A new WEF report projects middle-income economies will drive global GDP growth through 2030, highlighting key sectors and policy barriers.

South Korea restructures its regulatory committee to a presidential body and introduces Mega Special Zones to ease rules for key industries.

South Korean AI startup Upstage raises KRW 180 billion (US$ 120.8 million) in Series C funding, reaching a KRW 1 trillion valuation.

SoftBank, NTT DATA, and Fujitsu launch the xIPF Consortium to develop a decentralized AI computing platform for cross-industry data integration.

South Korean fashion platform Musinsa's 2026 Tokyo pop-up store drew 10,000 visitors in three days, featuring 80 brands and an O4O retail strategy.

Coupang announces $84M in AI tech investments since 2023 and a new partnership with Texas robotics startup Contoro for logistics automation.

Sony Ventures completes the first closing of Sony Innovation Fund 4, targeting over JPY 20 billion to invest in tech startups globally.

Naver Corp. links MYPlace location reviews with its Clip platform and restructures the app to a three-tab interface for enhanced content discovery.

JR East implements AI-based passenger detection on Sagami Line to enhance safety for driver-only operations. Full fleet deployment expected by FY2026.

SoftBank, NEC, Honda, and Sony formed a joint venture to build a 1-trillion parameter AI model and next-generation physical AI in Japan.

Rebellions, SK Telecom, and Arm partner to develop AI inference servers combining Arm AGI CPUs and RebelCard accelerators for sovereign AI.

Hyundai Motor debuts its all-electric IONIQ brand in China, unveiling the VENUS sedan and EARTH SUV concepts ahead of Auto China 2026.

South Korean app Daangn (Karrot) launched an AI voice-to-text review feature for local businesses, reporting a 43% return usage rate in beta.

SK hynix has started supplying its first 321-layer QLC NAND client SSDs (PQC21) in 1TB and 2TB capacities to Dell Technologies for AI PCs.

South Korea's MSS announced the Next-generation Unicorn Fund, providing KRW 60 billion (US$ 40.5M) per tech company via VC, FoF, and KIBO.

The Bank of Korea reports South Korea's total economy net lending reached KRW 158.2 trillion (US$ 109.6B) in 2025, with household assets rising.

South Korean firm Soombit AI receives Class 3 MFDS approval for AIRead-CXR, a generative AI tool that drafts preliminary chest X-ray reports.

S.Korea's Krafton launches AI brand Raon, releasing four open-source models on Hugging Face including a 9B parameter voice-enabled LLM.

S. Korea's MSS launches the 2026 Investment-linked GMEP, providing 20 AI startups with 80M won, US PoC testing, and venture capital matching.

South Korean AI infrastructure firm Rebellions secures $400M in pre-IPO funding to scale its Rebel100 NPU and expand into the US market.

SoftBank's Large Telecom Model (LTM) ranks third among 84 models in the GSMA Open-Telco LLM Benchmarks, utilizing a specialized telecom AI training framework.

Delivery Hero reports renewed growth for its South Korean unit Baemin in FY 2025 following an 18-month restructuring. Subscriptions now hit 50% of orders.

AMD signs MOUs with Samsung for HBM4 memory and Naver for HyperCLOVA X infrastructure, advancing next-generation AI computing development.

South Korea’s MSIT and FSC launch a KRW 50 trillion (US$33.3B) National Growth Fund to develop domestic AI semiconductors, investing heavily in NPUs.

Rakuten launches Rakuten AI 3.0, a 700-billion parameter MoE model developed under Japan's GENIAC project, available via Apache 2.0.

Hyundai Motor and Kia expand strategic partnership with Nvidia to develop and deploy Level 2 to Level 4 autonomous driving technology and robotaxis.

SoftBank builds a synthetic data generation platform using Nvidia NeMo Safe Synthesizer to securely train its Large Telecom Model (LTM).

Kakao Mobility begins operating a late-night autonomous vehicle service in Seoul's Gangnam district using its proprietary AI driving technology.

LY Corporation begins programmatic ad distribution on the updated LINE Home Tab, reaching 100 million monthly active users with in-feed ads.

Uber and Motional launch an IONIQ 5 robotaxi ride-hailing service in Las Vegas. The SAE Level 4 vehicles currently operate with a safety driver.

SBVA commits €30 million to AMI, a World Model AI lab founded by Yann LeCun. Investors include NVIDIA, Jeff Bezos, and Eric Schmidt.

Busan Mayor Park and Startup Genome CEO JF Gauthier partner to develop the city's startup ecosystem and support U.S. market entry.

Naver D2SF invests in physical AI startups Khameleon and Anyware Robotics, targeting hotel housekeeping and logistics automation sectors.

SK hynix develops a 16Gb LPDDR6 DRAM using 1c 10nm-class technology, offering 10.7 Gbps speeds and 20% lower power for on-device AI mobiles.

Naver and South Korea's MOIS launch the 'AI National Secretary' app feature, using HyperCLOVA X to issue certificates and book facilities.

LY Corporation introduces 'AI Pickup' for the Yahoo! JAPAN app, using generative AI to extract event schedules from X for 17,000 topics.

South Korean retail tech firm Kurly reports its first annual operating profit of KRW 13.1B for 2025, with record revenue of KRW 2.36T and GMV of KRW 3.53T.

Hyundai Motor Group launches the MobED Alliance at AW2026 with 15 industry partners to commercialize its mobile robot platform in South Korea.

Rakuten and Rakuten Payment introduce a new ID-POS postal sampling service using offline purchase data to drive brand switching and marketing ROI.

LY Corp updates Yahoo! Search Odekake AI Assistant with three new features for personalized restaurant picks and local food discovery in Japan.

LY Corporation expands Yahoo! Search’s generative AI shopping assistant to 276 categories, adding food, cosmetics, and furniture for AI-driven product discovery.

Musinsa Standard expands its Chinese retail footprint with a new 660sqm store in Shanghai's Nanjing East Road, featuring a 7m kinetic media wall.

SoftBank open-sources AITRAS Dynamic Scoring Framework to optimize multi-cluster AI-RAN resources. Partnership with Red Hat showcased at MWC Barcelona 2026.

CJ Logistics launches a 20,000 sqm Saudi GDC in Riyadh with 20,000 box daily capacity, utilizing AGV and GTP technology for Middle East fulfillment.

Tokyo Vice Governor Miyasaka unveils SusHi Tech Tokyo 2026 plans, featuring 700 exhibitors, Level 4 autonomous driving, and AI-driven urban resilience.

SoftBank and Ampere start joint verification to run SLM and MoE AI models on CPUs, reducing power and increasing efficiency for AI agents.

Rakuten Drone debuts an AI-powered drone inspection service for building facades, reducing analysis time by 48% with costs starting at 150 JPY/sqm.

LINE Pay Taiwan reports 7.15B TWD revenue and 13.6M users. New strategy includes AI-driven merchant tools, AR features, and international expansion.

South Korea confirms a former engineer exploited authentication flaws at Coupang, leaking 33.6M emails and accessing 148M delivery records.