SK's Choi Taewon Has Lunch with Sam Altman... Did They Discuss AI Cooperation?
SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won reportedly met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who is visiting South Korea.
SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman walk together after their meeting at The Plaza Hotel Seoul in Jung-gu, Seoul, on the morning of Feb. 4, 2025. Yonhap News
View original imageAccording to business and other sources on October 31, Chairman Choi had lunch with Altman in Seoul that day. Senior executives from SK hynix and SK Telecom are also reported to have attended the meeting.
The specific details of their discussions were not disclosed. However, they may have discussed the progress and future plans for cooperation on projects already in the works, including the supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and the construction of AI data centers.
In October 2025, SK Group and OpenAI signed a strategic partnership to expand global AI infrastructure. At the time, the two companies signed a letter of intent (LOI) on memory supply and a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on cooperation to build an AI data center in South Korea's southwestern region.
Following the agreement, SK Group decided to participate as a key partner in OpenAI's "Stargate" project, a major AI infrastructure development initiative.
SK hynix announced plans to establish a production system capable of responding to OpenAI's request for HBM supply of up to 900,000 units per month, based on DRAM wafers. SK Telecom agreed to jointly build an AI data center in the southwestern region with OpenAI and collaborate on developing AI service use cases and next-generation data center technologies.
Chairman Choi and CEO Altman also met at the "AI Summit" in San Francisco in July 2026, where they discussed the direction of medium- to long-term cooperation in AI infrastructure.
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Meanwhile, Samsung held a meeting with its presidents after inviting CEO Altman to the Samsung Human Resources Development Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, the same day. Around 50 presidents from key Samsung affiliates in electronics, finance, and biotechnology, including Samsung Electronics, attended to discuss how AI will change corporate management and strategies for future businesses.
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