OpenAI is deepening cooperation with Samsung Electronics as it develops its own chips, expanding the relationship across semiconductors and enterprise AI services, Reuters reported from a Seoul press conference on September 9. Harrison Kim, general manager of OpenAI Korea, said one of the areas of strongest progress with Samsung is “joint production and research on the next-generation chips we are developing,” without elaborating on architectures, process nodes, or timelines.
Samsung said in a statement it could not confirm information related to customers. In June, OpenAI unveiled Jalapeño, its first custom inference chip designed with Broadcom and slated for manufacture at TSMC. Last year Samsung and SK Hynix signed letters of intent to supply memory for OpenAI’s Stargate data-center project. Kim said memory demand will keep rising as more advanced chips enable faster, more complex computing, making South Korean suppliers a priority for the local office.
Kim also called Samsung one of the largest-scale ChatGPT deployments globally, with employees in Korea and overseas using the product across R&D, marketing, and sales. OpenAI said ChatGPT Enterprise users at South Korean companies and institutions rose about 28-fold by the end of August from a year earlier, without giving absolute counts. South Korea had the most paying ChatGPT subscribers outside the United States as of late last year, OpenAI previously said. This brief covers the September 9 Reuters Seoul wire; product specs for the Samsung chip work were not disclosed.