OpenAI and several Samsung companies have announced a letter of intent to form a strategic partnership aimed at advancing global artificial intelligence (AI) data center infrastructure and developing new technologies. The agreement brings together Samsung Electronics, Samsung SDS, Samsung C&T, and Samsung Heavy Industries with OpenAI to collaborate across areas such as semiconductors, data centers, shipbuilding, cloud services, and maritime technologies.
A signing ceremony took place at Samsung’s headquarters in Seoul. Attendees included Young Hyun Jun, Vice Chairman & CEO of Samsung Electronics; Sung-an Choi, Vice Chairman & CEO of Samsung Heavy Industries; Sechul Oh, President & CEO of Samsung C&T; and Junehee Lee, President & CEO of Samsung SDS.
Samsung Electronics will act as a strategic memory partner for OpenAI’s Stargate initiative by supplying advanced semiconductor solutions. With OpenAI’s memory requirements expected to reach up to 900,000 DRAM wafers per month, the company plans to meet this demand through its range of high-performance and energy-efficient DRAM products.
Samsung also offers expertise in memory, logic chips, foundry services, advanced chip packaging, and integration between memory and system semiconductors. These capabilities are intended to support the full AI workflow from training to inference for OpenAI.
Samsung SDS has entered into discussions with OpenAI about jointly developing AI data centers and providing enterprise AI services. The company will use its experience in advanced data center technology to work with OpenAI on designing and operating Stargate AI data centers. Under the letter of intent, Samsung SDS can now offer consulting and management services for businesses integrating OpenAI’s models into their systems. Additionally, it has signed a reseller partnership for OpenAI’s services in Korea and plans to help local companies adopt ChatGPT Enterprise offerings.
Samsung C&T and Samsung Heavy Industries will focus on advancing global AI data centers by collaborating with OpenAI on floating data center projects. Floating data centers are seen as a way to address land scarcity while reducing cooling costs and carbon emissions. However, technical challenges have limited their deployment so far. Both companies plan to explore further opportunities in floating power plants and control centers alongside floating data center infrastructure.
"Starting with the landmark partnership with OpenAI, Samsung plans to fully support Korea’s goals to become one of the world’s top three nations in AI and create new opportunities in the field."
Samsung is also considering wider use of ChatGPT within its own operations as part of efforts toward workplace AI transformation.
"OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company. Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity," according to information provided by the organization.