Samsung and SK Hynix, South Korean memory giants, are set to announce major deals involving “very large sums” with leading U.S. tech companies, according to a July 24 Bloomberg report, citing comments from the country's presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom. According to the report, Kim did not disclose the financial details of the deal but said the announcements would likely cover strategic partnerships, memorandums of understanding, and long-term supply deals on memory chips.
The deals are set to be announced during South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s visit to Silicon Valley for the high-profile San Francisco AI submit — beginning today, Friday July 24 — which is bringing together industry leaders, such as Samsung Chief Lee Jae-yong, SK groups chairman Chey Tae-won, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, as well as the CEOs of Open AI, Anthropic, and Broadcom among others.
South Korea announced an $880 billion investment plan last month — backed by SK Hynix, Naver, and Samsung — aimed at strengthening the country's AI leadership through aggressive chip production expansions, data center buildouts, and physical AI. Kim said the South Korean President’s visit and involvement in the summit will serve as a catalyst to seal several long-running negotiations between the country's top tech entities and their U.S. counterparts, while also turning a significant portion of last month's planned investment into concrete projects.
The president is set to hold separate meetings with Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Broadcom Inc.'s Hock Tan, all U.S. companies. The U.S. has also urged Samsung and SK Hynix to expand their chip production in the country, but Kim stated that there had been no formal requests from Washington. According to Kim, much of South Korea's domestic expansion is driven by strong demand from U.S. companies, which accounted for 80% – 90% of underlying orders.
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