SK, Samsung, Naver chiefs likely to meet Nvidia CEO in US as AI demand expands
Seoul, July 22
The heads of South Korean tech conglomerates Samsung Electronics, SK Group, and Naver are heading to the United States to meet Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang near Silicon Valley this week, according to a news report by The Korea Herald.
The high-profile meeting, likely scheduled for Friday, is expected to bring together Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Chairman Chey Tae-won, and Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin. Chief executives Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic may also attend the gathering.
The visit marks the second gathering between the executives in six weeks, following Huang's four-day trip to Seoul in early June. During that tour, Huang met leadership from SK, Naver, LG Group, Hyundai Motor Group, and Doosan to disclose expanded agreements. This week's talks in the United States aim to advance those existing initiatives rather than introduce new projects.
The gathering coincides with SK hynix reporting its second-quarter earnings on Friday. The company's upcoming guidance on high-bandwidth memory pricing and capital spending arrives as global memory and chip stocks have declined by double digits from recent peak levels. Each of the three South Korean firms approaches the talks with distinct operational agendas.
SK maintains the largest exposure to Nvidia through a co-development memory deal that expanded in June across four platforms covering artificial intelligence infrastructure, personal AI, and physical AI. SK Telecom also plans a gigawatt-scale AI cloud service in South Korea utilizing Nvidia's DSX platform.
SK Chairman Chey Tae-won said in June that the group aims to finish its first domestic AI factory in 2027 and build in Japan later in the decade.
Naver is building a similar computing model. The company plans to construct an AI factory combining graphics processing units with data center space, power, and cooling, subsequently selling the resulting capacity as a service.
Under Nvidia's plan, Naver will expand its Gak Sejong data center to 55 megawatts and eventually toward gigawatt scale. Naver also joined Nvidia's Nemotron Coalition for open model development as the first Korean member and plans to launch an AI agent platform domestically in the second half of the year.
The news report noted that capacity of that scale requires major anchor tenants like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Samsung's focus centers on contract manufacturing for third-party chip designs. While trailing Taiwan's TSMC in foundry market share, Samsung manufactures the Groq 3 LPU accelerator, which pairs with Nvidia's Vera Rubin systems.
Jun Young-hyun, vice chairman and head of Samsung's Device Solutions division, said his meeting with Huang on June 8 covered next-generation foundry work along with HBM4E and HBM5.
Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong had skipped a dinner Huang held with other corporate chiefs in June. Recent industry reports indicated Anthropic is in early talks to utilize Samsung's 2-nanometer manufacturing process for its own AI chips, though neither firm confirmed the negotiations. Both Korean memory suppliers currently ship HBM4 for Nvidia's Vera Rubin platform, which reached full production in late May.
As per the news report, none of the companies confirmed the meeting or its finalized guest list as of yet.
— ANI
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