Major LG Group affiliates have in succession identified the robotics industry, including humanoids, as a new growth engine. There are forecasts that LG Group’s moves related to robotics will accelerate further this year.

LG Electronics CEO Ryu Jae-cheol on the 23rd declared this year “the first year of the full-fledged robot business” at the 24th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders held at LG Twin Towers in Yeouido, Seoul. CEO Ryu stated, “Among businesses related to artificial intelligence (AI), we will focus on four key areas: robots, AI data center cooling solutions, smart factories, and AI homes.” He also said, “We stand at an inflection point where AI is changing the foundation of business and global supply chains are being reorganized,” adding, “We will build a growth base that is resilient to external environments by shifting to a high-performance business structure based on fundamental competitiveness.”

LG Electronics will target the four areas mentioned by CEO Ryu, including robots. First, it will launch a business-to-business (B2B) operation designing and producing “actuators,” which account for more than 40% of robot costs, and supplying them to robot manufacturers. Actuators are components corresponding to a robot’s joints, and the more actuators a robot has, the more varied and precise its movements can be. At “CES 2026,” the world’s largest information technology (IT) and home appliance exhibition, LG Electronics unveiled its in-house actuator brand “AXIUM.”

In the AI data center cooling solutions business, LG Electronics has drawn up a plan to become a key partner to global big tech companies with “liquid cooling,” a next-generation technology. In the smart factory business, the company has secured an order backlog of KRW 500 billion within two years of establishing the dedicated “Smart Factory Solution Center” in 2024. For AI homes, its goal is to create “space solutions” that go beyond simple interconnection of home appliances.

On the same day, LG Electronics also disclosed plans to strengthen shareholder returns. The dividend per common share was increased by 35%, from KRW 1,000 last year to KRW 1,350. The company also decided to retire all 6,442 treasury shares.

That day, Moon Hyuk-soo, President of LG Innotek, also held a general meeting of shareholders at the LG Innotek Magok R&D Campus in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, and cited “physical artificial intelligence (AI),” including humanoids, as a new growth driver for the company.

President Moon said, “We are conducting supply negotiations with major customers in the United States and Europe, leveraging ‘composite sensing modules’ such as LiDAR and cameras,” and projected, “The timing for mass production of robot components on a large scale will be around 2027 to 2028.”

LG Innotek is a company that has grown based on mobile optical components. After expanding its business scope to autonomous driving components and substrates for AI semiconductors, it has also begun generating humanoid-related revenue since the beginning of this year. President Moon forecast, “After 2030, when the general public begins using humanoids at home, we will be able to generate meaningful revenue related to this area.”

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