President Lee Jae Myung (R) shakes hands with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ahead of their talks at the presidential office in Seoul on Oct. 1, 2025. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 2 (Korea Bizwire) — OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman met with South Korea’s top corporate leaders this week to enlist Samsung and SK Group as cornerstone partners in the U.S. startup’s multibillion-dollar artificial-intelligence infrastructure plan.
Altman sat down Wednesday with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won in Seoul, ahead of a meeting with President Lee Jae-myung, underscoring South Korea’s ambition to rank among the world’s top three AI powerhouses.
The visits come as OpenAI, together with Oracle Corp. and SoftBank, has laid out a plan to spend at least $500 billion on data centers, chips and infrastructure through a new joint venture known as Stargate.
Samsung said it has signed a letter of intent with OpenAI to support the project, drawing in units from semiconductors to shipbuilding. Samsung Electronics will commit memory and system chips, including a guaranteed supply of low-power DRAM—critical for the nearly 900,000 wafers of high-performance memory OpenAI is expected to require each month.
President Lee Jae Myung (far R) talks with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (4th from L) during their meeting at the presidential office in Seoul on Oct. 1, 2025. Also attending the meeting are Samsung Electronics Co. Chairman Lee Jae-yong (3rd from L) and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won (2nd from L). (Yonhap)
Its IT arm, Samsung SDS, will co-develop AI data centers and enterprise AI services, while Samsung C&T and Samsung Heavy Industries will explore carbon-reduced offshore data center construction.
SK Group also signed on, pledging to provide high-bandwidth memory chips through SK hynix and to collaborate on a new AI data center in South Korea, dubbed “Stargate Korea.” Chey said SK’s goal is to leverage its chip and cloud assets “to proactively participate in global AI infrastructure innovation and reinforce South Korea’s competitiveness.”
The Ministry of Science and ICT inked a separate memorandum with OpenAI covering workforce training, startup support and government AI adoption. Officials said the partnership is designed to plug Korean companies into OpenAI’s global projects while accelerating domestic digital transformation.
For OpenAI, the partnerships secure a foothold in South Korea’s industrial ecosystem just as competition in AI infrastructure is heating up. For Samsung and SK, the deals lock them into the supply chain of one of the most resource-intensive tech undertakings to date, deepening their roles as global enablers of the AI boom.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
