AI-driven shifts will unlock opportunities: SK Chairman

Challenges are ahead but the artificial intelligence industry will eventually boom, opening new markets, said South Korea’s second-largest business group SK Group’s chief, urging its employees to prepare for a new leap with AI.

“Leverage AI. That is how we can survive this new ecosystem,” Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Group, said at a town hall meeting with employees on Wednesday on the sidelines of the company’s annual Icheon Forum event, held this year Aug. 19-21.

He noted businesses that are profiting now are those in the AI value chain, and Big Tech companies are not shy about making huge investments to lead the AI race.

“Bumpy roads are expected but there is no doubt that the AI industry is on an upward trajectory,” said the group chief. “AI advancement will allow SK to do hardware business for AI data centers and develop related service models like large language models (LLMs).”

“Once the (right) business model is in place, the (AI) industry will develop in its own business cycle,” added Chey.

SK Group controls hundreds of companies across four mainstay sectors – semiconductor and materials; energy and chemicals; information and communications technology; and logistics, services and bio.

Of them, its memory chip business SK Hynix Inc. leads the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chip market, which has rapidly expanded in recent years in line with the advancement in the AI industry.

But the positive impact of the AI boom is expected to go beyond the chip industry and trickle down to other sectors, Chey said.

“Big Tech companies share the view that they may need nuclear power later to cover the massive amount of energy an AI data center will consume,” said Chey. “Any changes in the energy mix (driven by Big Tech’s AI transition) will unlock opportunities for us.”

He met chiefs of Big Tech firms including Nvidia Corp., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC), OpenAI, Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. during recent overseas business trips.

Training and delivering AI requires enormous amounts of computing power and data storage, meaning data centers consume a lot more electricity than before.

SK Group owns SK Innovation Co., Korea’s major oil refiner and battery maker, and 10 other energy-related affiliates.

“Every change driven by AI is an opportunity for us,” said Chey, urging employees to seek the direction that will lead the group to a promising future.

The group has been streamlining its business portfolio to focus on core units such as semiconductors and batteries amid lingering economic uncertainties.

Write to Sang Hoon Sung at uphoon@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.