OpenAI founder Sam Altman is here in Seoul for a number of events and meetings aimed at advancing AI collaboration.
ChatGPT developer OpenAI is looking to expand its presence in the South Korean market, as Chinese start-up DeepSeek poses a challenge to its position in the tech industry.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during a closed-door workshop held in Seoul on Tuesday said that with its robust semiconductor and energy industries, Korea is a country that is actively adopting artificial intelligence.
This marks Altman’s third visit to South Korea and the first time an official OpenAI event took place in the country.
As part of its efforts to stay competitive, OpenAI announced that it has entered into a joint strategic partnership with South Korea’s leading messaging app operator Kakao.
Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a said on Tuesday, that upcoming key Kakao services such as Kanana, an AI-integrated messenger app, will utilize Open AI’s latest AI technology APIs,.. application programming interfaces that allow developers to integrate OpenAI’s language models such as ChatGPT into their own apps.
But Kakao isn’t the only Korean company OpenAI is planning to work more closely with as Altman also met with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won immediately after the workshop on Tuesday.
Chey and Altman reportedly discussed potential areas of collaboration between OpenAI and SK Group, such as the supply of high-bandwidth memory from SK hynix and the construction of an AI data center by SK Telecom.
And in the afternoon, Altman met with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who flew in from Japan in the morning to attend the meeting.
This comes after SoftBank and OpenAI on Monday agreed to set up a joint venture in Japan, with SoftBank also committing to investing 3 billion U.S. dollars annually to utilize OpenAI’s technology.
The three are expected to discuss ways to expand AI collaboration, namely Samsung Electronics’ potential participation in the Stargate Project, a 500 billion dollar AI infrastructure initiative supported by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Source: Arirang news.
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