11 points, or 1.55%, failing to reclaim the 7,000 level. After surging as high as 7,216.62 during the session, it gave back all of its gains in a strong-open, weak-close pattern, with an intraday swing of 427.84 points — the widest so far in August. Negative factors had eased, with foreign investors extending net buying for a fifth straight session since the 11th and the won-dollar exchange rate falling to 1,411.8 won, but the U.S. 30-year Treasury yield rose to around 5.32%, holding the market back. Analysts said the 60-day ceasefire between the United States and Iran ended without results, pushing Brent crude to around $91 a barrel and further weakening upward momentum.

2. Amid Confusion Over U.S. Investment, Even Security Turns Turbulent

- Summary: With Seoul and Washington at odds in U.S. investment negotiations, U.S. President Donald Trump, after ordering a reduction in Korea-U.S. combined exercises, criticized South Korea for a second day for staying out of the conflict with Iran. Trump disclosed that he had asked for cooperation on the Iran issue but that President Lee Jae-myung had replied it would be better not to get involved. Trump said he then asked why, in that case, the United States was helping South Korea. The U.S. online outlet Politico reported that dissatisfaction with the investment negotiations was reflected in the order to scale back the drills, and Seoul and Washington are considering converting some of the 14 battalion-level or larger combined field maneuver exercises during Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) into standalone drills. Separately, Secretary Lutnick said last month, on the 9th, that he wanted to bring Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK hynix (000660.KS) to the United States and have them build production facilities, naming the two companies.

3. "Few Companies Can Replace K-Semiconductors — But Watch the Pace of Debt Growth"

- Summary: Moody's set South Korea's real gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast at 3.5% for this year and 2.7% for next year. The forecast, which stood at 1.8% in February this year, rose in succession to 2.5% in May and 3.5% this month, while the average forecast from eight major investment banks also rose to 3.2%, up 0.2 percentage points from a month earlier. Moody's judged that semiconductor strength would continue at least through the middle of next year, as alternatives to South Korea's high-end memory are limited, and it assessed semiconductors, AI data centers and physical AI mega-projects as consistent policy efforts. However, Moody's projected that the ratio of government debt to GDP would rise from 35% in 2019 to 47% this year — a 12 percentage-point increase over seven years — and noted that the pace of the increase warrants monitoring.

4. Nvidia Backs OpenAI Data Center With 149 Trillion Won Guarantee; Jensen Huang Rejects "Circular Financing"

- Summary: Nvidia is providing a residual-value guarantee of up to $105 billion (about 149 trillion won) for OpenAI's long-term leased data center. OpenAI signed a deal on the 17th local time with SB Energy and Nvidia to secure 8 gigawatts (GW) of infrastructure at the Ports Pike campus in Pike County, Ohio, under a structure in which SB Energy builds the data centers and OpenAI leases them for 20 years. The guarantee is far smaller than the initial estimate of $250 billion, but it applies to the first 4.25 GW, leaving open the possibility of additional support for the remaining 3.75 GW project. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang rejected the idea of circular financing, saying OpenAI pays rent. By contrast, DoubleLine Capital CEO Jeffrey Gundlach said AI chips with uncertain lifespans cannot be used as collateral for long-term debt.

5. Upstage, SKT and LG (003550.KS) in Three-Way Race; "AI Used in the Field" Decided the Outcome

- Summary: The competition over independent AI foundation models has narrowed to a three-way race among Upstage, SK Telecom (017670.KS) and the LG AI Research. The Ministry of Science and ICT announced the results of the second-stage evaluation on the 18th and reported the elimination of Motif Technologies; in the user evaluation, worth 25 points, the gap between first and fourth place was 5 points, the widest of any category. Motif received the highest score among the elite teams on Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index (AAII) but was rated poorly on usability and applicability. The ministry also said it was discussing a plan to fully overhaul its support approach, moving away from selecting only a small number of winners, and two teams are expected to be chosen as early as the end of this year after a third evaluation.

6. LG Electronics (066570.KS) and Nvidia Join Hands on "12 Years' Worth of Robot Data"

- Summary: Ryu Jae-cheol, CEO of LG Electronics, met with Madison Huang, senior director of Nvidia's Omniverse and Robotics, and agreed to secure more than 100,000 hours of robot learning data within the year. That is equivalent to about 12 years' worth of data for a single robot accumulating data without pause, achieved by combining Nvidia's physical AI technology with the data factory LG Electronics is building. The data factory is being built as a robot training center spanning one basement level and three above-ground floors, with a total floor area of 10,000 square meters, and hundreds of robots — including the humanoid LG CLOi — will be deployed within the year. Four days after LG Group Chairman Kwang-mo Koo and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on developing a next-generation bipedal humanoid on the 13th, senior officials from the two companies met again, giving the cooperation added momentum.