South Korean President Lee Jae-myung to Meet Jensen Huang and Sam Altman; Samsung, SK Hynix Chiefs to Join as AI and HBM Supply on Agenda

TradingKey - The South Korean presidential office stated on Wednesday, July 22, that South Korean President Lee Jae-myung will visit San Francisco, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Germany from July 24 to August 3. From July 24 to 25, Lee Jae-myung will attend the AI Summit in San Francisco, before embarking on state visits to three South American countries.

At the AI Summit, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung will hold intensive meetings with heads of core companies in the global AI industry chain, including Nvidia ( NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Broadcom ( AVGO) CEO Hock Tan, among others. South Korean business leaders, including Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Chairman Euisun Chung, and NAVER founder Hae-jin Lee, will also attend.

Kim Yong-beom, Chief of the Presidential Policy Office, stated that the trip aims to demonstrate South Korea's commitment to deeply cultivating the AI industry and expanding international cooperation, seeking to secure substantive investment and cooperation outcomes. Among these, the High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) supply chain is likely to be one of the industry's key focuses.

Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix ( SKHY) and Micron ( MU) have all entered the HBM4 supply chain for Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin platform. As Vera Rubin enters the mass production stage, Nvidia's requirements for HBM4 capacity, supply pacing, and product performance continue to rise. For South Korea's two major memory chipmakers, whether they can expand their supply share will directly impact their standing in the new round of AI memory market competition.

In addition to memory chips, foundry cooperation is also one of the focuses this time. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang confirmed at the GTC conference in March this year that Samsung is manufacturing Groq 3 LPU inference chips for Nvidia. The chip, which utilizes a 4nm process, will be featured on the Vera Rubin platform and is expected to enter mass production and launch in the third quarter.

Meanwhile, NAVER is expected to leverage this summit to further advance its AI infrastructure strategy. In June this year, NAVER and Nvidia announced an expansion of their cooperation, planning to build AI infrastructure based on Nvidia's DSX platform, starting with the Sejong GAK Data Center. The initial scale is 55 megawatts, with a long-term goal of expanding to the gigawatt level.

Analysts believe that the South Korean president personally leading a delegation to hold intensive meetings with core global AI companies reflects that AI competition is extending from model capabilities to a comprehensive contest over computing power infrastructure systems. Leveraged by its existing advantages in memory chips and foundry capacity, South Korea is vying for dominance in the global AI supply chain.