The meeting at the U.S. tech company’s headquarters came in the wake of an announcement of a deal on ChatGPT.

Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong, left, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pose for a photo during a meeting at OpenAI headquarters in San Francisco on July 25.
OPENAI

Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Saturday morning at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco, the AI company said.

While OpenAI did not disclose the agenda or details of their discussions, industry observers believe the two sides likely discussed expanding cooperation in AI infrastructure, including high bandwidth memory, dynamic random-access memory and advanced foundry manufacturing.

They may also have discussed ways to accelerate Samsung’s companywide AI transformation by applying generative AI across Samsung’s business operations.

OpenAI announced in June that it would provide ChatGPT and Codex to all Samsung employees in Korea as well as all employees in the company’s Device eXperience Division worldwide. The agreement is among one of the largest enterprise deployments OpenAI has signed to date.

Samsung plans to integrate OpenAI’s services into software development, marketing, product development and manufacturing, as well as nontechnical functions aimed at improving employee productivity.

Samsung and OpenAI also signed a strategic partnership agreement in October of last year and have since been working together to expand production of advanced memory chips and build next-generation AI infrastructure.

OpenAI has described its cooperation framework with the Korean government, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix as its first state-level strategic partnership announced in the Asia-Pacific region.

Ahead of his meeting with Samsung’s Lee, Altman met President Lee Jae Myung on Friday and attended the San Francisco AI Summit.

BY CHO MUN-GYU [kim.jiye@joongang.co.kr]

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.