South Korean President Lee Jae-myung met with top executives from major global tech companies in San Francisco to discuss large-scale investments and collaborations in sectors ranging from semiconductors to artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and physical AI. Over the next five years, a total of $950 billion will be invested in semiconductor cooperation alone.
Kim Yong-beom, head of the Presidential Policy Office, announced on July 24 that President Lee held individual meetings with Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA; Hock Tan, CEO of Broadcom; Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI; and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, before attending the 'San Francisco AI Summit.'
This event was organized to enhance the scale and execution of the three mega projects announced last month for South Korea's major leap forward by combining the technology and capital of global big tech firms. The government plans to solidify investment and cooperation across the entire AI stack based on South Korea's semiconductor and AI infrastructure, AI models, and physical AI capabilities.
Attendees at the summit included President Lee, global tech CEOs, Lee Jae-yong, chairman of Samsung Electronics; Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group; Chung Eui-sun, chairman of Hyundai Motor Group; and Lee Hae-jin, chairman of Naver's board. The event attracted over 230 participants, including domestic and international business leaders, researchers, startups, investors, and students.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, conveyed his commitment to collaborating with South Korea in the semiconductor and AI infrastructure sectors through a video message.
In the semiconductor sector, domestic companies and global tech giants have agreed to pursue a total of $950 billion in cooperation.
Samsung Electronics and Broadcom signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for advanced memory semiconductor supply and AI chip production, valued at $200 billion over the next five years. SK will also engage in long-term supply cooperation for advanced memory semiconductors worth $750 billion with global tech firms, including NVIDIA.
The Ministry of Science and ICT and AMD signed an MOU on July 23 to jointly establish and demonstrate AI computing infrastructure that links South Korea's neural processing units (NPU) with AMD's central processing units (CPU) and graphics processing units (GPU). The government views this as a foundation for cooperation that encompasses semiconductor supply and production, next-generation chip co-design, and domestic AI semiconductor validation.
In the AI data center sector, investment cooperation is being pursued to secure approximately 5GW of infrastructure and around 2 million GPUs based on NVIDIA's B200 standard.
SK Telecom will collaborate with NVIDIA to build and expand AI data centers with a capacity of up to 2GW, prioritizing the allocation of the latest GPU, the Vera Rubin system. They will also pursue investment cooperation for a domestic GW-level AI data center project with Anthropic. Amazon Web Services (AWS) plans to expand its existing Ulsan AI data center project into a major domestic hub to secure GW-level AI computing capacity.
Naver aims to establish a global AI factory worth $10 billion, backed by investments from NVIDIA and Brookfield. Naver will secure $1 billion from NVIDIA to enhance GPU supply and technical collaboration, while Brookfield will provide up to $9 billion to jointly build the infrastructure and supply chain necessary for operating the GW-level AI factory.
Cooperation plans were also announced in the fields of physical AI, autonomous driving, and AI talent development.
Hyundai Motor Group and NVIDIA will jointly develop a standardized 'robot reference platform' to create and validate AI robots, which will be made available to universities and startups to support various robot development initiatives. Hyundai also announced plans for an autonomous vehicle foundry in collaboration with Waymo.
Samsung SDS and Anthropic signed a strategic partnership agreement to jointly explore new AI markets and train AI engineers.
During the summit, President Lee announced the 'San Francisco AI Declaration,' presenting a vision to make South Korea a global AI production hub and a foundation for innovation. He aims to create a dynamic market that utilizes AI most effectively and to establish a horizontal cooperation network among countries, propelling South Korea to become a global AI hub.
President Lee also emphasized the importance of developing AI responsibly and human-centered, aiming to realize an 'AI basic society' that translates growth outcomes into new opportunities for society as a whole. This initiative seeks to position South Korea as an indispensable core country in the global AI supply chain.
After the event, President Lee dined with Jensen Huang, Hock Tan, Rani Borkar, president of Microsoft Azure Hardware, and other business leaders, including Lee Jae-yong, Chey Tae-won, and Chung Eui-sun.
Participants responded to President Lee's call to action by affirming their commitment to global AI supply chain cooperation. President Lee noted that thanks to corporate investments and collaborations, the country's economic growth rate has significantly increased, achieving its best performance in decades, and urged continued contributions to the development of the industrial ecosystem.
Jensen Huang remarked that South Korea is already a 'global powerhouse' in AI, stating, 'While AI technology is indeed challenging, it is not impossible.' He suggested that investing in South Korea could yield top-tier frontier AI models in a short time and emphasized the need to build both domestic AI models and utilize those from other countries.
Kim Yong-beom stated, 'The government plans to strengthen cooperation between domestic companies and global big tech through these individual meetings, the AI summit, and the dinner, aiming to achieve visible results from the three mega projects at an early stage.'
* This article has been translated by AI.
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