South Korean President Lee Jae Myung (R) meets with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the presidential office in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday. Altman secured a deal with Samsung and SK to buy chips. He also agreed to build data centers in Korea. Photo by Yonhap/EPA
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman signed partnership deals for artificial intelligence with SK Hynix and Samsung during a visit to South Korea Wednesday.
The partnerships will allow the two companies to supply AI-specific memory chips for the Stargate project, a $500 billion venture between OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank for AI infrastructure in the United States.
The meeting also included President Lee Jae Myung at the presidential office in Seoul. Altman and Lee reached an agreement to set up two new AI data centers. Korea has growing AI demands and not enough computing power to meet them. ChatGPT’s popularity has spiked in Korea, where its monthly active users were more than 20 million in August.
“We’re very excited to get to build Stargate Korea and data centers with our wonderful partners to support the sovereign AI needs of Korea,” Altman said.
OpenAI estimated that the Stargate Project will need up to 900,000 high-performance DRAM chips per month, including high-bandwidth memory semiconductors. The two companies said they are planning to overhaul their production to meet Stargate’s demand.
“The spread of AI is impossible without semiconductors, and since Samsung and SK play a major role in the global semiconductor market, the partnership forged by the three companies is a mutually beneficial one that will lead the global market,” Lee said. “I expect the collaboration with OpenAI to expand domestic exports and create employment opportunities.”
Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong said the partnership will help Korea “stand at the center of the global AI paradigm and pioneer a new future. Samsung will continue to contribute to Korea’s national AI vision, taking the lead not only in ensuring a stable semiconductor supply but also in fostering a solid AI ecosystem that includes small and venture businesses.”
In June, SK group made a deal with Amazon Web Services to build an AI data Center in Ulsan, about 250 miles south of Seoul. The Ulsan city government said the two companies would invest $5.1 billion to build a 41-megawatt facility by 2027 and expand it to 103 megawatts by 2029.
Soon after, IGIS Asset Management, Korea’s top real estate investment firm, said it will invest $1.3 billion to build two AI data centers in Busan, about 280 miles south of Seoul. Construction of the 40- and 80-megawatt data centers will begin in late 2026, with operations to start in late 2029.
