▲ 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]
■ China's Memory Push: Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) of China said it has begun mass production on its G5 platform, a fifth-generation DRAM process, lifting the potential number of dies per wafer on an 8Gb-equivalent basis by at least 50% from the fourth generation. With the three global players concentrating capacity on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and high-capacity server DDR5, Chinese manufacturers are filling the gap in the commodity market, raising the prospect that the incumbents' ability to defend prices could weaken.
■ Fair Exchange Rate Assessment: In an urgent survey of 20 foreign exchange specialists by Seoul Economic Daily, the largest group put fair value in the low 1,300-won range against the dollar, and 14 of the 20 said a stronger won would benefit the domestic economy. The prevailing view is that lower import prices and higher real household income from won appreciation outweigh the earnings risk for exporters.
■ Anthropic Listing Variables: Anthropic's annualized revenue surged to $65 billion (about 90 trillion won) as of July ahead of a planned initial public offering this year, but skepticism about further growth has deepened as OpenAI counterattacks and Chinese open-source models close the gap. Post-listing valuation forecasts diverge widely, from $1.5 trillion to $4 trillion, and the listing is now seen as pushed back to November from October.
[News of Interest to Corporate CEOs]
- Key points: CXMT, a Chinese memory chipmaker, formally declared the start of mass production on its G5 platform, a fifth-generation DRAM technology process, at the World Manufacturing Convention in Hefei, Anhui province, China. Luo Xiaodong, CXMT vice president and head of its marketing center, said the company's process capability has reached a level on par with the most advanced processes in mass production in the industry, and the company said it has reduced the active-area half pitch of its memory array to 11.95 nanometers. That figure, however, is a measurement of one specific key structure and is difficult to compare directly with the 12-nanometer-class process names used by Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), SK hynix (000660.KS) and Micron, while the 50% increase in dies per wafer is based on total dies before defect screening and therefore differs from actual yield. CXMT ranked fourth with a 9.5% share of global DRAM revenue in the second quarter of this year. It recently announced mass production and commercialization of LPDDR6, and its HBM3E is reported to have entered trial production.
2. "Fair Rate in the Low 1,300-Won Range; a Stronger Won Is Favorable for Now"
- Key points: In an urgent survey of 20 foreign exchange specialists conducted by Seoul Economic Daily immediately after successive rate increases in the United States and Japan, seven respondents — the largest group — cited 1,300 to 1,350 won per dollar as the fair rate. Four cited 1,350 to 1,400 won, bringing to 11 the total number of specialists who see the 1,300-won range as appropriate. The won-dollar rate stood at 1,383.3 won based on daytime trading on the 18th, close to the 1,400-won line. Kang Hyun-joo, senior research fellow at the Korea Capital Market Institute, said that with international oil prices high, won appreciation eases upward pressure on import prices and raises real household purchasing power. Respondents also noted that if the won strengthens too quickly, exporters could face greater strain on price competitiveness and currency risk management. For the Bank of Korea's Monetary Policy Board meeting in October, 75% of respondents expect the base rate to be held.
- Key points: Anthropic's annualized revenue surged to $65 billion (about 90 trillion won) as of July this year and is expected to exceed $120 billion (about 166 trillion won) by the end of the year, the Financial Times of Britain reported. Valued at $965 billion on the strength of its enterprise AI business, it became the most valuable private AI developer. But after OpenAI released GPT-5.6 in July, it won over corporate customers with aggressive pricing and, based on OpenRouter data, overtook Anthropic in weekly customer spending for the first time in two and a half years. Open-source models from Chinese developers including Moonshot AI and DeepSeek have also fueled price competition by delivering performance close to that of closed models, and Chief Executive Dario Amodei's argument that development should be slowed has been criticized as a strategy to cut development costs. As a result, post-listing valuation forecasts diverge widely, from $1.5 trillion to $4 trillion, and the listing is reported to have been pushed back to November.
[Reference News for Corporate CEOs]
4. From Hanwha, Coupang and LH to Farmland Surveys: Economic Reform Hits the Brakes
- Key points: Economic reform initiatives pursued by the Lee Jae-myung administration are running into resistance one after another from companies, the public sector and local communities. On the 9th, a court granted Hanwha Group's request to suspend the effect of a Fair Trade Commission order to submit documents, and Coupang declined to cooperate with an on-site FTC inspection, taking issue with prior notification procedures — the first time such an inspection has been thwarted since the enactment of the Large-Scale Distribution Business Act. Over the spinoff of Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH), seen as central to the functional reform of state-run institutions, some 8,000 union members have begun labor dispute procedures and signaled a general strike. Rural opposition is also spreading after the revised Farmland Act changed disposal orders from a discretionary power of local governments to a mandatory one, with noncompliance subject to an annual enforcement fine equal to 25% of the land value. Experts say what matters in reform is not justification but acceptance.
- Key points: The Ministry of Science and ICT will create a dedicated department this year for its seven SEED projects, under the science, technology and artificial intelligence policy cooperation officer reporting directly to Bae Kyung-hoon, deputy prime minister and minister of science and ICT. The plan is to abolish the future strategy officer post early next month and set up in its place a new organization built around the themes of "future" and "pioneering," reflecting a judgment that a control tower is needed to oversee the seven projects now scattered across ministries and departments. The seven SEED areas are small modular reactors (SMR), nuclear fusion, renewable energy, quantum technology, space and aviation, advanced biotechnology and advanced supply chains. The government plans to break ground on a non-light-water SMR within the 2030s and to build a nuclear fusion power plant in earnest in the same decade. It also set goals of securing a 100-qubit domestically built quantum computer by 2029, establishing an independent low-Earth-orbit satellite communications network by 2035 and commercializing brain-computer interface (BCI) products, while activating a whole-of-government support system.
- Key points: LS Chairman Koo Ja-eun urged executives and employees, including chief executives of major affiliates, to keep up with changes in the AI era faster than anyone else to strengthen business competitiveness, speaking at the fifth LS Future Day held on the 18th at LS Tower in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province. Koo said this is an era in which yesterday's science fiction becomes today's reality, stressing that LS must not fear the pace of change but be the first to enjoy it, and called for dramatically raising productivity in offices and on manufacturing floors while adding AI to products and services to create new value that customers can feel. The event, which began in 2022 when Koo took office, has generated more than 500 new business ideas in batteries, next-generation power solutions and AI. This year about 500 executives and employees attended, including chief operating officers and chief technology officers, and strategies for nurturing talent and applying AI on industrial sites were shared at the LS Future Forum, an expert session.
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