Samsung Electronics chairman may meet with CEOs of Apple, Google, OpenAI and others
Every summer, the world's billionaires converge on one place: the Sun Valley Conference. Attention is now turning to whether Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong will attend the global business gathering, which opens Tuesday.
The Sun Valley Conference is an annual international business meeting hosted by US investment bank Allen & Company since 1983. Its official name is the Allen & Co. Conference, but it is commonly known as the Sun Valley Conference after the Idaho resort town where it is held. Leaders from media, technology, finance and other industries gather to discuss solutions for a sustainable and resilient world.
This year's event, scheduled for Tuesday through July 11 local time, is expected to draw Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Senior Vice President John Ternus — who has been mentioned as a candidate to succeed Cook — as well as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, according to foreign media and Yonhap News Agency.
Lee is also expected to attend for a second consecutive year, observers say.
Last year, Lee attended alongside Lee Won-jin, then Samsung Electronics president and head of the Global Marketing Office and Visual Display division, to explore ways to strengthen AI business cooperation and identify new growth engines.
The conference holds particular significance for Lee. From 2002, when he was a senior manager, through 2016, he attended every year without exception, building his global network. A meeting with Apple CEO Cook at the 2014 conference led to a landmark settlement in which Samsung Electronics and Apple dropped their smartphone patent litigation outside the United States.
While in detention in 2017, Lee told a court that "the Sun Valley trip is the busiest and most important business trip of the year," underscoring the event's significance.
After missing the conference for years following the influence-peddling scandal, Lee returned to Sun Valley last year for the first time in nine years, signaling a full resumption of his business activities. Shortly after he returned from that US trip, the Supreme Court handed down a not-guilty verdict on July 17 last year, clearing him of his remaining legal risk.
won@heraldcorp.com
