OpenAI signs deal with Samsung, SK Hynix to source memory chips for Stargate project
OpenAI has signed a new strategic partnership with Samsung and SK as part of the company’s Stargate initiative. The ChatGPT maker said that the new partnership is aimed at expanding infrastructure critical to AI development globally and in Korea.
“These partnerships will focus on increasing the supply of advanced memory chips essential for next-generation AI and expanding data center capacity in Korea, positioning Samsung and SK as key contributors to global AI infrastructure and supporting Korea’s ambition to become a top-three global AI nation,” OpenAI said in a release.
The letter of intent between the three companies was signed following a meeting between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, South Korea President Lee Jae-myung, Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee, and SK Chairman Chey Tae-won.
The new deal stipulates that Samsung and SK will increase their production to 900,000 DRAM wafers per month to be used in AI data centers and Stargate initiative. The SK Group separately said in a release that this is more than double current industry capacity for high bandwidth memory chips.
Samsung and SK say they will also look to deploy ChatGPT Enterprise and API capabilities into their operations to “improve workflows and support new forms of innovation.”
”Korea has an industrial base like nowhere else in the world that is critical for the development of AI. And so to get to work with such wonderful partners, Samsung and Hynix in many, many ways, but really starting with memory and the needs for that to serve the whole world’s demand for AI,” Altman was quoted as saying by Reuters.
What is the Stargate initiative?
The Stargate project was launched in January 2025 by OpenAI, Softbank,and Oracle to build large-scale AI infrastructure. The companies had committed to investing $500 billion for building a network of AI data centers across the United States by 2029. Reportedly, the name Stargate was inspired by the 1997 TV series of the same name and its scale has led to comparisons with the Manhattan Project.
OpenAI has been catching a lot of eyeballs owing to its announcements in the project recently. In September, the company announced that it had signed a five-year contract to buy $300 billion of compute capacity from Oracle to develop 4.5GW of Stargate data center capacity.
Meanwhile, Nvidia also announced last month that it will invest $100 billion in OpenAI to provide the company with enough computational power needed to train its next generation of AI models.
