Seoul – OpenAI and a group of Samsung companies have signed a letter of intent to collaborate on global AI infrastructure, including semiconductor supply, data centre development and new technologies such as floating data centres, the firms said on Wednesday.
The agreement, signed in Seoul, involves Samsung Electronics, Samsung SDS, Samsung C&T and Samsung Heavy Industries. Executives from each company attended the signing ceremony at Samsung’s corporate headquarters.
Samsung Electronics will act as a strategic memory partner for OpenAI’s global “Stargate” initiative, supplying advanced semiconductor solutions to help meet projected demand of up to 900,000 DRAM wafers per month. The company said its portfolio across memory, logic and foundry could support the full AI workflow, from training to inference.
Samsung SDS will work with OpenAI to design and operate AI data centres, as well as offer consulting, deployment and management services for businesses integrating OpenAI’s models. It has also signed a reseller agreement to provide OpenAI services in Korea, including ChatGPT Enterprise, the company said.
Samsung C&T and Samsung Heavy Industries will collaborate with OpenAI to develop floating data centres, which proponents say can reduce land use, lower cooling costs and cut carbon emissions. The two companies also plan to explore projects in floating power plants and control centres.
“Through this collaboration, we are combining Samsung’s expertise in semiconductors, data centres, shipbuilding and cloud services with OpenAI’s advancements in AI,” Samsung said in a statement.
The companies did not disclose financial terms of the partnership or timelines for project rollout.
The agreement is part of Samsung’s broader push to position South Korea as a leading hub for artificial intelligence. It also comes as OpenAI seeks to expand its global infrastructure footprint to meet rising demand for generative AI services.
