▲ 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]
■ Ownership of AI assets: As corporate investment in AI expands, the question of who owns the intangible assets created outside the financial statements has come to the fore. With refined data, algorithms, prompts and rule sets accumulating as a new class of assets, analysts say that depending on who captures their value, AI spending may either remain on a company's books as an asset or amount to nothing more than a service fee.
■ Power grid bottleneck: The view is gaining ground that the biggest constraint on the spread of AI is not semiconductors but power grids. Global power grids are projected to draw $5.9 trillion over the next decade, with the largest share of that money concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region.
■ IMF's three risks: The International Monetary Fund raised its forecast for Korea's growth this year to 3.3% while also flagging three risk factors for the global economy. It pointed to a sharp drop in asset prices and a surge in government bond yields stemming from deteriorating returns on AI investment, along with a rise in cyberattacks, highlighting the need to secure fiscal space.
[Top News for Corporate CEOs]
1. [Investment Window] Who Owns the Assets Created by AI Investment?
- Key summary: The source of corporate value in the AI era is shifting from tangible assets such as factories and equipment to intangible assets. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), investment in intangible assets across 29 major countries topped $10 trillion in 2025, growing 3.6 times faster than investment in tangible assets since 2008. Brand Finance estimated the intangible asset value of listed companies worldwide at $97.6 trillion last year, and found that 83% of that does not appear on financial statements. Meanwhile, multiple parties take part in creating AI assets, including foundation model providers, systems integrators, employees and customers. For that reason, deciding which country or legal entity the value and profits should be attributed to becomes a transfer pricing issue — the setting of prices for transactions between affiliated companies — at multinational firms.
2. Different From the Dot-Com Bubble, but Beware Indiscriminate AIDC Expansion [Signal]
- Key summary: A call has been made for selective rather than scale-driven investment in AI data centers (AIDCs). Cha Seung-hwan, head of the Asia infrastructure investment team at the National Pension Service, cited power and operating capacity (MW), fiber-optic connectivity, tenant credit quality and long-term usage contracts as the factors that determine a data center's value, speaking at the Seoul Economic Daily Invest Forum on the 13th. He said investors should look at capacity that can actually be brought online rather than planned capacity. He added that if holding periods are extended to as long as 20 years, investors must also weigh who bears the cost of equipment replacement that comes around every four to six years, as well as the re-leasing risk that arises from tenant concentration. Cha noted that the dot-com bubble involved speculative construction built ahead of any contracts, whereas the main players today are hyperscalers generating profits on a contractual basis — though he pointed to the rapid pace of capital inflows and the circular flow of funds as similarities.
- Key summary: The IMF delivered two contrasting messages on the Korean economy at once. In its World Economic Outlook (WEO) on the 13th, the IMF raised its growth forecast for Korea this year to 3.3% from 2.6%, an increase of 0.7 percentage points, saying strong demand for semiconductors would offset the negative impact of the war. It also lifted next year's forecast to 2.8% from 2.5%. In its Global Financial Stability Report released the same day, however, the fund identified three major risks: a sharp drop in asset prices and a surge in government bond yields stemming from deteriorating returns on AI investment, and a rise in cyberattacks driven by the digitalization of finance. With the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note climbing from around 4.2% early this year to 5.24% on Oct. 9, the report found that a combination of falling AI asset prices, rising interest rates and an energy shock could cut global banks' core capital ratio by 1.5 percentage points to 11.5%.
[Reference News for Corporate CEOs]
- Key summary: The latest agreement, which the EU has touted as cutting imports of Chinese hybrid vehicles by more than half, is drawing assessments that China secured the practical gains. Bloomberg reported that the European Union agreed to cap imports of Chinese hybrid vehicles at 350,000 units a year starting next year, with the ceiling rising 6% annually from the second year of implementation. China's Ministry of Commerce said that measured against 2025 imports of 302,000 units, the agreement actually expands volumes, while the EU emphasized the reduction based on an expected 800,000 units in imports this year — leaving the two sides with conflicting interpretations. At the same time, analysts say the impact will be limited because BYD, Chery and Geely are rapidly expanding production bases in Europe. Of the EU's roughly 360 billion euro goods trade deficit with China last year, the automotive sector accounted for just 13.5 billion euros.
- Key summary: Alongside a diagnosis that power grids are the key constraint of the AI era came the presentation of a large-scale investment opportunity. Shin Jung-seob, head of Macquarie Asset Management Group's CSG for Northeast Asia, named power grids, power generation and optical fiber as the areas that benefit most directly from AI, speaking at the 16th Seoul Economic Daily Invest Forum held at the Shilla Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the 13th. Global investment in power grids is projected to reach $5.9 trillion from this year through 2035, with Asia-Pacific the largest at $2.787 trillion, followed by Europe, the Middle East and Africa at $1.523 trillion and the Americas at $1.459 trillion. In the United States, 2,061 gigawatts of capacity is waiting for grid connection, equal to 1.5 times the capacity currently installed. Shin said the vacancy rate at North American data centers is around 1% and that 92% of capacity under construction has already been leased, arguing the investment case holds even amid talk of an AI bubble.
6. "We Can't Hold Off China at the Same Speed — Overcoming Human-Wave Tactics With AX"
- Key summary: Samsung Electro-Mechanics (009150) is accelerating its push into AX, or AI transformation, wary of Chinese competitors even amid the AI boom. Jang Woo-seok, chief AI officer (CAIO) at Samsung Electro-Mechanics, met with Seoul Economic Daily at the company's Suwon plant on the 13th and said China has more than 10 times as many companies in the same industry, meaning developing technology at the same pace will not hold off their pursuit. Jang referred to a "red sandwich crisis," in which the company is squeezed on both advanced technology and price competitiveness. Samsung Electro-Mechanics is expanding sales of key AI chip components to Big Tech firms, and its operating profit this year is projected to reach 2 trillion won, more than double last year's level. To counter China's human-wave tactics, the company has assigned every team an AI agent development project and has more than 100 projects underway. It also plans to hold its first AI hackathon using its in-house AI model, Semcowork, with a total of 33 million won in prize money for top-performing teams.
