Las Vegas, NV = KoreaTV.Radio Reporter Steven Choi | The biggest topic of ‘CES 2026’, the world’s largest information technology (IT) and consumer electronics exhibition, was once again Artificial Intelligence (AI) this year. CTA, the organizer of CES, stated that this year's event, held from January 6 to 9 in Las Vegas, USA, is filled with about 4,100 exhibitors and more than 300 conference sessions. The presence of Korean startups at this CES was also confirmed by their performance in winning Innovation Awards. According to CTA, 168 out of 284 companies that won the CES Innovation Award were identified as Korean companies, setting an all-time record.

Major Korean corporations presented a blueprint for ‘AI Daily Life’ by putting AI-based smart homes, home appliances, and robots at the forefront. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics each emphasized the connectivity of AI-centered products and services, and robot companies such as Doosan Robotics also exhibited solutions that can be immediately deployed to industrial sites. In particular, Doosan Robotics' AI-based autonomous mobile robot solution was included in the CES ‘Best of Innovation’ list, symbolically showing the ‘Physical AI’ trend.

CES 2026, which marked its third day of official opening on the 8th, was a scene where AI, which had remained in the realm of grand discourse, settled down as a ‘physical entity’ by our side. While giants like Samsung and LG drew the sketch of the ‘AI Home’, it was Korea's small but strong companies that filled that drawing paper with practical survival technologies. I captured the essence of ‘K-Innovation’ that fascinated the world at the Eureka Park and Venetian Expo sites, which I visited by pushing through the crowds.

Advisory member Jae-man Lee, who serves as a Scale-up Advisor at the KICT Startup Mentoring Center met at the entrance of the exhibition hall, nodded repeatedly while looking at the booths of Korean companies this year. He asserted that the core of this CES is ‘Proof.’

“If until last year was a preview saying ‘there is such AI technology,’ this year is the stage of the main feature saying ‘we earned this much money and contributed this much to the world with this technology.’ In particular, ‘Physical AI,’ combined with productivity, manufacturing automation, and robotics, has moved to the central axis of the industry. The decisive difference from last year is that our companies have moved away from being technology-centered and put ‘business results’ such as global market entry and partnerships at the forefront.”

Advisory member Lee continued, “While exhibitions emphasizing technical prowess and ideas were dominant until last year, this year, the number of companies presenting actual application cases, customer acquisition status, partnerships, and revenue models together has clearly increased,” and evaluated, “Korean companies have begun to recognize CES not as a simple promotional stage but as a practical business platform for global market entry and business expansion.”

“Creating a video with a single photo”… 10kM.ai, challenging ‘one-stop’ generation, editing, and monetization. AI video production company 10kM.ai (CEO Yusuk Kim) put a multimodal-based video production ecosystem at the forefront. 10kM.ai was named a 2026 Innovation Award Honoree with ‘GEMGEM.SG’ in the ‘Filmmaking & Distribution’ category, one of the newly established fields of the CES Innovation Award program.

The company presented a strategy to bind ‘Generate-Edit-Monetize’ into a single flow with a lineup including ‘GEMGEM.video,’ which can immediately generate, edit, and distribute short video content to SNS from just one photo or a webpage capture; ‘GEMGEM.pro,’ targeting corporate production workflows; and ‘GEMGEM.SG,’ targeting the movie/video pre-production market. CEO Yusuk Kim emphasized, “The fundamental problems of video production were the limitations of cost, time, and personalization, and the GEMGEM product family is a tangible AI that solves these three at the same time,” and “Production teams will be able to move away from repetitive tasks and focus on more creative work.”

“Borderless payment + identity authentication”… Crosshub, CES Best of Innovation.

In the fintech field, Crosshub (CEO Jaeseol Kim) received attention. Crosshub’s ‘Financial Passport (IDBlock & B·Pay)’ was selected for the ‘Best of Innovation’ (Fintech category), which is evaluated as the highest among CES Innovation Awards.

The core of this solution is to help overseas visitors use local services such as delivery, mobility, and accommodation based on the electronic wallets and payment methods they used in their home countries without complicated sign-up procedures. IDBlock featured authentication based on Zero-Knowledge Proof to quickly verify identity information such as passports while lowering the risk of personal information exposure, and B·Pay presented a structure that enables payment without a local SIM or bank account.

Advisory member Jae-man Lee said, “Now, ‘customer conversion’ and ‘on-site application’ are the winning points of CES rather than ‘technology demos’,” and “Approaches like Crosshub that integrate authentication and payment to reduce bottlenecks in the actual user experience are highly likely to lead directly to global partnership discussions.”

“Making factories lighter and faster with AI”… Amplab presents ‘Smart MES’ for small and medium manufacturing sites.

At this CES, Amplab (CEO Jinyoung Kim) put emphasis on ‘field-applied AI.’ Amplab prepared an AI-based smart MES solution ‘FactoryX’ for small and medium manufacturing factories and has been emphasizing that it can be introduced lightly and quickly by containing core functions ‘compactly.’ In an on-site interview, CEO Jinyoung Kim stated, “The direction and value of technology ultimately depend on how well it understands and solves the problems of the market and users,” and explained that they are focusing on reflecting the actual needs of the manufacturing site.

Amplab’s approach is in line with Vertical AI, a major trend of CES. This is because it is an attempt to lower the barrier to entry for automation by simplifying ‘unstructured problems of the field’ such as process, inventory, and production management with AI. Advisory member Jae-man Lee also evaluated, “The biggest change for Korean companies this year is that their exhibition strategy has moved from ‘technology-centered’ to ‘business-centered’,” and “Solutions with a clear introduction context like Amplab are likely to lead to commercialization and expansion discussions beyond PoC.”

Korean startups… ‘Multi-layered expansion’ from AI semiconductors and infrastructure to digital health and mobility.

At the CES site this year, a variety of Korean companies were out in force, including AI semiconductors/infrastructure (DeepX, Mobilint), data centers/CXL/fabric (Panmnesia), on-device AI/agents (Dinotisia, Lablup), quantization (Enerzai), AI boxes for mobility (Bos Semiconductors), AI reliability/data (SelectStar), content/entertainment AI (Nation-A), and radar-based cognitive AI (DeepFusion AI). While large corporations showed ‘AI Lifestyle,’ small and medium-sized startups are penetrating the market with ‘Vertical AI’ accurately targeting industry-specific problems.

Advisory member Jae-man Lee emphasized, “CES is now not only a ‘festival of technology’ but a stage where ‘changes in the global industrial structure’ are concentrated,” and “True results of attending CES are made when Korean companies do not just leave this trend at ‘awards’ or ‘topicality’ but connect it to contracts, partnerships, and revenue models.”