Samsung and SK Hynix Join OpenAI's Stargate

Samsung and SK Group signed deals with OpenAI to supply AI infrastructure, including chips and other equipment, for the Stargate project. This gives two of South Korea’s biggest companies a major role in the $500 billion project.

OpenAI said the partnerships were struck during meetings between CEO Sam Altman, SK chairman Chey Tae Won, Samsung CEO Young Hyun Jun, and the country’s President Lee Jae-Myung in Seoul, in deals that advance the country’s ambition to become a top-three global AI nation. Through the collaborations, the Korean companies will focus on increasing the supply of advanced memory chips essential for next-generation AI and expanding data centre capacity in the country.

Samsung and SK Hynix plan to scale up production of advanced memory chips, targeting 900,000 DRAM wafers per month, critical for powering OpenAI’s advanced models. The projection is more than double the current HBM industry capacity. This underscores the immense semiconductor demand driven by the Stargate project, SK Group added in its own statement.

As part of a series of deals, OpenAI stated it will explore the development of next-generation AI data centres in the nation. With SK Telecom, it will look into building a data centre in Korea, and it has penned agreements with Samsung’s other businesses, Samsung SDS, Samsung C&T Corp, and Samsung Heavy Industries, to assess opportunities for additional data centre capacity in the country.

Samsung and SK Group will also look to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise and API capabilities into their operations going forward. “Korea has all the ingredients to be a global leader in AI—incredible tech talent, world-class infrastructure, strong government support, and a thriving AI ecosystem,” Altman said after signing the contracts.