South Korea President Lee calls for new AI era during US tech summit

SAN FRANCISCO/SEOUL- South Korean President Lee Jae Myung hosted an AI summit in San Francisco on Friday, bringing together the heads of leading AI developers with top South Korean business figures to accelerate efforts by Seoul to make the country a global AI powerhouse.

Lee said South Korea would lead the way to a new era of AI in partnership with global technology companies, making available its "dynamic AI ecosystem" to expand the global market for industrial and personal AI use.

Lee separately met with Nvidia NVDA.O CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Broadcom AVGO.O CEO Hock Tan, before joining the summit.

Samsung Electronics 005930.KS Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Group 005380.KS Executive Chair Euisun Chung and Naver 035420.KS founder Lee Hae-jin also attended.

President Lee unveiled a "San Francisco AI Declaration" that outlined South Korea's AI ambitions for technological cooperation with the United States.

"I'd like to present a vision for the future of AI and propose global cooperation to make it happen," Lee said.

President Lee's push to make South Korea a central player in the global AI supply chain comes as demand for chips and computing infrastructure outpaces supply, driving tech companies into closer partnerships with the country's semiconductor and memory leaders.

According to South Korean officials, about 150 executives, investors, researchers and startup founders attended the summit.

On the sidelines of the conference, Nvidia and SK Group unveiled a $500 billion-plus initiative spanning large-scale AI data centers and next-generation memory.

As part of the agreement, SK Telecom 017670.KS plans to build a 2-gigawatt data center powered by Vera Rubin chips and SK Hynix 000660.KS HBM4 high-bandwidth memory chips. The data center is due online in 2027.

'I WANT MORE'

Speaking at the forum, SK Group Chairman Chey said Anthropic was making its own "computing power" without elaborating, potentially referring to a plan reported by Reuters that the AI lab is exploring the possibility of designing its own chips.

An Anthropic spokesperson said the startup had no updates to share but is always exploring options, drawing on a range of chips for a diversified approach to computing. Anthropic CEO Amodei made no comment on the reported plan.

Demand for Anthropic's AI model Claude has accelerated in 2026, and the plan, if confirmed, underscores the urgency in the AI sector to respond to the shortage of chips to power and develop more advanced systems.

Speaking at the summit, Amodei said Anthropic had signed supply deals with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, without providing further details.

In May, Anthropic raised funding at a post-money valuation of $965 billion, naming Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron MU.O as partners whose technologies play a critical role in the supply of memory, storage and logic chips.

Chey said AI customers were seeking far more memory than previously anticipated, pointing to recent discussions with Nvidia, Anthropic, OpenAI and Broadcom.

Chey said Nvidia's projected memory requirement over the next five years could soon prove to be higher.

"I wouldn't be surprised if, the next time I see (Huang), he'll tell me those figures were too low and say, 'I want more,'" Chey said.

He said Broadcom CEO Hock Tan also told him the company's memory demand was likely to surpass available supply, and that Anthropic was regularly checking on future chip availability as it moves beyond developing AI models to building computing capacity.

Chey said OpenAI would require enormous computing power over the coming years and had urged SK to supply chips directly to the ChatGPT maker.

President Lee is due to attend a Silicon Valley meeting on Saturday between South Korea's National Pension Service, the world’s third-largest pension fund, and U.S.-based venture-capital firms to encourage investment in South Korean startups.

The events underscore Lee's efforts to attract global capital and technology partners as he pursues one of the world's most ambitious state-backed AI drives.

Last month, Lee unveiled three massive state-driven projects anchored by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to build semiconductor production clusters, physical AI ecosystems and AI data centers as part of a sweeping industrial strategy with more than $576 billion in investment.

Reporting by Kyu-seok Shim, Heekyong Yang, Joyce Lee and Jack Kim in Seoul, and Max Cherney and Jeffrey Dastin in San Francisco; Editing by Tom Hogue/Reuters