Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Co have forged initial agreements to supply chips and other gear to OpenAI’s Stargate project, a deal that helps shore up their lead in advanced memory chips for artificial intelligence (AI).
OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman yesterday signed a letter of intent to enlist South Korea’s two biggest companies in the data center construction effort, which involves the biggest players in AI from Nvidia Corp to Oracle Corp. Overall demand from OpenAI could reach 900,000 wafers per month as Stargate expands across the globe, the South Korean companies said in separate statements.
That projection for demand is more than double the current global capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), underscoring Stargate’s enormity and quickening global AI development, SK Hynix said in its statement.
Photo: EPA
OpenAI and Nvidia are helping lead a global push to build data centers for a new generation of AI tools — an effort that is expected to cost trillions of dollars and require chips, servers, cooling systems and copious amounts of electricity. Altman was due in Taipei next, where he is slated to meet with AI linchpins Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), local media reported.
The pact signed in Seoul is aimed at creating a longer-term partnership between the US’ most valuable AI start-up and two Asian companies that, along with Micron Technology Inc, dominate the memorychip sphere. As part of the agreement, the partners would help Seoul develop a domestic AI ecosystem — something many governments are exploring to try and harness a potentially transformative technology.
“I hope that Samsung and SK will play a key role in the global spread of AI together with OpenAI,” South Korean President Lee Jae-myung said in the statement.
Last month, Nvidia announced it would invest as much as US$100 billion in OpenAI to support new data centers and other infrastructure, a blockbuster deal that underscores booming demand for services such as ChatGPT and the computing power needed to make them run.
SK Hynix is the global leader in the provision of HBM essential to Nvidia’s AI accelerators, but Samsung is vying to become a major supplier as well.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Taiwanese firms have increased investment in the Philippines in recent years as Manila’s ties with Washington deepen and global supply chains continue to shift away from China, an expert at the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The Philippines had not been among Taiwanese investors’ top choices in Southeast Asia, CIER Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center director Kristy Hsu (徐遵慈) said at a seminar in Taipei. However, Taiwan’s investment in the country has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching US $257 million last year, a high in recent years, she said. Although Taiwan’s total investment in the Philippines still lags
Intel Corp regards Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) as a longstanding partner, as the US chipmaker would continue outsourcing production of advanced chips to TSMC, Intel chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) said yesterday. “I don’t look at people as competitors. I look at the collaboration... Nvidia is also, you know, a good friend,” Tan told a news conference following his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei. “It’s a very trusted partnership for us... We are a big, top customer for them, and we’re going to continue doing that,” he said, referring to TSMC, the world’s largest foundry
Artificial intelligence (AI) agents would supplant smartphones as the center of people’s digital lives, fundamentally reshaping personal devices and driving a major computing upgrade cycle, Qualcomm Inc CEO Cristiano Amon said yesterday. In his keynote speech for this year’s Computex trade show in Taipei, Amon said that the rise of "agentic AI" — AI systems capable of reasoning, planning and carrying out tasks autonomously — would transform how people interact with technology across phones, PCs, vehicles and wearable devices. Describing the technology as the next major evolution in computing, Amon said that "2026 is the year of agents.” For decades, smartphones have sat
RSS