OpenAI deepens Samsung partnership to co-develop AI chips
OpenAI Korea confirms deeper Samsung ties on chips and memory as GPT-6 Astra adoption accelerates
OpenAI is no longer just a Samsung customer; it's becoming a co-designer of the chips running inside its own products. The company confirmed Wednesday that it's deepening its partnership with the South Korean giant across chip manufacturing, memory production and enterprise software deployment.
In remarks to reporters at a news conference in Seoul, Harrison Kim, general manager of OpenAI Korea, said that the two companies have been making the most progress and receiving the most attention with Samsung Electronics in relation to manufacturing and researching future chips.
This future chip is believed to be an improvement upon Jalapeno, the processor used for inference that was created by OpenAI in collaboration with Broadcom and produced by TSMC earlier in the year.
To go from working with TSMC to Samsung would truly be a shift in diversifying away from manufacturing in Taiwan, as laboratories become more concerned about having their supply chain too reliant on one region.
Beyond processors, OpenAI is leaning on Samsung for the memory hardware its Stargate data centre project needs.
Samsung and rival SK Hynix both signed letters of intent last year to supply memory chips for Stargate, and Kim said demand for faster, more advanced memory will only keep climbing as OpenAI's models grow more complex.
The story about the chip is followed by an even more important piece of information: South Korea currently boasts the largest ChatGPT-paying user community outside the US, and the adoption of ChatGPT Enterprise services in Korea is up some 28 times in one year alone, covering the country's legal, finance, marketing and operations communities.
Even Samsung is among them, allowing its Device eXperience department, responsible for designing phones, televisions and other appliances, to use ChatGPT, along with Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude internally.
OpenAI claims that the number of users will increase further after the release of GPT-6 Astra on September 4.
