[Exclusive] Jo Joo-wan Meets Nadella... LG Electronics and Microsoft Strengthen Quantum Partnership Beyond AI

Meeting with Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, Visiting Korea on the 26th
Expectations for a Quantum Partnership Beyond AI Collaboration

Cho Ju-wan, President of LG Electronics, will meet Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft (MS), to discuss cooperation plans in quantum technology. LG Electronics is advancing the sophistication of its smart home appliances and automotive electronics businesses based on MS's artificial intelligence (AI) technology, and is expanding the scope of collaboration to include quantum computing, which supports AI technology. This partnership between LG Electronics and MS is expected to become a milestone that goes beyond the AI industry.

Cho Joo-wan, CEO of LG Electronics, is delivering the keynote speech at the 'LG World Premiere' held on the 6th (local time) at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, USA. Photo by Yonhap News

According to industry sources on the 11th, President Cho plans to meet CEO Nadella, who will visit Korea at the end of this month. It will be their first meeting in 10 months since they met at the 'MS CEO Summit' held in Seattle, USA, last May. CEO Nadella will visit Korea to participate in the 'AI Tour' event held at the aT Center in Seocho-gu, Seoul, on the 26th. The LG Electronics Yangjae Building (R&D Campus) is being strongly considered as the meeting place for the two, as the LG Twin Towers in Yeouido were excluded from consideration due to a shareholders' meeting being held there on the day of the event.

An industry insider said, "President Cho is very curious about future technologies, and recently he has shown great interest in MS's self-developed quantum computing chip 'Mayonara 1.' It is expected that conversations will take place to elevate the existing AI collaboration to the next level and explore what kind of partnership is possible in the quantum field."

Since meeting in person last year, the two have continuously exchanged communications through social media to strengthen cooperation. Last month, President Cho sent a love call on CEO Nadella’s LinkedIn, saying, "I hope we can explore potential collaboration opportunities." Regarding MS's publicly revealed quantum computing chip 'Mayonara 1,' he evaluated it as "highly anticipated for the future of next-generation computing innovation."

MS's self-developed 'Mayorana Chip' is a next-generation semiconductor that significantly enhances the stability of qubits, the core components of quantum computers. Using 'Majorana particles,' which have the same properties as both particles and antiparticles, it is expected to have fewer errors and maintain quantum states more stably for longer periods than existing quantum computers.

Satya Nadella, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft (MS).

In particular, the industry expects that through this meeting, President Cho and CEO Nadella will discuss cooperation plans utilizing MS's quantum computing platform 'Azure Quantum.' This platform is MS's cloud service that allows companies or research institutes to use quantum computing technology without owning a separate quantum computer. They are expected to exchange opinions on ways to conduct advanced research such as material development, product design, and complex data processing using new technologies.

Since 2021, LG Electronics has been researching ways to utilize quantum computing in various fields such as product design, battery, and display development. Once quantum computers become commercialized, it is highly likely that smart home appliances, automotive electronics, autonomous vehicles, and high-performance data processing equipment currently in production will be prioritized for application.

Meanwhile, LG Electronics and MS have been expanding their cooperation since the beginning of this year, leveraging the world's largest home appliance and IT exhibition 'CES 2025' held in the United States. Through a strategic partnership, they are jointly promoting the development and advancement of LG Electronics' mobile AI home hub 'AI Agent (project name Q9),' while also expanding cooperation in the fields of thermal management and chillers (cooling systems), which are core technologies of the next-generation AI data centers being built by MS.