Su holds meetings with Jun Young-hyun and Kwak Noh-jung despite shortened visit

Talks focus on strengthening HBM supply chain ahead of AI accelerator ramp-up

AMD chief emphasizes 'three-to-five-year-plus' long-term partnership

AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su visits Samsung Electronics' Seocho office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on Wednesday to meet with Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun, Samsung's co-CEO and head of its semiconductor division, and other senior executives. [Joint press corps]
AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su visits Samsung Electronics' Seocho office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on Wednesday to meet with Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun, Samsung's co-CEO and head of its semiconductor division, and other senior executives. [Joint press corps]

AMD Chair and CEO Lisa Su, on her second visit to South Korea this year, met separately with the heads of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix to discuss memory chip supply and partnership strategies, sources said. Su had originally planned a two-day trip but cut it to one day after an urgent schedule arose in Washington. That she still found time to meet both Korean chipmakers underscores how central their cooperation is to AMD's AI semiconductor strategy.

Su visited Samsung Electronics' Seocho office in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on Wednesday afternoon, where she held talks with Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun, Samsung's co-CEO and head of its semiconductor division, along with other senior executives.

Kim Jae-jun, a senior vice president heading the strategy and marketing office of Samsung's DS memory business division, and Cho Sang-yeon, a senior vice president overseeing Samsung's DS Americas operations, greeted Su when she arrived at the Seocho office at around 4:40 p.m.

Su was accompanied by AMD Chief Technology Officer Joseph Macri and Jack Huynh, AMD's senior vice president and general manager of the computing and graphics group.

When reporters asked Su who she was meeting on Wednesday, she said, "We have many partners at Samsung," adding that she would be discussing "our broader partnership."

Asked whether she would be meeting Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, she declined to answer directly, saying it was "too much information."

During her first visit to South Korea in March, Su met with Lee over dinner at Seungjiwon, a private guesthouse in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, where they discussed cooperation in AI semiconductors.

Before that dinner, she also met with Jun and signed an MOU to expand collaboration in next-generation AI memory and computing technology.

AMD at the time named Samsung Electronics as the preferred supplier of HBM4 — sixth-generation HBM — for its next-generation AI accelerator, the Instinct MI455X.

Samsung Electronics has maintained a steady memory partnership with AMD, supplying both fifth-generation HBM3E and sixth-generation HBM4 for AMD's latest AI accelerators.

With AMD having repeatedly flagged the need to scale up AI accelerator output, speculation has also grown about potential foundry cooperation leveraging Samsung's most advanced manufacturing processes.

Su also met with SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung on Wednesday afternoon, sources said. The two had not met during Su's previous visit to South Korea, making this their first known meeting on Korean soil.

With demand for AI accelerators surging, the industry is watching closely to see whether AMD and SK hynix will forge a new partnership in high-performance memory, including HBM4.

AMD and SK hynix jointly developed the world's first TSV-based HBM and completed their first product in 2014.

Su had earlier said at an AMD Gamer Day event that "AMD has no choice but to rely on the Korean supply chain," calling Samsung Electronics and SK hynix "important partners in achieving AMD's AI data center strategy."

She added that AMD was not looking for short-term partnerships of one to three years, but aimed to build long-term ties spanning three to five years or more, noting that cooperation in South Korea could extend to system components, semiconductor wafers, packaging and memory.


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