A Trillion-Dollar Bet on AI Infrastructure
South Korea has cemented its position as the world's semiconductor powerhouse with the announcement of nearly $950 billion in new AI chip and infrastructure deals involving Samsung Electronics, SK Group, Nvidia, and Broadcom.
The deals were unveiled at a summit in San Francisco hosted by South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who convened the CEOs of the world's most powerful tech and chip companies to outline a joint vision for AI's hardware future.
The Numbers
- SK Group signed deals worth $750 billion, including SK Hynix's partnership with Nvidia valued at more than $500 billion for next-generation HBM4 high-bandwidth memory. - Samsung Electronics signed a memorandum of understanding with Broadcom covering up to $200 billion across memory chips, foundry services, and advanced packaging. - SK Telecom plans to build a 2-gigawatt data center powered by Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips and SK Hynix's HBM4 memory, due online in 2027.
Why This Matters Now
The deals reflect an urgent scramble among AI companies to lock in chip supply. Demand for high-bandwidth memory — the specialized chips that enable AI training at scale — is far outstripping supply.
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won said Nvidia's projected memory needs over the next five years could prove to be too low. "I wouldn't be surprised if, the next time I see [Jensen Huang], he'll tell me those figures were too low and say, 'I want more,'" Chey said.
Broadcom CEO Hock Tan told Chey his company's memory demand would likely surpass available supply. And Anthropic — the $965 billion AI lab — was regularly checking on future chip availability as it moves beyond model development into building its own computing capacity.
A New Era of AI Cooperation
President Lee unveiled a "San Francisco AI Declaration" outlining South Korea's ambitions for technological cooperation with the United States. He separately met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and Broadcom CEO Hock Tan.
Speaking at the summit, Lee said South Korea would lead the way to a new era of AI, making available its "dynamic AI ecosystem" to expand the global market for industrial and personal AI use.
What Gets Built
Under the Nvidia-SK partnership, the companies will jointly develop high-bandwidth memory for AI training, AI agents, and physical AI applications — a category that includes robotics and autonomous systems.
Samsung will work with Broadcom on next-generation AI accelerators based on Samsung's HBM technology, using its sub-2-nanometer foundry process.
The announcement comes just weeks after President Lee unveiled three massive state-driven projects — semiconductor clusters, AI data centers, and physical AI ecosystems — backed by more than $576 billion in investment.
South Korea is betting big that the AI revolution's biggest bottleneck is hardware — and it intends to own the supply chain.
