South Korean chip giant SK Hynix has raised a record-breaking $26.5bn ahead of its Wall Street debut amid soaring demand for semiconductors used in AI. SK Hynix said on Friday that it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares (ADS) at $149 each ahead of its listing on the New York-based Nasdaq stock exchange. SK Hynix's 177.9 million ADSs are equivalent to 18 million ordinary shares. SK Hynix's initial public offering (IPO) marks the largest-ever listing by a foreign company in the US, surpassing Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's $25bn debut in 2014. The listing also ranks as the second-largest globally, after SpaceX's record-breaking $85.7bn Nasdaq listing in June.

South Korean computer chip maker SK Hynix has raised $26.5bn (£19.8bn) in its New York share offering, marking the largest ever listing by a foreign firm in the US. The company, a key supplier to artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant Nvidia, said on Thursday that it had sold 177.9 million American depositary shares for $149 each. The shares are set to begin trading on Friday on the Nasdaq. In May, SK Hynix saw its market value top $1tn in its home country, lifted by the boom in demand for AI chips. Its share price has more than tripled in South Korea this year, which along with Samsung Electronics has helped boost the benchmark Kospi index by more than 70% over the same period.

This year, RoboCup took place in Incheon, South Korea, from 2-6 July. The event saw teams take part in competitions, training sessions, and a symposium. Take a look at what the participants got up to in our round up from social media. RoboCup 2026 officially begins today! A post shared by RoboCup Federation (@robocup.official)

The EurAI Distinguished Service Award started in 2012, and it is presented annually to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the European AI community. This year, the award goes to two researchers: Jérôme Lang and Luc de Raedt. Find out who won the small, middle and large divisions in Incheon. Find out the latest from day two of the competition. In the first of our round-ups from the humanoid league we introduce the competition, and report some preliminary results.

Image caption, Samsung is also one of the world's leading smartphone makers South Korean technology giant Samsung Electronics says it expects to post a 19-fold jump in its profits, driven by global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips. The company forecast that it made 89tn won (£44bn; $58bn) between the start of April and the end of June, marking its third record quarterly operating profits in a row. Major South Korean firms like Samsung release forecasts of their earnings ahead of official detailed reports to help guide investors. Samsung's latest forecast, released on Tuesday ahead of its full results due later in July, comes as demand for semiconductors continues to outstrip supplies - which has pushed up prices . Samsung said in the preview, known as earnings guidance, that it brought in around 171tn won of sales during the quarter, more than double the amount for the same period last year.

This weekend saw the finale of the league competitions at RoboCup 2026 in Incheon, South Korea, with the winners in the small, middle, and large humanoid divisions decided. You can watch the action from one of the semi-finals in the middle division, which saw HTWK take on Rhoban. Although the competitions have drawn to a close, RoboCup 2026 continues today with a symposium, which brings together researchers and practitioners from around the world to present and discuss innovative research in robotics and artificial intelligence. You can find out more here . Lucy Smith is Senior Managing Editor for Robohub and AIhub.

This short video from RoboCup gives a flavour of the day's happenings, which also featured the opening ceremony.

'There's this deep mystery of what, actually, is this thing?': the philosopher inside Google DeepMind AI Since 2017, Iason Gabriel has worked at the tech giant, trying to anticipate - and think through - the impact of AI. But as commercial and geopolitical pressures escalate, can ethicists make any difference? In 2017, a 33-year-old political philosopher named Iason Gabriel was told by a friend that he ought to apply for a job at DeepMind, the London-based subsidiary of Google where much of its AI research was concentrated. The suggestion was not an obvious one. Gabriel was a cheerful but intense junior academic with a passion for Vipassana meditation and what his brother calls "enthusiastic" rock climbing. At the University of Oxford, where he was a fellow at St John's College, Gabriel taught courses on political theory and wrote papers on the moral contortions of "yuppie ethics" and the ethical blind spots of effective altruism. When he wasn't there, he did crisis work for the United Nations Development Programme in Sudan and Lebanon. DeepMind, meanwhile, was the world's leading AI research lab. In part, this was because it had the financial and computational backing of Google, which had bought the company in 2014 for $650m. In part, it was because DeepMind had recently shown it could put those resources to stunning use. In Seoul, in 2016, a DeepMind system called AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol, a South Korean Go champion, in a five-game match. The victory was significant not least because of Go's legendary complexity; the game has more possible configurations than there are atoms in the universe. Thanks to the fuss around AlphaGo, Gabriel was aware of DeepMind.

This year, RoboCup will be held in Incheon, South Korea, from 2-6 July. The event will see teams take part in competitions, training sessions, and a symposium. It's an exciting time for RoboCup, as there have been some updates to the leagues and competition format . Most prominently, the soccer leagues will have a primary focus on humanoid robots. A workshop focused on sharing projects, experiences, and innovations in educational robotics.

South Korea has laid out a sweeping industrial strategy focused on semiconductor chips and artificial intelligence projects as President Lee Jae Myung pledges to cement overwhelming industry leadership with investments of hundreds of billions of dollars over several years. Flanked by the heads of the world's two biggest memory chipmakers, Lee cast the initiative on Monday as a "great leap forward" centred on the "triple axis" of semiconductors, physical AI and data centres. The world's two largest memory chipmakers, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, will invest 800 trillion won ($518bn) with suppliers to build two new chip fabrication sites each in South Korea's southwest, Industry Minister Kim Jung-kwan said. Lee said the country's southwestern city of Gwangju and South Jeolla province will also invest 5 trillion to 20 trillion won ($3.2bn to $13bn) in the projects. Kim said a further 81 trillion won ($52.5bn) is expected to be invested for a chip-packaging cluster in the Chungcheong area near Seoul.