Amazon Web Services Korea, the leading private cloud provider in South Korea, will continue large-scale investments this year with "agentic artificial intelligence expansion" as the core pillar of its business strategy.
Ham Ki-ho, CEO of AWS Korea, held a press conference at the AWS Korea office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on the 3rd and said, "If 2023 was the year of introducing and verifying generative AI concepts through proof of concept, 2024 was the commercialization stage." He added, "Last year was when companies that adopted AI actually created business value and measured performance, and this trend will continue this year."
Citing a report from market research firm IDC, Ham said, "More than 60% of Korean companies have already built complex AI environments including generative and diagnostic AI." He projected, "At this rate, before 2029, about five Korean companies could emerge that achieve $100 billion (approximately 146 trillion won) in revenue with fewer than 12 employees." He emphasized, "AI initially played a simple assistant role, but now we are shifting to an era where humans supervise and manage while AI does the actual work using agentic AI systems." Agentic AI refers to AI that understands user intent and autonomously plans and acts.
AWS Korea plans to continue large-scale investments and customer acquisition this year, following last year's efforts, to keep pace with the trend of agentic AI becoming mainstream. Last year, AWS Korea announced plans to invest 7 trillion won in the Korean market by 2031 and launched a Korean marketplace, an enterprise software store. Ham said, "This year, we will focus more on realizing the business value of generative AI and agentic AI," and disclosed actual AI application cases from clients. Samsung C&T built a platform where AI reviews specifications and legal risks during large-scale construction bids, while Nexon developed a game anomaly detection system together with AWS.
Ham particularly noted, "We will work to help Korean companies quickly apply physical AI in their operations," adding, "We have also created a dedicated domestic task force to support physical AI work." Specifically, the plan involves collaborating with AWS hubs in China and Japan to increase customer networking and identify business opportunities.