Shinsegae Group Chairman Chung Yong-jin attended the launch of the Foundry School, a US State Department and Stanford University program for developing entrepreneurs and engineers in manufacturing and advanced technology. Officially invited by US Vice President JD Vance and the State Department, Chung used the event in Washington to discuss US-South Korea cooperation in advanced industries and AI supply chains with senior government and business figures. The ceremony was held on the 3rd, local time, at the Trump Peace Institute and included Vice President Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jacob Helberg, Meta President of Global Affairs Dina Powell McCormick, Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra, and Applied Materials CEO Gary Dickerson. The program is intended to connect government, universities, and industry, and forms part of the United States-led Pax Silica framework for an allied technology ecosystem spanning semiconductors, AI, advanced manufacturing, and energy. Shinsegae's partnership with US AI company Reflection AI is central to that agenda. The companies signed an agreement in March for a large-scale AI data center in South Korea and are working on follow-up steps, including a joint venture and site evaluation. The project was previously presented as the first initiative under the State Department's AI export program, launched under the banner of global expansion of trustworthy AI. The investment scale, site and joint-venture timetable remain undecided, leaving execution as the key test of Shinsegae's move from retail into AI infrastructure.