Category: K-Now

Nvidia runs a certification framework called "DSX Ready" that vets AI data center components — everything from compute and cooling to power and software — under a single standard. For cooling distribution units (CDUs), only large-capacity systems above 2.3 megawatts qualify for review. LG Electronics announced on September 22 that its 2.5-megawatt CDU cleared that bar and received formal approval. The unit is designed to cool multiple server racks as a single group; as AI server racks have grown to around 120 kilowatts each, a cluster of roughly 20 racks now generates heat loads around 2.5 megawatts, which the industry treats as the benchmark for large-scale cooling.

LG Electronics had already secured the same certification for 600-kilowatt and 1-megawatt units in July and earlier this month, respectively. With this latest approval, the company now has a complete CDU lineup spanning small, medium and large capacities. Combined with its chillers for bulk chilled-water production, server-room air conditioning units, and cold plates that cool chips directly, LG says it now covers the full spectrum of thermal management for AI chips.

On the same day, affiliate LG Energy Solution received DSX Ready certification in the battery energy storage system (BESS) category. Only three companies worldwide have passed this certification, and LG Energy Solution is the only Korean battery maker among them. The certified product, the lithium iron phosphate-based "JF2 AC Link," adjusts charging and discharging to match sudden swings in AI servers' power draw and keeps supply stable even when grid voltage fluctuates sharply.

Market researchers expect liquid cooling adoption in AI data centers to climb from about 14% in 2024 to nearly 60% by 2027, making both cooling and power storage central to AI infrastructure buildouts. LG Energy Solution currently operates five ESS production sites in North America and plans to expand its regional capacity to more than 50 gigawatt-hours by the end of the year.

According to trade data the Korea Customs Service released Sept. 21, the country's exports for Sept. 1-20 jumped sharply from a year earlier, marking the strongest total ever recorded for that 20-day window. The gain looks even more striking given there was one fewer working day this year than last.

Semiconductors were the clear driver. Chip exports nearly tripled from a year earlier, setting a new record for the period, and semiconductors' share of total exports jumped to nearly half. Petroleum products, passenger cars, ships and computer peripherals also grew, but nowhere near as fast as chips.

By destination, Taiwan posted the steepest growth rate. Exports to the U.S. and China roughly doubled, while Vietnam and the EU also posted solid gains, with most of Korea's top trading partners turning in strong numbers across the board. China, the U.S. and Vietnam alone accounted for more than half of total exports.

Imports rose too, but at a slower pace than exports, pushing the trade balance to the largest surplus on record for the period. On the import side, semiconductors, chipmaking equipment and crude oil all climbed sharply, while petroleum product imports fell — a split trend. Imports from China, Japan and the U.S. all increased.

An academic exchange event normally held in Sweden each December, timed to the Nobel Prize ceremony, made a special international stop in Seoul this time. Korea has hosted the event twice before, and this third edition once again brought the Korean public face to face with world-renowned scholars.

The lineup of three laureates on stage stood out. They included a Princeton University chemist honored for developing new catalytic reactions, an astrophysicist from the Australian National University recognized for observational proof of the universe's expansion, and a professor at a Massachusetts medical school honored for uncovering the mechanisms that regulate gene expression. Sixteen experts from science, the arts, and philosophy joined them as speakers and panelists.

Samsung Electronics used the event to once again lay out its AI-centered business overhaul in public. According to the company, the gathering went beyond simply bolting AI features onto individual products like smartphones or TVs — it was meant to share a broader vision of AI supporting a consumer's entire day.

Alongside Noh Tae-moon, who heads the Device eXperience (DX) division as CEO, the event drew a lineup of top division executives: Lee Won-jin, president of the Visual Display business; Yoon Jang-hyun, the chief technology officer shaping the company's tech strategy; and Choi Won-joon, chief operating officer overseeing the mobile business. That an executive lineup of this caliber turned out to engage directly with overseas developers signals how much weight Samsung is placing on this shift.

The vision underpinning the event was first previewed at the world's largest consumer electronics show earlier this year. Rather than competing device by device, Samsung is aiming for AI that follows users and assists them wherever they are — at home, in the office, or on the move. In his keynote, CTO Yoon Jang-hyun walked through how that vision could evolve further when combined with robotics.

Noh said in his remarks that AI has become an unavoidable trend, and that Samsung's goal is to build personalized, intelligent experiences for consumers in every space they occupy. He added that Samsung aims to be a company that leads this transition. Samsung said it plans to keep engaging with overseas tech talent through similar events going forward.

The AI industry's newest buzzword is "continual learning" — an approach that blurs the once-clear line between training and inference. Traditional generative AI learns everything upfront, then just recalls it when answering. Continual-learning models keep absorbing new information even while actively serving users — industry insiders compare it to a student cramming new material mid-exam.

That shift is rewriting memory chip demand. Citigroup expects the trend, once it takes hold, to push high-bandwidth memory (HBM) demand well beyond today's levels: bit demand next year could run roughly 1.6 times this year's, nearly tripling to 2.8x by 2028. Citi argues that even amid memory-spec adjustments and lingering AI-safety concerns, this shift is the key reason supply shortages could persist for years.

The catch is that no single memory type can handle it alone. Models need to both ingest fresh data and repeatedly tap into vast stores of existing knowledge — and stashing everything in pricey HBM isn't realistic. That's expanding the role of server DRAM and NAND-based storage, and raising the stakes for tech that computes directly inside memory chips.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix both debuted new technology to address this at a US AI infrastructure event. Samsung showed off "zHBM," a stacked design that places memory directly atop accelerator chips to shrink data-travel distance, targeting roughly 10x faster response times. SK hynix showcased PIM (processing-in-memory) tech, along with SALT-KV — which sorts data into different storage tiers by type — and a high-bandwidth flash architecture concept.

Markets are already pricing this in. Shares of both companies jumped after Nvidia's CEO said next year's chip sales could double this year's. Meanwhile, Korean markets have seen a wave of new ETFs tracking US memory makers and HBM-linked stocks. WTO data shows AI-related goods trade climbing 42% year-over-year in Q1 — far outpacing other categories — adding fuel to the bullish demand outlook.

The contest's full name is the Adventurous and Challenging AI Startup Investment Discovery Competition. South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) put it together, with the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association (KTOA) — whose members include the country's three major mobile carriers — running the show day to day. Rather than leaning on revenue or funding track records, judges weigh how solid the technology is, how original the business model is, and how much room a company has to grow.

Now in its second year, the competition had a breakout run: applicants jumped from 91 last year to 268, pushing the odds of making the finals past 33-to-1. The surge in interest was enough for organizers to upgrade the top prize to a Deputy Prime Minister and Minister's Award.

Eight finalists who cleared the preliminary round faced off on September 17 at Texfair Hall inside Seoul's Textile Center. SteelCut, with its deepfake prevention and detection tech, took the top spot. Quantum Hitech, which built an AI platform that estimates a battery's remaining lifespan without taking it apart, placed second, and autonomous-driving software maker Motif Drive placed third. Five more teams picked up honorable mentions: voice-phishing detection service MetaCloud, manufacturing-floor AI infrastructure builder AllInCarbon, image-and-video generation platform Ziro, fintech-for-foreigners startup CrossHub, and construction-automation firm PlanBy Technologies.

Beyond the trophies, all eight finalists get a shot at funding through a pool backed by the mobile carriers. Organizers also announced a new fund aimed at early-stage companies, with priority going to startups under three years old and this year's winners. The top three teams get extra perks too: dedicated office space and a spot at overseas investor pitch events.

SK Hynix's new wage and collective bargaining agreement has cleared a member vote, effectively wrapping up this year's negotiations. After the first tentative deal stalled at the ballot box on August 25, management and the union spent roughly two weeks back at the table before unveiling a revised proposal on September 9. That proposal went to a two-day member-wide vote on September 15 and 16, and it passed comfortably, with more than half the vote.

The final tally showed 8,731 votes in favor, or 57.08% of the total, against 6,566 opposed. Of the 16,039 eligible voters, 15,297 cast ballots, for a turnout above 95%. In the late-August vote on the original deal, production workers split 7,510 to 7,535, sinking the agreement by just 25 votes, while office and technical staff approved the same deal with more than 66% in favor — exposing a sharp divide between job categories.

At the heart of the revised deal is a change to how profit-sharing bonuses, known as PS, get paid out. The original proposal split payouts 40% cash and 60% stock; the revision moves that to an even 50-50 split. On top of that, workers can now convert their cash portion into stock in 10-percentage-point increments, meaning anyone who wants their entire bonus in stock can now choose that option. The two sides also agreed to pay out, all at once, the deferred bonus tied to last year's earnings that was originally set to be split across payouts next year and the year after — easing any cash-flow strain the payment-structure changes might have caused members.

Ahead of the revote, management held more than 60 briefing sessions to explain the changes. The company said it was grateful to the union and employees for working through a difficult negotiation. The two sides plan to hold a formal signing ceremony before the Chuseok holiday to close out this year's labor talks, and the approval means they'll wrap up without any formal labor action.

Euclid, the company Samsung just backed, is drawing attention for trying to break away from the GPU-centric architecture that has defined the AI chip market. Unlike existing AI accelerators, it's redesigning not just the processor that handles computation but also the memory architecture that stores and moves data — a different approach from the ground up, industry watchers say. Still, it's early days: the product hasn't launched and hasn't been tested at commercial scale.

Industry observers read Samsung's participation as a bet on the next generation of AI accelerators. As major tech companies — Google, Meta, Microsoft among them — build their own chips to cut reliance on any single GPU maker, partnering with a startup pursuing a different chip architecture gives Samsung a foothold that could translate into future memory supply deals or foundry contracts.

This isn't Samsung's first move like this. The company has previously put money into another Dutch edge-AI chipmaker. That company's chips are manufactured using Samsung Foundry's advanced process nodes, and Samsung's venture arm returned as an existing investor in that startup's latest funding round as well.

Samsung's European AI bets extend beyond chip startups. It has also struck a strategic partnership with a major French AI startup to jointly build AI models specialized for chip design and manufacturing, broadening its investments across both hardware and software.

Walk through the new space and it feels like touring an actual home, with each room styled for a different purpose. Ovens, range hoods and refrigerators come from LG's built-in lineup tailored to local tastes, paired with furniture from a lifestyle-brand partnership to round out the look. The idea is to let visitors see, not just hear about, a future-ready home where AI quietly learns residents' habits and adjusts conditions on its own.

At the center of it all sits LG's AI Home Hub. Powered by generative AI, it lets you control the house by voice alone — no app-tapping required — and it links up with a smart home hub made by a Dutch company to pull together a wide range of IoT devices used across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. LG also brought in a global energy management firm and a global security company to show off a turnkey solution that manages appliances, heating and cooling, power and security all in one place.

Behind the push is fast-growing local demand. Research firms have tracked Saudi Arabia's smart home market climbing sharply in recent years, with roughly 27% annual growth expected to continue through 2030. As smart buildings and luxury residential developments multiply across the kingdom, LG is using the new showroom as a launchpad to court local construction firms, real estate developers and hotel operators.

LG says Saudi Arabia's location — a natural bridge between the Middle East and Africa — makes it a strategic regional hub, and the company plans to open similar touchpoints in other major cities, including Jeddah and Dammam, before the year is out. Back home, LG has partnered with major construction firms to roll out its solutions in more than 1 million apartment units; in North America it runs a dedicated brand for building managers, and in Europe it leans on an open smart home platform for energy management — each region getting its own playbook.

LG Electronics said Sept. 13 that it's once again the official TV and appliance partner of the Emmy Awards, widely considered the top honor in American broadcasting. The company is extending its partnership with the Television Academy for another year, and this time it's expanding the deal beyond TVs to cover home appliances too.

This year's ceremony takes place Sept. 14 at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. Near the venue, LG is setting up a Signature influencer lounge stocked with its latest lineup, including the OLED evo AI TV, along with Signature appliances like the Essence White refrigerator and the Styler.

The company plans to produce behind-the-scenes footage of actors and creators visiting the lounge. On top of that, its webOS smart TV platform and free ad-supported channel service, LG Channels, will feature a dedicated banner highlighting past winners and this year's nominees.

Kwak Do-young, LG's North America regional president, said the goal is to use the picture quality of its OLED technology and its Signature appliances to deliver an elevated living experience to consumers around the world. First held in 1949, the Emmy Awards mark their 78th edition this year as the leading showcase for achievement in American TV and drama.