LG Group accelerates shift toward AI, bio and clean tech

Artificial intelligence, bio and clean tech are in their early stages of development for LG Group, but they should lead the South Korean conglomerate’s growth over the next decades, its Chairman and Chief Executive Koo Kwang-mo said earlier this week.

The country’s No. 4 business group has been accelerating its push into the three future-oriented sectors. To that end, it acquired Boston-based AVEO Pharmaceuticals Inc. for $566 million early this year.

“LG’s bio business is in its nascent stage. But if we make consistent efforts and take on challenges, it will grow into a big tree representing LG in the future,” Koo said during a meeting with LG Chem executives and AVEO Chief Executive Michael Bailey in Boston on Aug. 21.

The meeting was held after he visited AVEO’s head office during his four-day business trip to the US and Canada.

He toured LG Chem Ltd.'s life sciences center in Boston, established in 2019, as well as LG Electronics Inc.'s AI Lab in Toronto, set up in 2018.

As LG Group’s first AI research hub, AI Lab has been doing joint projects with the University of Toronto. Their research outcomes will be applied to LG’s AI-based services for smart homes and smart cars.

Koo also visited world-class R&D centers and startups for anti-cancer drug development and AI technology in Boston and Toronto to explore possible  partnerships.

He looked around the cell therapy manufacturing facility at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a leading cancer research and treatment institute affiliated with Harvard Medical School.

He shared ideas about forming a partnership between a research-focused hospital and a pharmaceutical company, as well as anti-cancer drug development in a meeting with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute CEO Laurie Glimcher.

He also visited LabCentral, a shared laboratory facility for bio and pharmaceutical startups and met with its co-founder and CEO Johannes Fruehauf to discuss the bio startup ecosystem and startup nurturing models.

In Toronto, he toured the Vector Institute, an AI-dedicated research center, co-founded by Geoffrey Hinton, a renowned machine learning expert. Koo also visited Xanadu, a Canadian quantum computing company, with an estimated corporate value of $1 billion.

Meanwhile, LG Chem is seeking to sell its film factories, seen as noncore assets, at home, according to industry sources on Wednesday.

Write to Jeong-Soo Hwang at hjs@hankyung.com
 

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.