SK successfully concludes ‘2026 SK AI Hackathon’… The target is SK Innovation's 'SynthOS' team.

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Minji Kim = SK announced on the 16th that the '2026 SK AI Hackathon', which was held for all members, was successfully concluded.

The SK AI Hackathon has been held for the sixth year by SK's education platform mySUNI, with the goal of solving difficult problems within the group with members' AX (artificial intelligence conversion) capabilities starting in 2021.

This year, it was divided into the AI ​​Solution League and AI Idea League.

The AI ​​Solution League is a practical league where members work as a team to propose problems or new business ideas in the field and implement or solve them into actual, working services using AI. 672 members from 39 affiliates participated in 271 teams.

The 10 teams that went through a month and a half of preliminaries and finals held the finals on the 14th and 15th in an intensive immersion method to advance their projects.

The evaluation was conducted by a five-member panel of judges consisting of external experts, such as AI company representatives and university professors, who distributed 1.5 billion worth of virtual investment credits granted to each person to promising teams.

The grand prize went to the ‘SynthOS’ team created by three SK Innovation members. They introduced an AI agent that independently conducts repetitive experiments to create new materials or raw materials, from planning to optimization.

The judging panel gave high praise to the AI ​​agent for its ability to serve as the core brain of an unmanned autonomous laboratory and to secure the foundation for laboratory operation through the accumulation of experimental know-how.

My Sunny plans to discuss with the working department whether the solutions of the finalist teams can be applied to actual workplaces.