Held September 3 at The Westin Seoul Parnas, the flagship conference drew more than 1,600 registrations
Under the theme “AI Has Landed,” the conference featured five keynotes and 15 sessions across three dedicated tracks
CEO Andre S. Yoon introduced “Enterprise AI Sovereignty” as a critical requirement for industrial AI, built on three principles: ownership, independence, and control
SEOUL, South Korea, September 4, 2026 — MakinaRocks, South Korea’s leading Physical AI company, today announced that ATTENTION 2026, its flagship AI conference, brought together approximately 800 industry professionals on September 3 at The Westin Seoul Parnas in Gangnam, Seoul.
Held annually since 2024, ATTENTION brings together industry leaders to explore how AI is being deployed and operated in real-world industrial environments. This year’s conference, themed “AI Has Landed,” focused on how AI is moving into the physical world and creating tangible change across industries. More than 1,600 people registered for the event, with approximately 800 professionals from manufacturing, energy, semiconductors, defense, and the public sector attending in person.
Opening the morning keynote, Andre S. Yoon, CEO of MakinaRocks, introduced Enterprise AI Sovereignty as a critical requirement for companies seeking to build lasting competitive advantage with AI. Yoon defined Enterprise AI Sovereignty as an organization’s ability to lead and control how AI is deployed and operated across the enterprise. He outlined three core principles: ownership, retaining data and institutional know-how as internal assets; independence, avoiding lock-in to any single model or infrastructure provider; and control, maintaining visibility and governance over how AI makes decisions and takes action.
Youngjae Jang, KAIST Endowed Chair Professor and CEO of DAIM Research, outlined a path toward fifth-generation production systems powered by Physical AI and autonomous factory orchestration. Moving beyond the automation of individual processes and equipment, Jang described how intelligent logistics and warehousing, real-time synchronization between digital twins and physical operations, and collaboration among heterogeneous robots could enable fully autonomous manufacturing environments.
Sungjin Kim, CDO and CIO of Hankook & Company Group, presented the group’s “PI (Process Innovation) on AI” strategy for moving beyond stalled returns on generative AI investments by redesigning business processes around data and AI. He shared how the group is applying “vibe coding,” enabling business users to develop directly with AI on top of a unified data platform, alongside applications including AI-generated tire patterns and AI-powered demand forecasting. Kim emphasized that in the AI era, “Essential Thinking” — the ability to define the right problems and assess the value of outcomes — will be a critical competitive advantage.
Youngok Kim, CAIO of HD Hyundai, presented the company’s manufacturing AX (AI Transformation) strategy and its vision for intelligent, autonomous shipyards. Drawing on HD Hyundai’s proprietary data, AI-native capabilities, and accumulated domain knowledge, Kim outlined how greater automation and intelligence in shipbuilding, combined with environmentally friendly, high-value software-defined vessels (SDVs), could reshape the future of the industry.
Stefan Hudelmaier, Director at Device Insight, presented Nora, an agentic AI solution jointly developed with MakinaRocks and deployed to support wind turbine maintenance worldwide. Hudelmaier shared how the solution has improved first-time resolution rates and contributed to lower wind power generation costs.
The afternoon program featured 15 sessions across three dedicated tracks — AI OS, Industrial AI, and Defense AI — with MakinaRocks customers and partners sharing real-world deployments and lessons from the field.
The AI OS track featured speakers from SurplusGLOBAL, YC Corporation, and YES24, who shared how AI operating systems are being deployed and managed across a range of business environments. Sessions covered strategies for integrating AI development, deployment, GPU infrastructure, and security; transforming semiconductor component information into AI-ready assets; AI assistants designed to operate in air-gapped environments; MLOps for financial AI models; and AI harness integration in commerce.
The Industrial AI track featured speakers from Samsung Electronics, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering, and DENSO Korea. Sessions explored AI applications across manufacturing, including semiconductor equipment anomaly detection, physics-based anomaly detection, AI-powered engineering drawing analysis, reliability testing automation, and industrial energy optimization.
The Defense AI track brought together speakers from the KAIST Eulji Research Center, LG AI Research, Samsung SDS, and TwelveLabs to examine how AI can be deployed in real-world defense environments. Topics included emerging trends in defense AI, AI infrastructure designed for operational environments, video intelligence for reconnaissance and surveillance, and AI systems capable of operating on edge devices.
Beyond the conference sessions, ATTENTION 2026 featured the Physical AI Village, an eight-booth exhibition bringing together MakinaRocks and partners including Amazon Web Services (AWS), TwelveLabs, LG AI Research, Rebellions, and KRM. The exhibition showcased technologies spanning AI semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, multimodal video intelligence, and AI solutions for industrial and defense applications, giving attendees a view of the broader Physical AI ecosystem. MakinaRocks also hosted consultations for Runway Inside, its partnership program for companies building and operating industry-specific AI solutions.
“Just as the theme ‘AI Has Landed’ suggests, this year’s ATTENTION demonstrated that AI capable of operating in some of the most demanding and unpredictable environments — from factories to the battlefield — is already here,” said Yoon. “We are proud to be building Physical AI that works in the real world alongside leading organizations across manufacturing, energy, semiconductors, defense, and the public sector.” Yoon added, “MakinaRocks will continue to help enterprises turn AI into measurable outcomes and meaningful innovation, grounded in Enterprise AI Sovereignty — giving organizations the ability to own and control the knowledge and value they create with AI.”
