The International Machine Learning Association (ICML) 2026 conference opened at COEX in Gangnam-gu, Seoul on the 6th, with a "job posting" space filled with handouts from companies recruiting talent, including AI companies like Neoclouds and research institutes such as Epoch AI, as well as a Chinese university research institute. According to ICML 2026 organizers on the 11th, the number of field participants registered was 20,456, making it the largest ICML conference over the past decade and the first time official ICML tickets sold out. Companies participated as sponsor booths to promote research and find talent, with OpenAI hosting a booth where Noam Brown, vice president of OpenAI research, held a session on "reinforcement learning." OpenAI also rented a restaurant in COEX, Devils Door, for a networking event with AI semiconductor company Cerebras, and its safety organization hosted a "mixer" promoting that "the teams actively hiring are attending."