OpenAI Korea says chip production and research are among the most advanced areas of cooperation with Samsung Electronics
OpenAI is deepening its semiconductor collaboration with Samsung Electronics as the artificial intelligence company develops its own next-generation chips. OpenAI Korea General Manager Harrison Kim said at a press conference in Seoul on September 9 that chip development is one of the areas where cooperation between the two companies has made the most progress.
Kim said OpenAI and Samsung are working on the joint production and research of next-generation chips being developed by OpenAI. He did not disclose the chips involved, Samsung's specific role, manufacturing arrangements, technical specifications, or expected production timelines. Samsung declined to comment on customer-related information.
OpenAI Korea later clarified that Kim's comments were made in the context of the companies' existing relationship and did not represent the announcement of a new agreement. The relationship already spans enterprise AI adoption as well as semiconductor and infrastructure cooperation announced under OpenAI's Stargate initiative in 2025.
Next-Generation Chip Development
The latest comments point to a potentially broader role for Samsung in OpenAI's push to develop custom semiconductor technology.
OpenAI has been developing its own AI chips as part of a wider effort to build the computing infrastructure needed for its models. The company developed its first custom AI chip, known as Jalapeno, with Broadcom, with production handled by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Samsung's exact role in OpenAI's next generation of chips remains unclear. Neither company has confirmed that Samsung Foundry has secured a manufacturing contract, and Kim did not specify whether Samsung's involvement relates to fabrication, memory, packaging, research, or other semiconductor technologies.
The cooperation comes as demand for advanced computing infrastructure continues to rise across the AI industry, increasing the strategic importance of relationships between AI developers and semiconductor manufacturers.
Existing Stargate Partnership
The chip collaboration builds on agreements announced by OpenAI, Samsung, and SK Group in October 2025 under OpenAI's Stargate initiative.
As part of those agreements, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix agreed to expand the supply of advanced memory chips needed for OpenAI's AI infrastructure, targeting production capacity of 900,000 DRAM wafer starts per month.
Samsung and SK also agreed to explore the deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise and OpenAI's API capabilities across their operations to improve internal workflows and support new applications of artificial intelligence.
The October 2025 agreements positioned Samsung and SK as important semiconductor partners for Stargate, OpenAI's broader effort to secure the computing, memory, energy, and data center infrastructure required to support increasingly capable AI models.
AI Data Center Cooperation in Korea
OpenAI's existing relationship with South Korea also extends to data center infrastructure.
In October 2025, OpenAI signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT to evaluate opportunities to develop AI data centers outside the Seoul Metropolitan Area.
The company also reached a separate agreement with SK Telecom to explore the development of an AI data center in Korea, while Samsung C&T, Samsung Heavy Industries, and Samsung SDS agreed to assess opportunities for additional data center capacity.
The initiatives form part of a broader effort to expand South Korea's role in global AI infrastructure by combining the country's semiconductor manufacturing capabilities with investment in computing and data center capacity.
Enterprise AI Adoption
Samsung Electronics has also become a major enterprise user of OpenAI's technology.
Kim said Samsung is one of OpenAI's largest-scale ChatGPT deployments globally, with employees using the technology across areas including research and development, marketing, and sales.
OpenAI has also reported rapid enterprise adoption in South Korea. The number of ChatGPT Enterprise users across Korean companies and institutions increased roughly 28-fold compared with a year earlier, while South Korea had become ChatGPT's largest market outside the United States by number of paid subscribers by the end of 2025.
The relationship between Samsung and OpenAI therefore extends beyond semiconductor development, combining enterprise AI adoption with cooperation around the infrastructure required to develop and operate advanced AI systems.
The September comments suggest Samsung could play a growing role in OpenAI's custom-chip strategy, although the scope of that involvement remains undisclosed.
No new manufacturing agreement has been announced, and neither company has confirmed specific production responsibilities for OpenAI's next-generation chips. Instead, the development represents a deepening of an existing relationship that already covers enterprise AI adoption, advanced memory supply, and AI infrastructure development.
As OpenAI expands its custom semiconductor efforts alongside partners including Broadcom and TSMC, closer cooperation with Samsung could give the company access to another major player across the global semiconductor supply chain.