00:00Before you submit that next application in Korea, one number matters more than the rest.
00:05The Samsung and Hyundai tie-up is no longer just a headline. Let's get into it.
00:09It's Tuesday, November 10th. Let's look at what this means for job seekers and graduates in Korea.
00:14NVIDIA just surprised the Korean startup scene with direct investments in four companies.
00:19Point 2 Technology, founded by Caste's Dr. Bae Yun-min, is among them. The others are Upstage,
00:25Motif Technologies, and Real World. None of these deals went through NVIDIA's venture arm.
00:30They're direct investments. Here's what the numbers show.
00:33Samsung and Hyundai Motor Group declared a one-team partnership on November 9th,
00:37covering future mobility and physical AI. More than 177 executives and their spouses
00:43attended the event at Samsung's Seo Chan Training Center. Hyundai's Chung Ui-sun was also seen
00:49arriving in a Genesis GV90 powered by a Samsung SDI battery. Samsung and Hyundai's robot
00:55battery co-development started last year. Samsung SDI handles high-capacity materials,
01:00while Hyundai and Kia run robot application tests. Hanmei Semiconductor's rival in the GPU
01:06plus NPU space is Rebellions, which will connect its next-generation R200 NPU to NVIDIA's NVLink
01:13Fusion. Skek Telecom will build the combined system in its AI data center, with plans to supply the system
01:19from 2028. Korea's Wanted Lab ran an AI-native career camp, and seven of its 35 first-cohort
01:26trainees landed jobs before finishing the program. Their 63 projects covered not only development,
01:31but also product planning, design, and HR. Korean Engineering and Consulting, known as Hankook
01:37Engineering, was bought by its own employees in 2017. Over 830 people pooled roughly 53 billion won.
01:44Revenue doubled from 199.6 billion won to 412.9 billion won by 2025, and the company swung from
01:53a loss to profit. Government officials are now studying this employee buyout model as a template
01:58for companies without a successor. In the femtech sector, the global market is expected to grow more
02:03than 18% a year through 2034, yet Korea has only just run its first femtech industry survey. The survey
02:10counted 450 femtech companies generating a combined 3.8 trillion won in sales. So what does this mean
02:17for graduates weighing where to start? Three things stand out. First, the big tech and infrastructure
02:23players are investing in AI at the ground level, so entry-level roles in AI-adjacent companies are
02:28expanding. Second, employee-owned firms like Hankook Engineering show that stable, long-term careers
02:34exist outside the traditional conglomerate track. Third, roles outside pure coding, including design,
02:41product planning, and HR, are getting pulled into AI projects. Earlier, we said that the job market is
02:46shifting toward AI-linked work across multiple functions. Here's what that actually means for
02:51you. Look for companies where AI is a business line, not just a buzzword, and build a portfolio that
02:57shows real project output. That's today's AI prism. Students and grads. This episode was produced with
03:03AI assistance based on Seoul Economic Daily reporting. AI prism is a Juan IFRA award-winning series.
03:10We'll be back tomorrow.
