South Korean semiconductor chip wafer supplier SK Siltron announced Thursday that it plans to invest a combined 2.3 trillion won ($1.6 billion) over the course of five years until 2026. The capital will be used to increase the production capacity for its wafer plants in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province. SK Siltron will also create 1,000 new jobs for its wafer plants. As part of the plan, SK Siltron's board on Thursday approved a 855 billion won spending plan to expand the production capacity fo

South Korean lithium-ion battery cell maker SK On and Australian mining company Global Lithium Resources have signed a two-year nonbinding agreement over the supply of critical materials for batteries used in electric cars. The two companies agreed to explore future business opportunities including the potential development of downstream battery-grade lithium assets for at least two years in western Australia. Under the agreement, SK On also pledged to support Global Lithium's capital rai

Samsung Electronics’ smart home platform SmartThings has hit the 10 million mark in connecting devices and home appliances around the world as of Sept. 12, the South Korean tech giant said Wednesday. Launched in 2018, the app aims to connect small and larger appliances from refrigerators and washing machines to air purifier and dishwashers via smartphones. More recently, Samsung is increasingly teaming up with other brands to bolster connectivity. The number of connected devices has double

Science Ministry unveils W1.32tr plan on AI technology; aims to double data market size to W50tr

South Korea's consumer electronics-to-battery conglomerate LG Group has published its first annual report that revolves around its groupwide efforts to tackle environmental, social and governance issues, a holding company LG Corp. announced Wednesday. This is in line with the group's push to disclose nonfinancial performance such as actions to fight climate change, reduce and recycle waste, offer financial supports to vendors and local communities, as well as ensure boardroom diversity

Samsung Biologics has scored a “Gold Sustainability Rating” from global business evaluator EcoVadis for its sustainability efforts, the South Korean contract development and manufacturing organization company said Wednesday. According to Samsung Biologics, the CDMO giant received a score of 71 out of 100, up 14 points from the silver rating it earned last year. The company was among the top 5 percent of more than 100,000 firms in 200 industries across 175 countries assessed by EcoVad

More servers require faster semiconductor speeds in high performance computing technologies, to meet the growing demand for big data analytics and autonomous mobility. But a disparity in transfer speed between processors and memory chips have long been an obstacle for further computing system performance improvement, often creating a network bottleneck within a chipset. This is why memory chip engineers should get a load of the next-generation interconnect standard blueprints, although they are

  SUWON, Gyeonggi Province -- The memory chip upcycle has already peaked this year, while the downcycle is projected to continue until 2025 in a worst-case scenario, an executive from the US-based market intelligence IDC said Tuesday. Kim Soo-kyoum, associate vice president of semiconductor at IDC, cited a sharp decline in consumer demand and the projected price drop over the course of three years with the introduction of new chip factories and the growing competition in NAND flash industry

Celltrion’s Vegzelma, a bevacizumab anticancer biosimilar referencing Avastin, has been approved for sales in Japan, the South Korean biopharmaceutical company said Tuesday. According to Celltrion, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare on Monday granted Vegzelma marketing approval for the treatment of multiple types of cancer including colorectal cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, ovarian cancer and cervical cancer. The latest sales authorization of Vegzelma came after the co

South Korean biotechnology company Bertis has signed a contract with the Raffles Medical Group to supply its early stage breast cancer detection product Mastocheck, the world’s first proteomics-based blood diagnosis solution. According to Bertis, the two sides on Monday signed a deal to supply Mastocheck to about 30 medical institutions operated by the Raffles Medical Group in Singapore. Bertis said they will work to make Mastocheck available at the RMG’s overseas branches in China,

South Korea's most powerful businessman builds fandom on his way to chairman post

KT is looking to improve its artificial intelligence competitiveness through a partnership with Canada's Vector Institute, a nonprofit firm dedicated to AI research. According to KT, the two sides signed an agreement on research, development and business cooperation at the Vector Institute in Toronto on Thursday. The signing marked the first partnership between a South Korean company and the Vector Institute. KT said the partnership will focus on three main areas in the field of AI: joint R&

South Korean mobile telecom carrier SK Telecom announced Sunday that the company, its artificial intelligence chip developer arm Sapeon and the University of Toronto came together on Thursday to build an AI chip-mounted computing infrastructure at the Canadian university’s campus in Toronto. Sapeon will provide its low-power neural processors, the X220 and X330, free of charge to run its neural processing unit, or NPU, Farm infrastructure, which is capable of delivering up to 32,000 trilli

SK Telecom on Sunday unveiled the country’s first commercialized veterinary image diagnostic service based on artificial intelligence technology. Named “X Caliber,” the AI solution provides medical reports when a veterinarian uploads X-ray pictures of the dog’s chest or musculoskeletal system to the service’s website. The autonomous diagnosis takes about 30 seconds, according to SK Telecom. The company highlighted the importance of quick diagnosis, saying it would u

Information technology service provider LG CNS said Sunday it has become the first South Korean company to sign a digital transformation (DX) partnership with Google’s cloud service, Google Cloud. Through the strategic partnership, LG CNS said it hopes to acquire a competitive edge in the domestic artificial intelligence market catered toward corporate use, and to carry out cloud application modernization (AM) and total experience (TX) innovation projects. To increase market presence, the