South Korea is planning to spend at record levels as it leans into the global rush for artificial intelligence.
According to 朝日新聞 (the Asahi Shimbun), the country's 2027 budget has been lifted to a record $530 billion, a jump the report attributes to the boom in AI chips. The figure marks the largest budget the government has proposed, signaling that AI and semiconductors have moved to the center of national economic planning.
Alongside the broader budget, South Korea is putting money behind a newer frontier. According to bloomingbit, the government will invest $1 billion in "physical AI" — the term for AI that operates in the real world through machines rather than only on screens — and will build a dedicated robot training center.
A robot training center is a facility where machines learn to handle real-world tasks, and the $1 billion commitment suggests the country wants a hand in shaping how that technology develops rather than importing it later.
South Korea is already one of the world's most important producers of memory chips, the components that AI systems rely on heavily. The two announcements together point to a strategy of spending across the full stack: the chips that power AI, and the robots and systems that put it to work.
Why it matters: when a major chipmaking nation raises its budget to a record high and names AI as the reason, it is a clear signal of how central the technology has become to national economic competition — and of the scale of money now flowing into it.