Kakao Corp., the operator of South Korea's top mobile messenger KakaoTalk, has been plunged into crisis, as its founder and top decision-maker Kim Beom-su was arrested on Tuesday on charges of stock price rigging linked to last year's takeover of K-pop powerhouse SM Entertainment. With a leadership vacuum and a dent to its reputation, concerns are rising over the impact of the disruption on the tech giant’s drive for corporate restructuring and growth in burgeoning technologies i

Samsung Electro-Mechanics, the electronic parts manufacturing affiliate of Samsung Electronics, announced Monday that it would supply high-performance substrates for hyper-scale data centers to AMD, the US chip design firm. According to the company, the flip chip ball grid array (FCBGA) substrate offers larger surface areas and higher layer counts for dense interconnections, which means better operational efficiency and lower energy consumption. The product will be produced at the company’

Samsung Electronics is seen ramping up its merger and acquisition efforts to secure a stronger footing in the rising technology sectors, including artificial intelligence. The South Korean tech giant, leading in mobile devices and semiconductors, announced Thursday its acquisition of Oxford Semantic Technologies, a UK-based startup specializing in knowledge graph technology. It is the first time the company makes such an investment via Samsung Research, its research and development hub. The deal

Following the mass global tech outage linked to Microsoft that disrupted critical public services and grounded planes, 10 companies affected in Korea have restored their operations or are on their way to recovery, said industry officials on Sunday. A faulty update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike was released worldwide to Microsoft's Windows operating systems on Friday, resulting in “blue screen of death” crashes and systems being knocked offline in airports, hospitals and

[코리아헤럴드=조혜림 기자] SK온이 미국 켄터키에 투자한 세계 최대 전기차 배터리 생산공장 양산을 앞두고 앤디 버시어 미국 켄터키 주지사가 방한해 국내 기업들을 상대로 추가 투자 유치에 대한 기대감을 내비쳤다. 그는 15일 코리아헤럴드와의 인터뷰에서 SK온의 58억 달러 투자에 대해 "주 역사상 최대 규모"라며 "관련 협력사들을 중력처럼 끌어들일 것"으로 기대를 내비쳤다. SK온은 포드와 함께 2022년 전기차 배터리 생산 합작 법인인 블루오벌SK를 공식 출범시켰다. 이후 58억 달러를 투자해 총 628만 제곱미터 (190만평) 부지에 켄터키 1·2공장을 짓는다. 두 공장은 미국 단일 부지 내 최대인 80GWh 이상의 생산 규모를 자랑한다. 버시어 주지사는 SK의 대규모 투자 이후 한국 기업들의 켄터키 이전에 대한 관심이 크게 증가했다고 말했다. 그는 "현재 SK와 포드가 어떤 협력사들이 필요한지와 공장에서 얼마나 가까운 위

SK On’s new battery plant in Kentucky – the world’s largest of its kind – will help attract more investments into the US state like “gravity,” Gov. Andy Beshear told The Korea Herald in an interview held in Seoul on Monday. SK On, the battery-making unit of SK Group, has set up a joint venture with US auto giant Ford, called BlueOval SK, in the southeastern state of the US, with a whopping $5.8 billion investment. “SK On’s project is the largest in

Samsung Electronics took part in a $277 million Series D investment for Element Bioscience, a US-based DNA analysis equipment company, to expand its footing in the medical device market, the company said Friday. Element Biosciences, established in 2017 in San Diego, is a life science company that developed the disruptive DNA sequencing and multi-omics technology that boasts the industry's "top level" accuracy for research markets, Samsung said. According to the bioscience firm, th

LG Electronics Chief Executive Officer Cho Joo-wan met with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon on Wednesday to discuss their ongoing collaboration on advanced technology, including on-device artificial intelligence and automotive electronics, according to industry sources. On the second day of his trip to Seoul, Amon met with Cho at the LG Electronics headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul. The two companies have been building a firm partnership over the past years, especially in the fields of audio products a

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday reiterated his full support for Samsung Electronics to secure a bigger footing in the US, upon his visit to the chip giant’s semiconductor manufacturing plant in Korea. Abbott visited Samsung’s semiconductor campus -- the world's largest semiconductor production facility -- in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, as part of his Asian trip that includes South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. He arrived in Korea on Monday. The governor inspected the P1 line, gu

Samsung Electronics announced Tuesday it has bagged the first order for its new turnkey semiconductor solutions using the cutting-edge 2-nanometer foundry process from a leading artificial intelligence company in Japan. Holding the Samsung Foundry Forum and Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem Forum in Seoul, the chip giant also unveiled its foundry strategy for its advanced Gate-All Around transistor architecture to support the local logic chip industry, as well as the latest AI solutions. Having

South Korea's top two conglomerates Samsung Electronics and SK Group are speeding up efforts to secure an early edge in glass substrates, a "game-changer" in chipmaking that could drastically boost the data capacity and speed of semiconductors in the era of artificial intelligence. Their leaders recently visited their respective business sites producing glass substrates, renewing their commitment to the burgeoning area that is highly likely to overcome the limits of conventional p

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won inspected US business operations of chip materials and biopharma affiliates, the group's top decision-making body SK Supex Council said Sunday. Currently, Chey is staying in the US to oversee the group's business operations and meet with business partners. Since the trip started on June 22, he has met with CEOs of global tech giants, including Open AI, Microsoft, Amazon and Intel. Moving to the East Coast over the past weekend, Chey visited the headquarte

SK Square, the investment arm of SK Group, is set to reshape its business portfolio to concentrate on the chip industry and divest "non-core" investments, under a new leader. On Wednesday, the company nominated Han Myung-jin, the head of the company's investment support center and former chief strategy officer of SK Telecom, as its new chief executive officer, to take over from Park Sung-ha who was dismissed a week ago. "The appointments committee in the board of directors no

LG Electronics is acquiring Athom, a smart home platform based in the Netherlands, as part of its effort to strengthen connectivity for its open smart home ecosystem, the company announced Wednesday. The Korean tech giant said it has acquired an 80 percent stake in the Dutch firm and plans to purchase the remaining 20 percent within the next three years, with the condition included in the agreement. “The acquisition of Athom is a cornerstone for our AI home business,” said Jung Ki-hy

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong on Tuesday renewed his commitment to boosting investment in Vietnam, where the company remains the biggest foreign investor, during a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Seoul on Tuesday. In the private meeting, the Samsung chief pledged massive investment to set up the tech giant’s biggest display module production base in the Southeast Asian country over the next three years. "Vietnam's success is Samsung's su

Korean companies should focus on boosting their "still-nascent" lobbying power by spending the time to understand policymakers' needs and by building a strong network regardless of the outcome of the upcoming US presidential election in November, according to legal and trade advisers from Lee & Ko, a prominent law firm in Korea. Companies around the globe are paying keen attention to how US policy directions will diverge depending on who becomes the next US president: the incu

Cyberattacks using generative artificial intelligence, or targeting the weak points of the new technology are on the rise, SK Shieldus, a leading security service company in Korea said on Tuesday. In a media seminar, SK Shieldus and EQST, the company's white-hat hackers group, presented its findings on the rising hacking trends using AI and underscored the importance of raising awareness and taking preventive measures to reduce damage. “Large Language Models are being used actively to

The global memory chip market is picking up on the back of the artificial intelligence boom, with the chip price expected to rise in the second half of this year, according to industry sources on Monday. In the wake of a recovery in demand for server and AI chips, such as High Bandwidth Memory chips, the average sales price of DRAM chips is forecast to increase by 8 to 13 percent in the July-September period when compared to the previous quarter, TrendForce, a Taiwan-based chip market tracker sa

SK hynix, the world's second-largest memory chip-maker by revenue, said Friday it had successfully developed the industry's highest performancesolid state drive chip that can significantly enhance the process speed in on-device artificial intelligence. The product, dubbed PCB01, comes with the capabilities of sequential read and write speeds of 14 gigabyte and 12GB per second, respectively, bringing the performance of an SSD to a level unseen before, SK hynix said. The speeds allow the

Naver Global Investment Officer and founder Lee Hae-jin and Chief Executive Officer Choi Soo-yeon met with Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, to discuss strengthening their partnership in the rising artificial intelligence technology, according to the Korean internet giant Thursday. Naver’s key executives, including Lee, Choi and Naver Cloud CEO Kim Yoo-won met with Huang at Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California on Tuesday. During their meeting, the executives