According to media reports citing sources, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visited South Korea this week to meet with executives from Samsung and SK Hynix. According to people familiar with the matter, Altman arrived in Seoul on Thursday night. According to the itinerary, he is scheduled to visit Samsung Electronics' chip manufacturing plant in Pyeongtaek on Friday and meet with executives of Samsung's semiconductor business, as well as the heads of foundry, content and system LSI departments.
It is reported that Altman also plans to meet with SK Hynix CEO and SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won to discuss cooperation methods.
It's unclear what the purpose of Altman's trip to South Korea is. Earlier media reports stated that Altman is seeking to raise huge funds for a chip company, reaching tens of billions of dollars. His goal is to use these funds to build a factory network to produce artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
Samsung Electronics, a leader in the chip manufacturing industry, has been expanding its chip foundry business in recent years in the hope of grabbing more orders from TSMC. According to reports, Samsung Electronics, TSMC and Intel are all expected to become potential partners of OpenAI.
The South Korean government this month outlined an ambitious blueprint to build the world's largest wafer production base near Seoul. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix will invest 622 trillion won ($466 billion) by 2047 to build 13 new chip factories and three research facilities, which are expected to produce 7.7 million wafers per month by 2030.
Specifically, Samsung Electronics plans to invest 500 trillion won by 2047, including building 6 new wafer fabs in Yongin, 3 new wafer fabs in Pyeongtaek, and 3 new research wafer fabs in Gixing.
SK Hynix will invest 122 trillion won in the same period to build four new wafer fabs in Yongin.