South Korea will shift its personal data protection regime toward prevention, requiring regular inspections from the second half of the year for about 1,700 high-risk systems handling large volumes of data. The Personal Information Protection Commission plans punitive fines of up to 10 percent of sales for repeated or serious violations and will tighten fine calculation standards. It will also expand supply-chain checks, institutionalise Privacy by Design, bolster public-sector staffing and budgets, and step up enforcement against illegal distribution of leaked sensitive data.

A worsening shortage of AI chips is prompting major cloud companies to allocate GPU inventory first to internal demand and large customers, increasing pressure on AI startups. Some startups are said to be paying higher costs to access GPU servers. The Information reported that even heavily funded startups are affected, as demand from major AI developers rises and cloud providers limit capacity for smaller clients while raising fees for Nvidia GPU servers.