Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong (left) and Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won (right) speak with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at a Korea-US business roundtable reception held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in July last year. [Yonhap]
Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong (left) and Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chairman and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won (right) speak with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at a Korea-US business roundtable reception held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., in July last year. [Yonhap]

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and Naver board Chairman Lee Hae-jin are set to meet Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and other American AI industry executives in the United States.

The gathering of leaders from Korea's and the United States' AI sectors will be the first since the so-called "samgyeopsal," or grilled pork belly, meeting held in Seoul in early June — roughly 40 days ago.

The meeting comes immediately after Korea announced three major mega projects — centered on semiconductors, data centers and physical AI — involving vast investment commitments, and the two sides are expected to discuss further cooperation in carrying them out.

According to business circles Wednesday, executives from Samsung Electronics, SK Group, Naver and Nvidia are scheduled to meet in Silicon Valley, California, around Friday.

Lee, Chey, Lee Hae-jin and Huang are all expected to attend. The possible participation of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has also been raised.

If the meeting between Lee Jae-yong and Huang takes place, it will be their first in nine months, since the "chimaek," or chicken and beer, meeting held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in October last year. For Chey and Lee Hae-jin, it will be a reunion with Huang in less than two months after a dinner meeting during his visit to Korea last month.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have committed a combined 800 trillion won ($542 billion) to build four additional semiconductor fabs in the Honam region as well as Yongin. Strengthening long-term cooperation with Nvidia — the largest consumer of memory chips — is expected to be a central agenda item.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have established themselves as Nvidia's key supply partners across the memory chip spectrum, including HBM and low-power DRAM. With a prolonged memory supply crunch showing no signs of easing, reinforcing ties with the two Korean chipmakers is more critical than ever for Nvidia to secure stable supply.

OpenAI and Anthropic, whose attendance has also been floated, both maintain close working relationships with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, making the substance of their discussions a subject of considerable interest.

Anthropic, best known for its generative AI model Claude, received investment from Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron as "strategic infrastructure partners" in May.

Samsung Electronics is the only one of the three memory chipmakers that also operates a foundry business, and speculation has long circulated that Anthropic could eventually entrust production of its own AI chips to Samsung's foundry.

Samsung Electronics, which earlier secured an order for Nvidia's new AI inference chip — the Groq 3 LPU — is also reported to be in discussions with Anthropic on cooperation based on a 2-nanometer process, making the outcome of Lee Jae-yong's trip a matter of keen interest.

The three mega projects also call for building AI data centers worth more than 1,000 trillion won across the country, meaning discussions on securing AI chips from Nvidia for server construction are expected to feature prominently. Supply of Nvidia's AI chips is currently delayed due to a shortage, making early procurement a pressing priority for Korean companies.


joze@heraldcorp.com