Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (photo), who visited Korea for the first time in two years, will meet with representatives of artificial intelligence (AI) startups in Korea. The move is interpreted as an intention to find an ally to play together in the AI hegemony war by contacting not only major conglomerates such as KT but also small but strong Korean AI small and medium-sized companies.
According to the information and communication (IT) industry on the 25th, CEO Nadella will hold a private meeting with five AI startups prior to the ‘MS AI Summit’ event to be held at aT Center in Yangjae-dong, Seoul on the morning of the 26th. Lee Se-young, CEO of Luton Technologies, Kim Sung-hoon, CEO of Upstage, Kim Jin-woo, CEO of Liner, and Lee Yong-jae, CEO of Mespresso, will attend the meeting. They are customers of ‘Azure’, an MS cloud. Luton Technologies also signed a business agreement with MS to distribute and spread Azure-based Generative AI services. In addition, Galaxy Corporation, an agency of singer G-Dragon, will also attend the meeting. At the meeting, CEO Nadella is expected to discuss AI technology owned by five companies, service expansion using them, and MS-level support measures needed for this.
CEO Nadella, who visited Korea a day before the event, plans to meet with KT CEO Kim Young-sup, LG Electronics President Cho Joo-wan, and HD Hyundai Senior Vice Chairman Chung Ki-sun until the day of the event. President Cho met with reporters after the LG Electronics shareholders’ meeting on the same day and said, “I met with CEO Nadella several times, and just as I announced a strategic collaboration with MS at ‘CES 2025’ this year, the main content (of the meeting) will be joint development of AI agents.”
Chairman Seo Kyung-bae of AmorePacific had a brief meeting with CEO Nadella for several minutes at somewhere in Seoul. Chairman Seo and CEO Nadella reportedly exchanged views on the impact of AI technology on the future beauty market, with AmorePacific CEO Kim Seung-hwan and other executives also present. AmorePacific is actively investing in cutting-edge beauty technology and internal operating systems using AI. It is expected that this meeting will lead to collaboration between AmorePacific’s overall corporate operations and AI beauty technology.
Meanwhile, CEO Nadella will deliver a keynote speech at the MS AI Summit on the 26th with Cho Won-woo, CEO of Korea MS, and Thomas Domke, CEO of GitHub, under the theme of “The Age of AI Innovation, Leading Change.”
[Reporter Kim Tae Sung / Reporter Kim Geum]