Jay Y. Lee, Chey Tae-won, Euisun Chung, and Lee Hae-jin to Meet for AI Summit in the U.S., Expanding Beyond "Kkanbu" Collaborations

OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs May Attend
Meeting Likely on the 24th Near Silicon Valley, U.S.
Potential for Building a "Full-Stack Alliance" in the AI Industry

Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Euisun Chung, and Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin are scheduled to hold an artificial intelligence (AI) meeting in the United States with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The leaders of companies representing key pillars of the global AI industry—from memory semiconductors and graphics processing units (GPUs), to AI data centers, generative AI services, robotics, and autonomous driving—are expected to gather in one place to discuss collaboration.

According to industry sources on July 22, leaders from Samsung, SK, Naver, and Nvidia are preparing to meet in a roundtable format near Silicon Valley in the United States this week. July 24 has been cited as the most likely date for the meeting. Reports suggest that Chairman Lee, Chairman Chey, Chairman Chung, Chairman Lee, and CEO Huang will all attend, with the possible participation of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, also being discussed.

In the business community, if this meeting comes to fruition, it is viewed as the first time that leaders from each sector—memory and GPU in the global AI market, and generative AI services—will gather in the same place. Notably, CEO Huang visited Korea just over a month ago, where he met with key executives of Samsung, SK, Hyundai Motor, LG, and Naver, and is now returning for another meeting in the United States with these companies. This move is interpreted as a deliberate effort to reinforce partnerships with Korean AI companies.

OpenAI and Anthropic, through ChatGPT and Claude respectively, are leading the generative AI market. In memory, Samsung and SK are the key players; for GPUs and AI computing platforms, it's Nvidia; and for generative AI services, it's Naver, OpenAI, and Anthropic. With all these central companies coming together, there are expectations that they could lay the groundwork for a "full-stack alliance" that connects all aspects of the AI industry. At the same time, Hyundai Motor, as a core customer for "physical AI" such as autonomous driving, robotics, and smart factories, could also expand collaboration into hardware areas—such as mobility, manufacturing, and robotics—beyond software.

As the center of competitiveness in AI shifts from the performance of individual semiconductors to the optimization of data centers, power, cooling, cloud, and AI models as integrated systems, inter-company collaboration is evolving beyond the simple supplier-customer relationship to joint design. To improve power efficiency and computation performance, it is essential to design the next-generation AI accelerator—from the development stage—alongside the GPU, high-bandwidth memory (HBM), foundry, servers, and AI models.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are supplying Nvidia with high-performance memory, including HBM, and both companies' HBM4 is set to be installed in the next-generation AI accelerator "Vera Rubin," slated for release in the second half of the year. Samsung and SK are also providing memory for OpenAI's in-house AI chips. Foundry partnerships are also expanding. Samsung Electronics is handling the foundry production for Nvidia's inference language processing unit (LPU) "Grok 3," and recently, it has been reported that Anthropic is in talks to produce AI chips using Samsung Electronics' 2-nanometer process.

Naver is also working with Nvidia to promote a global AI factory business that combines GPU infrastructure, cloud, AI models, and services. Hyundai Motor, continuing its autonomous driving partnership with Nvidia, is preparing to establish an "AI Valley" in Saemangeum, South Korea.

If the meeting proceeds as planned, it is expected that a wide range of collaboration topics will be discussed—not only the supply of next-generation HBM and AI accelerators, but also AI factories, sovereign AI, and cooperation in physical AI areas such as autonomous driving and robotics. If the leaders of OpenAI and Anthropic also participate, this would be an extraordinary opportunity for companies producing AI semiconductors, GPU platforms, and AI model developers to coordinate mid- to long-term investments and technology roadmaps together.

Especially within the industry, there is a growing consensus that Korea has established itself not only as a global AI memory semiconductor supplier but also as a core AI infrastructure partner. Moves by major US tech companies to expand cooperation with domestic semiconductor firms are seen as evidence that the competitiveness of Korean companies has risen significantly.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.