OpenAI's Altman meets Samsung executives as chip crunch deepens Sam Altman met Samsung Electronics executives in Seoul, building on an earlier deal to supply memory chips for OpenAI's Stargate data-centre project. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman met Samsung Electronics executives in Seoul this week, a visit that builds on a partnership already announced to supply memory chips for OpenAI's Stargate data-centre project. The meeting comes as a global shortage of high-end memory chips, driven largely by surging demand for artificial-intelligence hardware, continues to tighten across the industry.

Samsung is the world's largest maker of memory chips, including the high-bandwidth memory modules used to feed data through AI processors, and competes closely with South Korean rival SK Hynix for contracts tied to the AI build-out. Stargate, the data-centre venture OpenAI is pursuing with partners including SoftBank and Oracle, requires enormous volumes of memory capacity to train and run large language models.

The renewed contact between the two companies underscores how dependent AI developers have become on a handful of Asian chipmakers for the physical hardware their models run on. Prices for memory chips have climbed this year as suppliers struggle to keep pace with orders from AI companies, a dynamic that has also lifted South Korea's broader export figures.