OpenAI, SoftBank tap Samsung for Stargate AI initiative

Samsung Electronics Co. Chairman Lee Jae-yong discussed potential collaboration on the Stargate AI initiative with OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son on Tuesday, according to Son.

At Samsung’s headquarters in Seocho-gu, Seoul, the three companies' leaders began talks on Samsung's possible participation in the Stargate Project in a friendly atmosphere and will continue their discussions on the topic, Son told reporters.

The Stargate Project, announced in January, is a venture with SoftBank and Oracle to spend $500 billion in building new AI data centers for OpenAI in the US. The move was seen as aimed at curbing China's rise in AI. 

The Tuesday meeting was arranged on short notice following an appellate court's ruling that acquitted Samsung’s Lee of all criminal charges – a ruling that removes legal risks he has faced for a decade.

Also on the agenda was the probability of Samsung investing in the Stargate Project, according to industry sources. Altman was said to have suggested Samsung invest in the AI initiative.

When asked about any plans to develop an AI-spefici device in collaboration with Samsung, he told reporters there was no such plan yet.

Rene Haas, CEO of SoftBank's subsidiary ARM and Jun Young-hyun, vice chairman and head of Samsung's semiconductor business, joined the meeting. Son flew to Seoul on Tuesday to have the sit-down with them.

After the meeting, Haas said Samsung Foundry is its good partner, referring to Samsung's contract chipmaking business and South Korea has excellent AI engineers, making its future bright. 

Before the meeting with Lee, widely known by his English name Jay. Y Lee, and Son, Altman said in a joint press conference with Kakao Corp. that several South Korean companies could contribute to the Stargate Project.

This was in response to a question about which Korean companies would be involved in the AI initiative. But he declined to elaborate further.

The ChatGPT maker also had a separate meeting with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and SK Hynix Inc.'s CEO Kwak Noh-jung on Tuesday, where he was said to have proposed SK's investment in the Stargate Project.

THREE-COUNTRY ALLIANCE?

Industry observers see the their gathering as a signal that Samsung will accelerate cooperation with OpenAI and ARM, a semiconductor intellectual property (IP) licensing firm.

With OpenAI developing AI chips using ARM's IPs, it may need to collaborate with Samsung in the semiconductor foundry and high-bandwidth memory fields, the latter known as AI chips.

Their possible collaboration could herald an AI alliance among South Korea, Japan and the US to counter China's growing influence in AI following the January launch of DeepSeek, China's generative AI tool comparable to ChatGPT.

KAKAO'S PARTNERSHIP WITH OPENAI

Early on Tuesday, OpenAI’s Altman announced a strategic collaboration with Kakao Corp. in a joint press conference with the indisputable No. 1 mobile platform in South Korea. Under the partnership, Kakao became OpenAI’s first South Korean strategic partner.

Kakao will integrate OpenAI’s most advanced application programming interface tailored for third-party developers into its major services like KakaoTalk messenger and Kanana, alongside its own large language model.

Kanana is Kakao’s first conversational AI-agent integrated messenger app that understands both one-on-one and group conversations, providing context-based responses.

Kakao will also adopt ChatGPT Enterprise to accelerate its transformation into an AI native company. ChatGPT Enterprise offers enterprise-grade security, privacy and unlimited higher-speed access to GPT-4, the fourth in the series of GPT.

They will cooperate in advancing AI services and developing joint AI products to make AI services more easily accessible.

“We’ll drive the widespread adoption of AI services by delivering innovative customer experience through collaboration with OpenAI,” Chung said in the joint press conference.

Since September last year, Kakao has been discussing collaboration with OpenAI in technology development and joint business opportunities.

(Updated with additional comments from Sam Altman and his meeting with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, as well as remarks from ARM CEO Rene Hass)

Write to Eui-Myung Park, Hyun-Woo Oh, Jeon-Soo Hwan and Hyung-Kyu Kim at uimyung@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.