Samsung Electronics held its 57th annual general meeting of shareholders at Suwon Convention Center on Tuesday and unveiled its 2026 AI business direction.

Jun Young-hyun (전영현), vice chairman and chief executive who chaired the meeting, shared last year's management performance. "Despite a difficult domestic and external environment last year, the company achieved record revenue of 333.6 trillion won," he said. "The share price also rose sharply, and the market value surpassed 1,000 trillion won for the first time for a South Korean company," he said.

He stressed that the company is continuing facility investment and R&D spending to secure future technologies to meet AI demand, without being complacent. Samsung Electronics invested 37.7 trillion won in research and development last year, its largest-ever amount.

On boosting shareholder value, he said the company plans to pay regular annual dividends of 9.8 trillion won for 2025 along with additional dividends of 1.3 trillion won. On division strategies, he defined the DS division as the world's only semiconductor company capable of a "one-stop solution" from logic to memory, foundry and packaging, and said it will build technological competitiveness to secure leadership in the AI semiconductor market.

The company also presented its strategy for the DX division. Jun said the company will expand AI-applied products and organically integrate AI technology across all functions and services to provide customers with the best AI experience, leading the AI transition.

Six agenda items were put to a vote, including partial changes to the articles of incorporation, approval of financial statements, appointment of inside director Kim Yong-kwan (김용관), appointment of outside director Heo Eun-nyeong (허은녕) as an audit committee member, approval of the ceiling on directors' remuneration, and approval of plans to hold and dispose of treasury shares. Lee Jae-yong's return as a registered director again failed to materialise.

A proposal to change the articles of incorporation so directors' terms can be shortened from "3 years" to "up to 3 years" was also submitted at this meeting. It is a measure to defend management control as cumulative voting becomes mandatory from Sept. 10 under a revision to the Commercial Act. Under cumulative voting, when appointing two or more directors, shareholders receive voting rights equal to the number of directors to be elected per share held and can concentrate them on a specific candidate. It is a mechanism to increase the influence of minority shareholders on the board, and if terms can be adjusted flexibly, the terms of directors elected through cumulative voting can be shortened to secure management stability.

After the agenda was handled, Jun, head of the DS division, and Roh Tae-moon (노태문), president and head of the DX division, each shared their division's 2026 business strategy with shareholders. Key executives including the chief financial officer, chief technology officer and heads of each business also attended and held direct talks with shareholders. Sign-language interpretation for the hearing-impaired, braille booklets for the visually impaired and consecutive English interpretation for foreigners were also provided on site.

Samsung Electronics has operated a pre-voting electronic voting system since 2020. For this meeting, it ran electronic voting from March 8 to 17 to support the exercise of voting rights by shareholders who did not come in person. An online live broadcast for shareholders not attending in person was also offered by prior application.

An exhibition space for Samsung Electronics products also operated at one side of the venue. Attendees could check semiconductor products such as HBM4 and Exynos 2600, as well as the Galaxy S26, Galaxy Z TriFold, Bespoke AI home appliances, Micro RGB TV and transparent micro LED. It also operated a "cheering message wall" that introduced shareholder messages in real time on a large LED display.