Gwangju Plans National AI Computing Center Amid Urgent Need

Gwangju is striving to become a leader in South Korea's AI development, with plans for a National AI Computing Center and an established National AI Data Center already in the region. Mayor Kang Ki-jeong emphasizes the urgency for government support to fund these initiatives, highlighting Gwangju's unique advantages like its proximity to renewable energy sources and substantial GPU resources. Meanwhile, Sridhar Vembu, the newly appointed Chief Scientist at Zoho Corp, announced the company's focus on AI as a crucial aspect of its future, unveiling a suite of AI-powered agents and a low-code platform for building autonomous agents. He remarked on the competitive landscape, particularly pointing out how advancements from Chinese startups like DeepSeek could disrupt the AI market by offering low-cost reasoning models. Vembu believes that this shift may drive down costs for deploying agentic systems, posing a challenge to established tech giants. Both Gwangju's ambitions and Zoho's innovations reflect a broader trend of rapid AI evolution impacting various sectors globally.