South Korea's Lee announces $950 bn chip deals with US tech giants

During President Lee Jae Myung’s San Francisco visit, South Korean chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix said they will unveil long‑term memory‑chip supply contracts with leading U.S. technology firms. The agreements are part of a $950 billion (≈ 1,375 trillion won) cooperation programme announced at an AI summit that also covered AI data‑centre investment. SK Hynix will supply about $750 billion of advanced memory chips, while Samsung will provide roughly $200 billion to Broadcom. The partnership also envisages a 5‑gigawatt AI data‑centre build‑out requiring around 2 million GPUs, with Naver planning a $10 billion AI factory in collaboration with Nvidia. Korean executives – including Samsung Chairman Jay Y. Lee, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae‑won and Hyundai Motor’s Euisun Chung – met U.S. CEOs Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Dario Amodei (Anthropic) and Hock Tan (Broadcom). Lee framed the deals as cementing South Korea’s role as a trusted AI‑chip production base and a strategic partner for the United States.