AI lets outsiders build but the connected still have an advantage

Samsung Electronics is turning a German kitchen industry hub into a year-round showcase for its built-in appliances as it seeks to deepen partnerships and expand its presence in Europe. The company opened a roughly 480-square-meter permanent showroom on the first floor of Kitchen Center Löhne in Löhne, Germany, during Küchenmeile, a major business-to-business event for the European kitchen industry. Küchenmeile runs through Friday, drawing more than 300 brands and 25,000 industry visitors, Samsung said. The company has participated in the event since 2013, using it to introduce built-in appliances and connect with kitchen furniture companies and other industry partners. The new showroom is designed as a venue for product demonstrations, business consultations and training, giving industry visitors year-round access to Samsung’s built-in appliances and connected kitchen technologies. Its displays include Bespoke artificial intelligence(AI)-powered refrigerators, a Bespoke AI dishwasher, an induction cooktop with an integrated extractor and a Bespoke AI oven equipped with AI Pro Cooki

Korea’s internet-only banks and regional lenders are expanding their co-lending partnerships beyond consumer credit into corporate lending, as they each look for new ways to grow their businesses, industry officials said Monday. KakaoBank and Busan Bank are preparing to launch a joint lending program for small and medium-sized businesses and sole proprietors, following a memorandum of understanding signed in April. The arrangement will combine KakaoBank’s nationwide digital platform with Busan Bank’s experience in assessing and managing business loans in its regional market. Until now, most co-lending partnerships between the two parties have focused on consumer credit. Toss Bank and Kwangju Bank introduced the industry’s first joint loan in 2024, followed by similar offerings from Kbank and Busan Bank, and from KakaoBank and Jeonbuk Bank in 2025. All three programs targeted salaried workers. Their expansion into business lending marks the next step. The incentives for both sides are clear. For internet-only banks, which have relied heavily on household lending, working with regio

Korea has decided on the first project it will pursue under its $350 billion U.S. investment pledge and drawn up implementation plans for two others as Seoul and Washington continue to finalize details of their investment agreement. Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan briefed the National Assembly's Trade, Industry, Energy, SMEs and Startups Committee on the projects Tuesday, saying the government had decided to pursue the project after reviews by committees chaired by the industry and finance ministers. “Today, I would like to report on one project for which the government has decided to pursue,” Kim said during the committee's plenary session. He added that the government had prepared implementation plans for two other projects that have not yet been approved but reflect shared interests between Korea and the United States. “Although we have not yet decided to pursue these projects specifically, I would like to report on the implementation plans for two projects that reflect the interests of both countries,” he said. Kim said the government had identified projects that could benefit

Bitcoin’s surge to around US$87,000 has captured the market’s full attention, and the data tells a clear story about what powered this move. The leading cryptocurrency rallied from the mid US$70,000s to an intraday high near US$87,000, its strongest level since late January. That advance pushed its market cap toward roughly US$1.7 trillion to US$1.8 […] The post Bitcoin’s US$87,000 spike: Real breakout or a US$900 million short squeeze? appeared first on e27.

Startups are constantly encouraged to expand. Enter new countries, test new segments, build distribution partnerships, hire locally and capture market share before someone else does. Much less attention is given to the opposite decision: leaving a market that looked promising but is not working. That decision is often harder than entering in the first place. […] The post Startups should learn to leave bad markets faster appeared first on e27.

Robotics and rehabilitation are undergoing a profound transformation that the industry’s own measurement infrastructure has largely failed to keep pace with. For four decades the recording of movement in three dimensions has been organised around a building in a studio. From a wired ring of cameras, a morning of calibration, and a purchase order that […] The post Why Asia’s Physical AI boom will be decided at the camera, not the model appeared first on e27.

Ask most founders why a deal stalled and they’ll say the same thing: “they wanted a better price.” It’s the most comfortable explanation in the room, because it points outward — at the market, at the competitor who undercut you, at a buyer who’s “just being cheap.” A common counter-argument is worth taking seriously: a […] The post Your price problem is a positioning problem wearing a discount request appeared first on e27.

Korea has decided to pursue one U.S. investment project and drawn up implementation plans for two others as Seoul and Washington continue to finalize details of their investment agreement. Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan briefed the National Assembly's Trade, Industry, Energy, SMEs and Startups Committee on the projects Tuesday, saying the government had decided to pursue one after reviews by committees chaired by the industry and finance ministers. “Today, I would like to report on one project for which the government has decided to pursue,” Kim said during the committee's plenary session. He added that the government had prepared implementation plans for two other projects that have not yet been approved but reflect shared interests between Korea and the United States. “Although we have not yet decided to pursue these projects specifically, I would like to report on the implementation plans for two projects that reflect the interests of both countries,” he said. Kim said the government had identified projects that could benefit Korea and reviewed U.S.-proposed projects based on

Every few months, another story circulates about Vietnamese-origin engineers leaving Silicon Valley, Tokyo, or Seoul to come home. The framing is almost always the same: here is an underused pool of senior talent, and here is why your company should go get some. That framing skips the harder question. Attracting a returning engineer is the […] The post Vietnam’s returning engineers are high-quality talent. Keeping them is the real problem appeared first on e27.

A generation ago, digital literacy was considered a specialist skill. Today, the ability to use digital tools, communicate online, and work with technology is a basic expectation across most industries. Artificial intelligence is following a similar path. What was once viewed as an emerging technology reserved for tech companies is rapidly becoming accessible to businesses […] The post Why AI literacy is becoming a business necessity, not a competitive advantage appeared first on e27.

The teller does not sound accusatory. The tone is worse than that. It is procedural. A man in his thirties slides his phone across the counter and points to the screen, a transfer that never arrived, a balance that will not move. The teller looks past the story and into the system. The account is […] The post The compliance paradox: More checks, more fraud appeared first on e27.