Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella delivers his keynote speech during the Microsoft AI Tour in Seoul at aT Center in Yangjae-dong, Wednesday. Courtesy of Microsoft

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella pledged the U.S. tech giant's support for Korean partner companies within its artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem during the Microsoft AI Tour in Seoul forum on Wednesday.

Nadella visited Korea a day earlier to host the AI forum, which brought together Microsoft's Korean partner firms to discuss their stronger partnerships. During his two-day stay in Seoul, he also met a slew of CEOs of big-name businesses, including KT CEO Kim Young-shub, LG Electronics CEO Cho Joo-wan and HD Hyundai CEO Chung Ki-sun.

During his keynote speech, Nadella stated that AI is quickly changing daily life and ways of working in Korea, and Korean firms in consumer goods, energy and various industrial sectors are creating new growth opportunities by adopting AI.

"We are a tech company that is fundamentally driven by our mission to empower every person and every organization, starting with one country and one community at a time," Nadella said.

"It matters that we come back here each year to see the innovation in Korea by Korean entrepreneurs, businesses and public sector to see the improvements in health care, education and local surplus that's being created here."

During his keynote address, Nadella introduced a number of model cases of how Korean companies are leveraging Microsoft's Copilot AI tool and Azure cloud platform to bring innovations to their own businesses.

During the event, KT unveiled its initiatives and action plans for driving innovation in AI and cloud technology based on its strategic partnership with Microsoft last year. The company noted that it is adopting Microsoft Copilot all across its businesses and emphasized its efforts to build an AI-powered internal work system.

Nadella also noted that Microsoft and KT will pursue the AI Skilling Initiative, which provides education services for Koreans interested in AI.

Participants of AX Leader Summit hosted by KT and Microsoft pose during the event at KT's headquarters in Gwanghwamun, Seoul, Tuesday. From left are KT CEO Kim Young-shub, Hyundai Motor Group President Song Chang-hyeon, Shinhan Financial Group Chairman Jin Ok-dong, Korea Development Bank CEO Kang Seog-hoon, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, POSCO Group Chairman Chang In-hwa, HD Hyundai CEO Chung Ki-sun and EBS CEO Kim Yoo-yeol. Courtesy of KT

On Tuesday, the KT CEO welcomed Nadella to his headquarters in central Seoul's Gwanghwamun. They shared their opinions on AI transformation and the two companies' joint project to develop a Korea-specific AI model trained on Korea's history, philosophy, and society and built upon an understanding of the Korean way of thinking.

The Korea-specific model is scheduled to be commercialized within the second quarter of this year. KT said the two CEOs discussed their continued collaboration aligned with Microsoft's road map for developing next-generation AI models.

Also on Tuesday, KT and Microsoft held the AX Leader Summit, involving POSCO Group Chairman Chang In-hwa, HD Hyundai CEO Chung and leaders of Korea's financial sector.

Nadella also met LG Electronics CEO Cho Joo-wan and LG CNS CEO Hyun Shin-gyoon after the forum. Cho wrote on social media Wednesday that the main topic was the joint development of an AI agent, as announced in their strategic partnership at CES 2025 in January. Also, the three companies discussed applying LG's cooling solutions for Microsoft's AI data centers, with Cho saying, "We are reaching an agreement to provide our cooling solutions to Microsoft's data centers."

"This meeting reaffirmed the shared vision between LG Electronics and Microsoft and discussed the continued growth of our strategic partnership," Cho wrote. He added that they discussed "potential collaborative projects with Microsoft" on LG Electronics' India businesses by leveraging India's expanding infrastructure and outstanding R&D talent.

During the forum, Nadella introduced LG Electronics' Q9 AI home robot, which is based on voice synthesis technology powered by Azure OpenAI service, as an example of the progress of AI.

Nadella, for the first time, unveiled two new reasoning AI agents for Copilot — Researcher and Analyst — during the keynote speech. In the context of AI, reasoning refers to a logical process of using knowledge to solve problems, draw conclusions and make predictions.