OpenAI ropes in Korean giants Samsung and SK Hynix to feed its AI megaproject

OpenAI has persuaded two of South Korea's chip titans to fuel its bid to build the biggest AI engine yet.

ChatGPT factory OpenAI confirmed this week that Samsung and SK Hynix will join the Stargate initiative, pledging to supply vast quantities of advanced memory chips and to collaborate on local AI datacenters. The agreement, announced in tandem with Seoul officials, solidifies Korea's role as a core supplier in what OpenAI boss Sam Altman modestly described as the largest infrastructure project since the dawn of the internet.

Stargate itself, unveiled in January, is OpenAI's blueprint for a global buildout of AI infrastructure, with as much as half a trillion dollars funnelled into new datacenters and compute capacity over the next four years. The company started by cutting a $100 billion check and striking a headline deal with Oracle to deploy gigawatts of datacenter power in the US. But ...