▲ AI PRISM* Personalized Economic Briefing
* Editor's note: "AI PRISM" (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six news items tailored to each reader type.
[Key Issue Briefing]
■ Oil at $100: International oil prices broke back above $100 a barrel as the war between the United States and Iran escalated simultaneously in the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen targeted oil facilities inside Saudi Arabia while the United States and Iran traded retaliatory strikes against tankers and warships, shaking both of the Middle East's main crude shipping routes at once.
■ Solution to an AI Challenge: OpenAI said it used artificial intelligence to derive a solution to the Navier-Stokes equations, a mathematical problem unsolved for more than 90 years, in just 88 hours. Some see it as evidence that AI has evolved beyond a research assistant into a stage where it searches for solutions on its own, while concerns were also raised about leaks of research data and reduced opportunities for humans to train their own thinking.
■ Capital Market Turning Point: At the KB Financial Group Korea Conference, market experts from South Korea and abroad examined investment opportunities and risk factors in the Korean capital market, centered on AI and semiconductors. Expectations that the semiconductor industry is moving into a more stable cycle than in the past through expanded long-term supply contracts were presented alongside warnings that hyperscalers' enormous AI investments could end in capital destruction.
[News of Interest to Corporate CEOs]
1. Flames Reach Beyond Hormuz to Saudi Refineries: "Oil Could Go to $150"
- Key summary: On the ICE Futures Exchange in London, Brent crude futures for November delivery touched $100.02 a barrel on the 9th, up 2.1%, or $2.10, from the previous session, while West Texas Intermediate traded in the $94 range. Houthi rebels used drones and ballistic missiles to attack four cities in southern Saudi Arabia — Abha, Khamis Mushait, Jizan and Najran — with targets including a Saudi air force base and energy facilities of state oil company Aramco, injuring at least 73 people. U.S. Central Command said it destroyed five Iranian tankers in response to attempted attacks on U.S. Navy vessels by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Crude exports from Middle Eastern oil producers, which stood at about 18 million barrels a day before the war, are now estimated to have fallen to around 11 million barrels. Goldman Sachs projected that Brent could exceed $120 if Gulf production stays 4 million barrels a day below prewar levels, and Bank of America warned that prices could spike to as high as $150 in the event of a broad escalation.
2. 10,000 AI Agents Deployed: 90-Year-Old Math Problem Solved in 88 Hours
- Key summary: OpenAI said on the 8th that it used an unreleased AI model to derive a solution to the Navier-Stokes equations, one of the world's seven great mathematical problems. The Clay Mathematics Institute in the United States designated it a Millennium Problem with a $1 million prize, and if the work passes verification by the international mathematics community, it would be the first case of AI solving a Millennium Problem. The company divided about 10,000 AI agents into groups and had them solve versions of the problem modified in different ways. Over 88 hours of parallel exploration, the agents exchanged 2.7 million messages and used about 130 billion output tokens. Mark Chen, OpenAI's chief research officer, called it an important milestone for AI research, but Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematician at New York University, has raised the possibility that OpenAI referred directly or indirectly to his unpublished research.
3. Global Investors Gather in Yeouido: "Now Is the Turning Point for Korea's Capital Market"
- Key summary: At the 2026 KB Financial Group Korea Conference, held by KB Securities on the 9th at the Fairmont Ambassador Seoul in Yeouido, KB Financial Group Chairman Yang Jong-hee said the Korean market is at an important turning point and stressed the potential for a re-rating. Kim Dong-won, head of KB Securities' research center, forecast that memory demand could rise to about three times current levels as agentic AI spreads, and to about 10 times at the stage of physical AI such as humanoids, and suggested a memory supply shortage could persist through 2028. He also projected that memory's share of AI investment would expand from about 40% this year to 57% next year. By contrast, Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies, said his base case is that most hyperscalers will fail to recoup their investments, ending in large-scale capital destruction like the railway mania of the late 19th century. Hyperscaler capital spending is expected to rise from $723 billion this year to $987 billion, or about 1,320 trillion won, next year.
[Reference News for Corporate CEOs]
4. Fallout From Direct Hiring: POSCO's 58 Years Without a Labor Dispute Ends
- Key summary: The POSCO labor union, affiliated with the Korean Metal Workers' Federation under the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, launched a first partial strike for 48 hours starting at 7 a.m. on the 9th, marking the first strike since the company's founding in 1968. The union is demanding a 7.1% increase in base pay, management performance incentives worth 600% of monthly salary and 50 shares under an employee stock ownership plan. Management says accepting the demands would require 1.4 trillion won, double last year's amount, and would be unmanageable. POSCO's operating profit on a separate basis in the first half was 487.3 billion won, down 43.3% from a year earlier, and POSCO President Lee Hee-keun said in a letter to employees that the company is sharing the pain, with the president giving up 20% of his pay, division heads 15% and executives 10%. Some analysts say the direct hiring of in-house subcontractor workers, pursued after a Supreme Court ruling on illegal dispatch, raised concerns among existing regular-employee union members that their benefits would be diluted. The union plans a second partial strike lasting 120 hours from the 16th unless management presents an improved offer.
5. Foundry Market Grows 11% in Q2; Samsung's Share Slips
- Key summary: According to market research firm TrendForce, combined revenue at the world's top 10 foundries, or contract chipmakers, reached $53.49 billion in the second quarter, up 11.5% from the previous quarter and a record high for a quarter. TSMC ranked first with revenue of $40.2 billion and a 72.5% share, as its most advanced 2-nanometer chip business was reflected in revenue for the first time and orders for mobile chips for Apple's iPhone 18 series lifted results. Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) posted foundry revenue of $3.26 billion on production of base dies for high-bandwidth memory and expanded orders from big tech firms, but growth was just 1.8%, leaving its share down 0.6 percentage points to 5.9% from 6.5% in the previous quarter. Samsung Electronics plans to formally start operations at its Taylor foundry fab in the United States this year to expand its share.
6. Like Big Tech: Large Firms Poaching Smaller Companies' Top Talent Face Merger Review
- Key summary: The Fair Trade Commission said on the 9th that it is giving public notice through the 30th of proposed revisions to its merger filing guidelines that would fully prohibit "acqui-hire" — a combination of acquisition and hiring — in which companies circumvent the fair trade law by poaching core personnel from promising startups. Under the revisions, cases in which core personnel move in an organized manner and leave the acquiring side able to carry out the existing business would also be treated as a transfer of a major part of a business and subject to merger review. Microsoft, instead of acquiring Inflection AI in 2024, hired its core personnel in a deal worth $650 million and signed a technology licensing agreement. Google also hired the co-founder of Character.AI in 2024 and paid $2.7 billion in a non-exclusive licensing deal, while Meta bought a 49% stake in Scale AI for about $14.3 billion and brought in its founder. FTC Chairman Joo Byung-ki said the commission plans to strengthen reviews so that venture companies do not fall victim to aggressive and hostile merger strategies by large firms.
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