SK Tackles On-Site Challenges with AI... '2026 AI Hackathon' Successfully Concludes

672 Participants from 39 Affiliates Join the Event
Practical Applications to Be Reviewed

SK announced on the 16th that it successfully concluded the '2026 SK AI Hackathon,' which was held for all SK members.

On the 15th, the finalist teams gathered for a commemorative photo at the ‘2026 SK AI Hackathon’ held for SK members. SK

The SK AI Hackathon has been organized for six years by SK's educational platform, mySUNI, with the goal of solving various challenges within the group through members’ transition to artificial intelligence (AX). The event has been running annually since 2021.

This year, the event was divided into an AI Solution League and an AI Idea League. The AI Solution League is a practical competition in which teams of two to three members propose solutions to on-site problems or new business ideas and develop them into functioning services using AI. A total of 672 participants from 39 affiliates formed 271 teams to join the league.

The AI Idea League was organized as a contest to submit and evaluate 735 real-world cases that had already applied AI to work practices.

After a month and a half of preliminary and main rounds, 10 teams advanced to the finals, which were held on September 14 and 15 in a two-day, overnight, immersive project-advancement format. The judging panel, composed of five external experts such as AI-specialized company CEOs and university professors, evaluated the teams by investing a virtual fund of KRW 1.5 billion assigned to each judge in the most promising teams.

The grand prize was awarded to the 'SynthOS' team, composed of three members from SK Innovation. The team presented an AI agent capable of independently planning and optimizing the repetitive experiments required to create new materials or raw ingredients.

The judges gave high marks, noting that the AI agent could act as the core brain for an unmanned autonomous laboratory and help establish an operational foundation for the lab by accumulating experimental know-how.

mySUNI plans to discuss with relevant departments whether the solutions of the finalist teams can be applied to real work sites.

Park Sangkyu, President of mySUNI, said, "Despite the limited time, it was impressive that participants could implement highly sophisticated AI agents and services. I hope that everyone who participated will continue to grow as pioneers who lead various AX initiatives that SK Group needs in the future."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.