Payments using facial recognition are growing in South Korea as the tech improves; Viva Republica has scaled its fintech app Toss' Facepay service to 1M+ users
SEOUL — Payments using facial recognition are becoming more widespread in cashless South Korea, as artificial intelligence and 3D photography increase accuracy.
South Korea, the EU, the UK, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and others aim to build “sovereign AI”; Gartner expects $1.5T in AI spending in 2025, up 50% from 2024
Jiyoung Sohn / Wall Street Journal :
An investor group and AI developer Voltai plan to use AI to design, build, and run a 3GW data center in South Korea, set to cost up to $35B and open in 2028
Jiyoung Sohn / Wall Street Journal :
Oxford Economics: the AI boom is lifting global trade, with ~60% of US data center capex spent on imported IT gear, mainly from Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam
Akash Sriram / Reuters :
US military has adopted an aggressive push to embrace AI; the top US Army commander in South Korea says “Chat and I” have become “really close lately”
- Some military leaders are adopting AI for decision-making. — The military has adopted an aggressive push …
Shares of ISU Petasys, a South Korea-based multi-layer PCB supplier for AI servers used by Alphabet, Nvidia, Microsoft, and others, are up 215% so far this year
Based in Daegu, a city in southeastern South Korea, ISU Petasys makes multi-layer printed circuit boards that hold chips and other components for AI servers.
SEMI: US chip fab investment to outpace China, Taiwan, and South Korea from 2027, driven by AI demand and US policies, rising from $21B in 2025 to $43B in 2028
Nikkei Asia : X: @drikramulhaq and @charlesmok . Threads: @charlespmok X: Dr. Ikramul Haq / @drikramulhaq : U.S. semiconductor investment is set to outpace that of major chip economies China, Taiwan ...
Chinese silicon wafer manufacturers like Eswin have rapidly gained market share by undercutting the prices of global leaders from Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea
Nikkei Asia :
SoftBank's shares plunged up to 9.2% on August 20, as tech stocks in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong fell after US tech stocks dropped overnight
Link: fortune.com/2025/08/18/m... Nash / @radiodeadair.com : This is the part where they're going to pretend every single one of us who were correct about “AI” for the past few years actually wasn't, ...
OpenAI sets up a legal entity in South Korea and plans a Seoul office, its third in Asia, and says the country has the most paying ChatGPT users outside the US
OpenAI has established a legal entity in South Korea, seeking to propel further adoption of its artificial intelligence technologies.