By Diplomacy Journal Lee Kap-soo

SK opened the “SK AI Summit 2025” at COEX Convention & Exhibition Center in Seoul on November 3.

Running through Tuesday, the SK AI Summit is a platform for collaboration where SK shares its integrated AI capabilities and vision accumulated across semiconductors, energy solutions and AI data centers. The event brings together diverse partners from global big tech companies, startups and academia to explore ways to strengthen the future AI ecosystem.

Last year's inaugural event attracted over 30,000 participants both online and offline, establishing itself as Korea's largest AI conference. This year's summit, held under the theme “AI Now & Next,” diagnoses the present state of AI and presents directions for future development.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won delivered the opening keynote at the SK AI Summit 2025, highlighting SK’s commitment to advancing the AI ecosystem and charting a path for future innovation.

Reflecting on the recent 2025 APEC CEO Summit in Gyeongju, Chey emphasized, “AI is now at the center of global economic, industrial and social transformation. Ensuring sustained competitiveness will require relentless innovation.”

Chey pointed to a surge in global investment in AI infrastructure, explaining that new data center spending by major players like OpenAI and Meta is now surpassing previous trends. However, he added that, unlike in established sectors such as energy or oil, there is currently no reliable model to predict how quickly the AI infrastructure market will ultimately grow.

Chey identified several key drivers behind rising AI demand: the scale-up of inference as a core AI function, broader enterprise (B2B) adoption of AI, the rise of agent-based AI, and intensifying competition among nations to develop sovereign AI capabilities. He explained that as AI systems deepen their reasoning and continually verify their responses, overall computing requirements inevitably increase.