Right After Big Tech Chain Meeting
Visited SK Biopharm's US Branch
Chairman Chey Tae-won visited the headquarters of SK Life Science, the U.S. subsidiary of SK Biopharm located in New Jersey, on the 2nd (local time) to check the status of the bio business. Photo by SK Group
Choi Tae-won, Chairman of SK Group, who is on a business trip to the United States, has been visiting local subsidiaries one after another to inspect SK's future business sites, including semiconductor materials and bio sectors.
Since the 22nd of last month, Chairman Choi held a series of meetings with CEOs of OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, and Intel, then immediately moved east to continue his busy schedule by visiting SK Biopharm and Absolix, a subsidiary of SKC.
On the 2nd (local time), Chairman Choi visited the U.S. headquarters of SK Biopharm's American subsidiary, SK Life Science, located in New Jersey, to check on the direct sales status of SK Biopharm's innovative epilepsy drug, Cenobamate (U.S. product name: XCOPRI®).
SK Biopharm's Cenobamate recently surpassed 100,000 total prescriptions, proving its efficacy and safety in the epilepsy field, and is recognized as an emerging powerhouse in the new drug market. SK Biopharm recently acquired SK Life Science Labs (formerly Proteovant), a company possessing core technology for targeted protein degradation therapy (TPD), which has attracted significant investment from global big pharma, and is accelerating pipeline development.
Chairman Choi encouraged the members and requested, "Please carefully review the potential impact of the recent U.S. Biosecure Act on national security policy and prepare countermeasures."
Chairman Chey Tae-won (center) is taking a commemorative photo with members at Absolix located in Covington, Georgia, on the 3rd (local time). Photo by SK Group
The next day, Chairman Choi visited Absolix in Covington, Georgia, toured the world's first mass production plant for glass substrates, and received a report on the business status. Absolix is a subsidiary established by SKC in 2021 for the semiconductor glass substrate business for high-performance computing.
Glass substrates are attracting attention as a "game changer" that can dramatically improve data speed and power consumption of semiconductor packages amid the rapid growth of the AI semiconductor industry. The glass substrate, which is about to be commercialized for the first time in the world, is scheduled for customer testing in the second half of the year. The industry expects demand for high-purity glass substrates to increase, driven by the rapid growth of AI semiconductors such as HBM. Chairman Choi is also known to have introduced the technological competitiveness of glass substrates and conducted sales to big tech CEOs he met during this trip.
Earlier, Chairman Choi focused on concretizing SK's AI strategy by holding a series of meetings with U.S. big tech CEOs to establish a "global AI partnership."
Chairman Choi also attended the 'Management Strategy Meeting' held over two days from the 28th of last month via video conference, emphasizing to the executives of member companies that "In the U.S. right now, the wind of change related to AI is so strong that there is nothing to talk about except 'AI'," and stressed strengthening "AI value chain leadership" utilizing SK Group's capabilities.
An SK official stated, "Based on the results of Chairman Choi's business trip, related member companies such as SK Hynix and SK Telecom plan to engage in follow-up discussions and business cooperation with big tech partners to strengthen the competitiveness of the SK AI ecosystem."
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