OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to visit Samsung Electronics, share AI insights

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman will visit South Korea next week, stopping by Samsung Electronics' facilities to share AI insights with employees. The visit is part of Samsung Electronics' push to transform its operations around artificial intelligence — a shift the company calls AX, or AI transformation.

Samsung Electronics announced Thursday that its Device eXperience division will officially roll out three external generative AI tools — ChatGPT, Gemini Enterprise and Claude — for all employees starting Friday. The move marks the company's full-scale adoption of leading generative AI platforms from global tech companies.

Altman is set to arrive Sunday afternoon and visit Samsung Electronics' Digital City campus in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, on Monday for a "DX Insight Talk" event with DX division employees.

At the event, Altman is expected to speak about the changes AI advancement will bring and the direction of AI-driven workplace innovation. He is also expected to exchange views with Samsung employees on improving productivity through AI and transforming how they work.

The visit will be Altman's first to South Korea in about eight months, following his trip in October last year. Observers are watching whether the Stargate partnership agreements signed with Samsung and SK Group at that time will take on more concrete form. During that visit, Altman met separately with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, after which OpenAI signed letters of intent with both companies to cooperate on building core global AI infrastructure and established strategic partnerships.

The partnerships center on supplying high-performance, low-power memory chips for OpenAI's Stargate project, a roughly $500 billion initiative. Stargate is a joint effort by OpenAI, US software and cloud company Oracle, and Japanese investment firm SoftBank to build large-scale AI data centers across the United States, with $500 billion (approximately 726 trillion won) to be invested over four years.

OpenAI has projected that the Stargate project will require high-performance DRAM equivalent to 900,000 wafers per month. To meet that demand, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix agreed to expand production of advanced memory chips and develop high-performance, high-capacity products capable of running OpenAI's advanced AI models.

Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics' generative AI rollout is notable for not being limited to a single AI service. Employees will be free to choose whichever AI tool best suits the nature and purpose of their work. The company's policy is to create an environment where every employee can use the optimal tool, marking a full-scale push into AX.

Samsung Electronics earlier conducted effectiveness evaluations of candidate external generative AI services with some 2,500 employees. As a result, the company selected three leading generative AI services from global tech companies and prepared for their rollout.

The company expects the adoption to meaningfully support productivity gains and workplace innovation, while also raising the speed of decision-making and the overall execution capacity of the organization. Building on this, the DX division aims to strengthen its business competitiveness and deliver better product and service experiences to customers.

Samsung Electronics President and CEO Roh Tae-moon said of the external generative AI adoption: "This is not simply about providing AI as a work tool — it is the starting point for fundamentally changing the way we work and the speed at which we execute."

In his New Year's address this year, Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong called for sweeping change, saying the company must "completely transform the way we work and our organizational DNA" and "integrate AI into every part of the business value chain, from research and development to production, marketing and support."