▲AI PRISM* Customized Economic Briefing
*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an AI-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items tailored to each reader type.
[Key Issue Briefing]
■ Samsung Shakes Up TV Business Leadership: Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) replaced the head of its Visual Display (VD) business unit in a May interim reshuffle, launching a restructuring of the division toward a platform and service-centered business model. Samsung's share of the global TV market has been declining, while Chinese rivals such as TCL and Hisense have been rapidly eating into the market.
■ Data Center DBO Contract Battle: Samsung SDS, Lotte Innovate (286940.KS), LG CNS (064400.KS) and KT Cloud, among other domestic systems integration (SI) companies, are simultaneously expanding into the data center design, build and operate (DBO) business. As AI shifts from training to inference-centered workloads, demand for data centers is surging, and as inexperienced asset managers enter the market, opportunities are opening up for specialized SI firms.
■ Physical AI Investment Emerging: As the stage of AI competition moves from software such as chatbots to real-world spaces including factories and logistics warehouses, "Physical AI" is emerging as the next-generation investment theme. The global Physical AI market is projected to grow rapidly from $1.5 billion this year to $15.2 billion by 2032.
[News of Interest to Startup Founders]
- Key Summary: Samsung Electronics appointed Lee Won-jin, head of the Global Marketing Office, as head of the VD business unit in its May interim reshuffle, launching a fundamental restructuring of its TV business. According to market research firm Omdia, Samsung's global TV market share fell from 18.6% in 2023 to 17.7% last year, while TCL rose from 12.5% to 14.7% and Hisense from 11.4% to 12.7%. Meanwhile, the operating profit of the VD and Digital Appliances (DA) business units, which reached 3.65 trillion won in 2021, turned into a loss of approximately 20 billion won last year. Lee, who previously served as head of Google's North American advertising solutions and as CEO of Google Korea, is a platform expert who successfully established the free streaming service "Samsung TV Plus," and is expected to lead the transition to software-based revenue models such as channel fees and targeted advertising revenue.
2. SI Industry Launches Battle for Data Center DBO Contracts
- Key Summary: Domestic systems integration (SI) companies are driving revenue expansion this year through data center design, build and operate (DBO) projects. LG CNS won contracts exceeding 1 trillion won on the Samsong Data Center project, a record high since its founding, while Lotte Innovate secured a DBO deal for an urban edge data center from IGIS Asset Management. Accordingly, LG Uplus (032640.KS) has also added data center DBO to its articles of incorporation, declaring its entry into the market and intensifying competition. According to Grand View Research, the global data center market is projected to reach $60.5 billion by 2030, more than 200% growth from last year.
3. [Investment Window] 'Physical AI' That Moves the Real World
- Key Summary: Physical AI, which combines robots, manufacturing equipment and autonomous systems, is emerging as the next-generation investment theme. Physical AI is a technology in which machines perceive their surroundings through sensors, make judgments with AI and take real-world actions, distinguishing itself from existing automation technologies through situational adaptation and iterative learning. At AWE 2026, Chinese companies including Haier, TCL and Unitree unveiled a wide range of service robots for household, care and manufacturing applications, presenting a vertical integration strategy encompassing hardware, control technology and AI models. In contrast, U.S.-based Nvidia countered at GTC 2026 with an ecosystem and platform-centered strategy, showcasing digital twin technology that trains and validates robots in virtual environments. According to MarketsandMarkets, the global Physical AI market is projected to grow rapidly from $1.5 billion this year to $15.2 billion by 2032.
[Reference News for Startup Founders]
4. Japan's SoftBank Signs Agreement with Korean Startup for Next-Generation Zinc Battery Production
- Key Summary: Japan's SoftBank will jointly develop zinc halide batteries with Korean startup Cosmos Lab and begin mass production in 2027. Cosmos Lab is a startup that has been developing next-generation batteries based on zinc instead of rare metals such as lithium and cobalt, using water rather than flammable electrolytes. SoftBank will use a factory site in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, which it acquired from Sharp last year, as its production base, and plans to supply the mass-produced batteries first to its own data centers. SoftBank also plans to include the battery manufacturing plan in its mid-term management plan to be announced this month, targeting revenue of 100 billion yen (approximately 940 billion won).
5. "LG for HVAC Too"…Breaking Japan's Dominance in Thailand
- Key Summary: LG Electronics (066570.KS) has signed an agreement with Sansiri, a major Thai real estate developer, to supply 14,000 high-efficiency cooling solutions for new residential complexes over the next two years, accelerating its push into the Southeast Asian heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) market. Since 2023, LG Electronics has built a business-to-business (B2B) network with major Thai developer associations, supplying cooling solutions to more than 10,000 households across more than 40 projects. In Singapore, LG beat out global competitors to become the sole supplier of system air conditioners to a mega-logistics center the size of nine soccer fields, and in the Philippines, it secured orders worth $8 million (approximately 11.1 billion won) from Shang Properties, a Shangri-La affiliate. Backed by these results, LG Electronics' ES (Eco Solution) business division recorded revenue of 2.8223 trillion won in the first quarter, successfully rebounding.
6. "Putting Out the Immediate Fire"…Natural Gas Emerges as Savior of AI Power Crisis
- Key Summary: Big tech companies such as Microsoft and Meta are turning to natural gas power generation to meet the power demand of AI data centers. Microsoft is pushing forward with a 2,500-megawatt (MW) gas power plant in Texas with an investment of approximately 11 trillion won ($7 billion), while Meta has agreed to directly fund the construction of seven new gas power plants for its Louisiana data center. Renewable energy is limited by intermittency due to weather conditions, nuclear power requires construction periods of more than 10 years, and small modular reactors (SMRs) face commercialization delays, making gas power generation a realistic alternative. Fuel cell company Bloom Energy turned profitable in the first quarter on the back of increased orders related to AI data centers, demonstrating expanding demand for natural gas-based distributed power sources.
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