South Korea’s two largest electronics companies, Samsung Electronics (005930) and LG Electronics (066570), have established CEO-led control towers for their robotics businesses, marking a full-scale push toward commercialization. Both companies recently carried out targeted organizational restructuring to accelerate robotics initiatives that had previously been managed at the subsidiary or R&D division level.<\/p>\n
Samsung Electronics created the “RX (Robotics eXperience) Business Division” reporting directly to Roh Tae-moon, Vice Chairman and head of the Device eXperience (DX) division. The new unit absorbed the existing Future Robotics Task Force and shifted the organization’s focus from R&D to a full-fledged business operation. LG Electronics similarly established a “Robotics Business Center” under CEO Ryu Jae-cheol. With these moves, both companies’ chief executives are now directly steering their robotics strategies.<\/p>\n
Industry observers view the manufacturing data and component production capabilities accumulated by Samsung and LG over decades as their greatest strengths. South Korea boasts one of the world’s highest densities of industrial robots and operates highly sophisticated manufacturing processes in semiconductors, automobiles, and secondary batteries. This creates a favorable environment for a “Manufacturing First” strategy, where real production-line data is used to enhance robot precision and durability.<\/p>\n
Seo Ji-hoon, research fellow at Korea Development Bank’s KDB Future Strategy Research Institute, noted, “South Korea has built an exceptionally advantageous environment for acquiring real manufacturing data, supported by an industrial structure that can simultaneously secure training data, testing environments, and references.”<\/p>\n
Samsung Electronics, through affiliates including Samsung Display, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung SDI, Samsung Heavy Industries, and Samsung E&A, has access to diverse manufacturing environments spanning displays, electronic components, batteries, shipbuilding, and plant engineering. This is expected to enable the company to train robots on a wide range of tasks, from precision electronic assembly to heavy material handling. To strengthen its data capabilities \u2014 a key competitive advantage in robotics \u2014 Samsung plans to build a “data factory” at its Gumi campus. LG Electronics is also constructing a robot training data factory at its R&D campus in Yangjae-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul.<\/p>\n
Both companies are also focusing on internalizing robot component production. LG Electronics plans to design and manufacture actuators \u2014 a critical component accounting for over 40% of robot production costs \u2014 in-house, leveraging more than 60 years of motor technology expertise, and supply them to global robot manufacturers. Samsung Electronics has begun developing dexterous hands, widely considered one of the most challenging hurdles in humanoid robot commercialization. Dexterous hands represent 17-31% of humanoid component costs, reflecting both high technical barriers and significant cost burdens. Kim Eui-kyum, a professor at Ajou University who recently joined Samsung Electronics, is reportedly leading the development of intelligent manipulation technologies.<\/p>\n
However, the two companies’ commercialization strategies show clear differences.<\/p>\n
Samsung Electronics is pursuing a phased approach: first deploying humanoid robots on its own production lines to accumulate data, then evolving them into “high-intelligence, multi-purpose humanoids.” At CES 2026 in January, Roh Tae-moon stated, “Manufacturing is where robots can be most effective while accumulating data and advancing their capabilities. Samsung has diverse manufacturing operations \u2014 home appliances, TVs, mobile devices, networks, and medical equipment \u2014 so we will build our capabilities there before expanding into B2B and B2C markets.” He added, “Home robots are one part of our B2C strategy.”<\/p>\n
In contrast, LG Electronics is pursuing a three-pronged strategy targeting industrial, commercial, and home robotics markets simultaneously. The company is focusing on field testing its home robot “Cloid,” unveiled at CES 2026. At a press briefing during the event, CEO Ryu Jae-cheol said, “Cloid will leave the lab and enter field testing next year, and you’ll be able to see it. Starting next year, we plan to launch our home robot business in earnest, including robot components.” Alongside robotics, Ryu is accelerating LG’s push into the B2B construction market with its AI home hub “ThinQ ON.”<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, competition in South Korea’s robotics industry is intensifying. Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Euisun is investing an additional 120 billion won (approximately $82.1 million) of his personal funds to acquire shares in robotics company Boston Dynamics. After SoftBank exercised its put option on its 9.65% stake, Chairman Chung and Hyundai Motor Group affiliates are moving to acquire those shares, effectively pursuing a path to 100% ownership. Hyundai Motor Group plans to deploy its humanoid robot “Atlas” at Metaplant America starting in 2028, expanding to assembly processes by 2030.<\/p>\n
Park Sun-young, an analyst at Mirae Asset Securities, commented, “The robotics momentum and humanoid competition among South Korea’s major conglomerates are intensifying further. With government-led robotics industry development policies and public-private fund support, related business initiatives are expected to accelerate.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korea’s two largest electronics companies, Samsung Electronics (005930) and LG Electronics (066570), have established CEO-led control towers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[15548,906,51037,43291,28918,51038,4298,293,315,357,314,1223,38155,22234,48910,8106,276],"class_list":["post-98470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lg","tag-actuator","tag-boston-dynamics","tag-chung-euisun","tag-cloid","tag-data-factory","tag-dexterous-hand","tag-humanoid","tag-hyundai-motor-group","tag-lg","tag-lg-electronics","tag-lg-group","tag-physical-ai","tag-robotics-business-center","tag-roh-tae-moon","tag-rx-business-division","tag-ryu-jae-cheol","tag-samsung-electronics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98470","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=98470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}