Korea's largest tech conference, "SMARTCLOUD SHOW 2026," kicked off at the Westin Josun Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the morning of the 26th. Now in its 16th year, SMARTCLOUD SHOW is hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and organized by ChosunBiz and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA). Under the theme "AI moves the world," this year's event examines shifts in technology and industry as artificial intelligence (AI) spreads into the real world and on industrial sites.
From early morning, more than 300 figures from government, academia, and industry attended the event, showing strong interest in the new opportunities and changes AI will open.
Vice Minister Ryu Je-myeong of the Ministry of Science and ICT said, "AI has established itself as a core technology that reshapes industrial competition and determines a nation's future," adding, "As countries around the world engage in fierce competition to secure leadership in AI, Korea is pooling its national capabilities with the goal of leaping into the world's top three in AI."
The Vice Minister said, "To secure leadership in AI, we need not only outstanding AI models but also a stable infrastructure environment, including large-scale computing resources and data, to support them," and added, "The government is pursuing multiple policies to advance national AI infrastructure, including building a national AI computing center by 2028 and creating an ecosystem of large-scale AI data centers."
Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, in a video congratulatory message, said, "If Generative AI has led to the popularization of AI, AI is now evolving beyond the screen into physical AI that makes judgments and moves directly in real spaces," adding, "We will build an innovation ecosystem where corporations, talent, and technology gather around the 'Seoul physical AI belt' connecting Yangjae and Suseo."
Oh said he plans to unveil Korea's first driverless level-4 robotaxi in Sangam, Seoul, in November, and to provide advanced Generative AI tools for one year to 500,000 young people in Seoul starting in the second half.
At this conference, discussions will focus on core technologies of the AI era, including physical AI that goes beyond generating text and images to making judgments and moving directly in the real world through robots, as well as AI agents, cybersecurity, data centers, and the cloud.
The first keynote will be delivered by Abhinav Gupta, co-founder of the global leading physical AI unicorn, Skild AI. Under the theme "Any robot, any task: with a single brain," Gupta will present the future of general-purpose robot intelligence. Then Kim Tae-soo, Microsoft corporate vice president (Georgia Tech professor of computer science), will present technology for large-scale software vulnerability detection using AI.
Lim Hyo-joon, head of the Next-Generation Computing Lab at LG Electronics, will examine new security challenges in the AI era, and Jung Seok-geun, CEO of SK Hyper (head of the SK Telecom AI DC Integration Task Force), will share infrastructure strategies centered on AI data centers. The four speakers will discuss opportunities and challenges in the AI industry in a panel moderated by Seoul National University Professor Yoon Sung-ro.
In the afternoon session, domestic and international corporations in diverse fields such as space, cybersecurity, and cloud will take the stage. Pekka Laurila, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Finnish satellite corporation ICEYE, will present a strategy to build proprietary information assets using satellite data. Tom Scully, director for government and critical infrastructure in Asia-Pacific and Japan at Palo Alto Networks, will introduce AI-powered cyberattacks and autonomous defense strategies.
From Korea, speakers will include Park Song, head of the Cybersecurity AI Lab and senior vice president at SK shieldus; Gong Seong-bae, executive vice president and chief AI officer (CAIO) at Megazone Cloud; Park Jun-sik, country head of STMicroelectronics Korea; and Park Won-gyu, executive managing director at Satrec Initiative. They will present changes across industrial sites, including agentic AI security, corporations' AI strategies, physical AI, and satellites and AI.