Ulsan City puts AI transition at core of 2026 industrial strategy

Ulsan’s decision to make “AI transition” a headline economic priority shows how second‑tier industrial cities are internalising AI not as a side project but as core infrastructure. This is a place known for refineries, shipyards and factories, now talking explicitly about grafting AI functionality onto its accumulated industrial capabilities. In practice, that means everything from predictive maintenance and robotics to AI‑optimised logistics and energy use along the value chain. ([ohmynews.com](https://www.ohmynews.com/NWS_Web/View/at_pg.aspx?CNTN_CD=A0003197930&PAGE_CD=R0101))

From an AGI‑race perspective, local industrial policies like this matter because they turn abstract demand for “more compute” into concrete, politically durable use cases. The more cities bake AI into their economic development story, the stronger the constituency for continued deployment of powerful models, even as safety debates intensify. It also diversifies where frontier systems get tested: heavy industry has very different failure modes and data regimes than consumer apps, which will influence what kinds of robustness and control tools vendors must build.

For Korea, Ulsan’s stance complements national ambitions around chips and robotics, potentially creating a regional cluster that demands—and co‑designs—next‑generation embodied and industrial AI systems rather than just office software.