Bang Si-hyuk

Bang Si-hyuk (born 1972 in Seoul), nicknamed “Hitman” Bang, founded Big Hit Entertainment in 2005 and built it into HYBE — the K-pop juggernaut behind BTS, one of the best-selling acts of the 21st century. As chairman of a company that industrialized fandom itself, his technology bets tend to become industry roadmaps.

Betting the label on synthetic voices

In 2023 HYBE completed its roughly $32 million acquisition of Supertone, a Korean AI voice-synthesis startup. In a June 2023 Billboard cover story, Bang told the magazine he had “long doubted that the entities that create and produce music will remain human,” framing the acquisition as strategic preparation and teasing a pilot known internally as “Project L.”

That project debuted in May 2023 as MIDNATT — veteran HYBE singer Lee Hyun, whose single “Masquerade” was released simultaneously in Korean, English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and Vietnamese, with Supertone’s technology correcting pronunciation and delivery in languages Lee does not speak. The Korea Herald described it as the opening of HYBE’s “tech-tainment” era. Supertone has since launched AI-powered virtual acts, and in 2025 HYBE’s CEO even delivered fiscal results to investors via an AI clone of himself.

The strategy has critics: K-pop fandoms prize parasocial intimacy with human idols, and some fans reacted to MIDNATT and HYBE’s AI experiments with suspicion that the technology cheapens the artistry the company sells. Bang’s public posture remains unapologetically forward-leaning — treating AI voices as an inevitability to be led rather than resisted.