On November 15, 2026, SK Group announced that chairman Chey Tae-won has told all of the group's affiliates to redefine themselves as AI companies at the annual CEO seminar, extending the business from AI semiconductors, infrastructure and energy into services, and building an 'AI flywheel' that links AI services with the token economy. It is the most sweeping AI pivot yet by a Korean chaebol: not one affiliate launching an AI project, but the whole group changing its identity.
The flywheel runs on cards SK already holds
The seminar ran from November 12 to 14 at the SKMS Research Institute in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, with about 50 senior executives attending, including Chey, vice chairman Chey Jae-won and Chey Chang-won, chairman of the group's top management council. On the final day, Chey personally led the session on future growth strategy and called for breaking the existing mold of the business. SK's hand is genuinely strong: SK hynix is the world's leading supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) — the tap for AI compute is in its hands; SK Telecom is pushing into AI data centers, and SK Innovation holds energy infrastructure. The affiliates have also shown real AI work: Hynix uses AI plus digital twins in smart factories to raise production efficiency, SK Innovation uses a 'process graph' linking equipment and operating data to improve yields at its Ulsan petrochemical complex, SK Telecom applies AI to network and service automation, and SK Gas uses AI market analysis to speed up decisions.
The hard part is going from selling chips to selling services
But there is still distance between a slogan and a business. SK has made its money on heavy assets — semiconductors and energy — while services are won on products, users and operations, a completely different game; and what exactly the token economy will mean in practice was left unsaid this time. Whether a chaebol-wide 'all-in on AI' pledge turns into measurable investment and organizational change will depend on what follows. SK starts from a stronger position than most: as long as demand for AI compute keeps growing, Hynix's HBM orders are the flywheel's first push. With Jensen Huang gone, is the funding tap for AI startups still open? — capital's enthusiasm for AI remains, and the race in AI infrastructure is far from over.
What the 50 CEOs owe after they go home
The seminar is SK's annual meeting to review results and set strategy; the real test comes after it: each member company must find its new positioning, and whether the group publishes concrete investment figures, organizational changes and service products will be the measure of whether this pivot is a slogan or a strategy. SK Group aims to become one of the core players in the token economy — whether it gets there, the 2027 results and new products will tell.
