Sam Altman Meets 50 Samsung Presidents and SK's Chey; No Memory Terms

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met about 50 presidents of Samsung affiliates and had lunch with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won in Seoul on Oct. 31, and no supply terms were announced.

SBS reported that Altman met the Samsung executives at the Samsung Human Resources Development Institute in Yongin on the theme of how AI will change corporate strategy. Samsung Electronics DS Division head Jeon Young-hyun, AI Center head Song Yong-ho, Samsung SDI President Choi Joo-sun and Samsung Electro-Mechanics President Chang Duk-hyun attended. OpenAI hardware vice president Richard Ho travelled with Altman. SBS said a meeting with Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong was not on the schedule and that Altman left Korea that afternoon after the lunch.

Seoul Economic Daily and The Herald Business, citing business sources, reported that executives of SK hynix and SK Telecom joined the lunch at an undisclosed location. Both said the substance of the talks was not disclosed. That the two sides likely reviewed existing projects, HBM supply and AI data centers, is the papers' own reading, not a statement from SK or OpenAI.

What the 2025 OpenAI Letters of Intent Say

The meetings build on letters of intent from October 2025. SK Group said at the time that SK hynix signed an LOI to supply HBM (high-bandwidth memory) for OpenAI's Stargate project and would build a production system able to meet demand of up to 900,000 DRAM wafers per month. SK Group also said specific volumes and arrangements would be set in later talks. SK Telecom signed a memorandum of understanding on an AI data center in southwestern Korea. SBS reported that Samsung Electronics signed its own LOI with OpenAI the same month.

None of the Oct. 31 reports says those letters have become binding supply contracts, and none gives a wafer count, price or delivery date for this visit. Chey and Altman also met at an AI summit in San Francisco in July, according to Seoul Economic Daily.

Why Altman's Seoul Trip Matters for HBM Supply

The visit lands in a tight market. Samsung said on Oct. 29 that its HBM supply is sold out for 2027, as Voltgrid reported, and SK hynix posted an 83.3T won third-quarter profit, as covered in our SK hynix results story. A buyer that wants HBM at scale has to negotiate with suppliers whose 2027 output is already largely committed.

On Oct. 30, the day before the trip, Altman said on the Cheeky Pint podcast that holding a large share of the world's DRAM in personal computers is "quite terrible" from a global allocation view, because it is in use only about 5% of the time, according to Tom's Hardware, published Oct. 30. He added that cloud use should be maximized in a supply-constrained market. Tom's Hardware noted that OpenAI's main business runs in data centers, so the remark also defends that model.

What is not confirmed yet

No agreement, volume or price came out of either meeting. SK and OpenAI did not comment on what was discussed at the lunch, and the Samsung session was described as a talk on AI and management, not a supply negotiation. Whether the 2025 letters of intent will turn into firm HBM or DRAM orders, and when, remains unreported.