{"id":5086,"date":"2026-05-06T07:48:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T07:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/5086\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T07:48:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T07:48:00","slug":"sk-groups-75-billion-ai-gamble-upstage-acquires-daum-as-koreas-ai-industry-enters-a-major-power-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/5086\/","title":{"rendered":"SK Group\u2019s $75 Billion AI Gamble: Upstage Acquires Daum as Korea\u2019s AI Industry Enters a Major Power Shift"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As global competition for AI dominance intensifies in the opening of 2026, Korea\u2019s leading AI companies are also in motion. SK Group has decided on an astronomical investment of more than \u20a9100 trillion, staking the group\u2019s future, while AI startup Upstage has brought major portal Daum under its wing. NCSoft, meanwhile, has replaced the head of its AI organization.<\/p>\n

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SK: \u201cQualitative Growth\u201d\u2026 \u20a9103 Trillion in Ammunition Loaded<\/p>\n

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At a recently held \u201cManagement Strategy Meeting,\u201d SK Group finalized an aggressive blueprint to invest a total of \u20a9103 trillion through 2028. The key point is that nearly 80% of that\u2014about \u20a982 trillion\u2014will be concentrated on building an \u201cAI value chain,\u201d spanning HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), AI data centers, and personal AI assistants (PAA), among other areas.<\/p>\n

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Chairman Chey Tae-won emphasized during the meeting, \u201cWhat we need is qualitative growth through AI, not simply getting bigger.\u201d To that end, SK also unveiled a hardline financial strategy: integrating capabilities that are currently scattered across its affiliates and securing \u20a980 trillion in funding internally through operational improvement (O\/I). This reflects SK\u2019s determination to build fundamental resilience that won\u2019t be shaken by semiconductor market cycles\u2014while never letting go of the initiative in the AI infrastructure market.<\/p>\n

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\u2018Upstage\u2019 Takes Daum\u2026 \u201cThe Shift in Search Power Begins\u201d<\/p>\n

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In the platform industry, an upset unfolded\u2014one described as \u201cDavid swallowing Goliath.\u201d Upstage, one of Korea\u2019s leading AI technology startups, pulled off a mega-deal to acquire Daum, Kakao\u2019s portal service.<\/p>\n

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This acquisition signals Upstage\u2019s ambition to expand beyond the B2B (business-to-business) market and into a B2C (business-to-consumer) platform\u2014building on the global recognition it has earned for its in-house large language model (LLM), Solar. Industry experts predict that if Daum\u2019s massive database\u2014long burdened by declining market share\u2014combines with Upstage\u2019s generative AI technology, a formidable \u201ccatfish\u201d could emerge in the search market dominated by Naver and Google. This is being read as more than a corporate acquisition: it is also a flare announcing a paradigm shift from traditional keyword search to \u201cAI conversational search.\u201d<\/p>\n

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NCSoft Makes a Leadership-Change Play\u2026 \u201cSecuring Practical Gains for Game-Production AI\u201d<\/p>\n

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NCSoft has abruptly replaced the leadership of its AI organization, NCAI, declaring a pragmatic direction. The company is restructuring its organization so AI can be deployed immediately into the game development pipeline, and\u2014centered around a new head\u2014will accelerate commercialization of its VARCO model.<\/p>\n

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This marks a departure from a previously academic, R&D-centered approach, and instead signals a \u201cvertical AI\u201d strategy aimed at cutting costs and boosting productivity in real production environments\u2014game art, scenarios, programming, and more. Observers interpret this decision by CEO Kim Taek-jin as reflecting a sense of crisis amid the industry downturn: that \u201ctechnology that can\u2019t make money is meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This article was translated from the original that appeared on INVEN.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As global competition for AI dominance intensifies in the opening of 2026, Korea\u2019s leading AI companies are also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[392,389,383,385,384,394,393,397,154,395,396,388,398,313,241,240,386,390,391,387,399],"class_list":{"0":"post-5086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sk","8":"tag-discussions","9":"tag-entertainments","10":"tag-esports","11":"tag-guides","12":"tag-interview","13":"tag-league-of-legends","14":"tag-lol","15":"tag-mobile","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-overwatch","18":"tag-pc","19":"tag-previews","20":"tag-ps4","21":"tag-reviews","22":"tag-sk","23":"tag-sk-group","24":"tag-strategies","25":"tag-trailers","26":"tag-videos","27":"tag-walkthroughs","28":"tag-xbox-one"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}