South Korean President visits the United States and wins a $950 billion deal! Eating burgers and drinking beer with Jen-Hsun Huang, Lee Jae-myung made a “big bet” on semiconductors
According to China News Service, on July 24, local time, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who was visiting the United States, toasted with the guests at the global AI leaders dinner held at The Ramp restaurant in San Francisco. Kim Yong-beom, Director of the Policy Office of the Presidential Office of South Korea, Rani Borkar, President of Microsoft Azure Hardware, Nvidia CEO Huang Jen-hun, South Korean Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science, Technology, Information and Communications Bae Kyung-hun, Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin, SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won, Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun and others attended the dinner.
According to China News Service, on July 24, local time, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who was visiting the United States, toasted with the guests at the global AI leaders dinner held at The Ramp restaurant in San Francisco. Kim Yong-beom, Director of the Policy Office of the Presidential Office of South Korea, Rani Borkar, President of Microsoft Azure Hardware, Nvidia CEO Huang Jen-hun, South Korean Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science, Technology, Information and Communications Bae Kyung-hun, Naver Chairman Lee Hae-jin, SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won, Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun and others attended the dinner. According to South Korean officials, about 150 business executives, investors, researchers and startup founders attended the summit. According to The Paper, Kim Yong-beom, director of the Policy Office of the South Korean Presidential Office, announced in San Francisco, the United States, that Samsung Electronics and Broadcom formally signed a memorandum of understanding on business cooperation, planning to carry out wafer foundry cooperation around the supply of advanced storage semiconductors and AI chip manufacturing with a scale of US$200 billion (approximately 1.36 trillion yuan) in the next five years. On the same day, SK Group announced that it would supply chips worth US$750 billion (approximately 5.09 trillion yuan) to U.S. technology companies such as Nvidia. The overall chip cooperation project scale between Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and U.S. technology giants reached 1,375 trillion won. Kim Yong-beom told the media before leaving for the United States on Thursday that the presidential visit played a "catalyst" role in helping Korean companies complete long-running negotiations with their American partners. According to the memorandum, Samsung Electronics will provide advanced storage semiconductors to Broadcom and open its foundry capacity to participate in AI chip manufacturing. As a major global supplier of network chips, customized AI accelerators and semiconductor solutions, Broadcom's customers cover the fields of cloud computing and data centers. This cooperation means that Samsung will not only supply key storage devices such as HBM, but will also directly intervene in the production of AI inference and training chips customized by Broadcom for cloud manufacturers. At the same time, Nvidia officially announced a long-term partnership with SK Hynix at the summit to ensure the supply of next-generation memory and jointly develop high-bandwidth memory for AI training, AI agents and physical AI applications. In addition, according to a report on the Nihon Keizai Shimbun website on July 24, South Korea’s Lee Jae-myung government proposed the idea of a “Korean version of Silicon Valley” to lay a solid foundation for the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. The government plans to build a high-end industrial cluster centered on semiconductor factories in Jeolla Province in the southwest, which is a traditional vote base for the ruling party belonging to the progressive camp. The government is trying to use the huge state taxes paid by semiconductor giants such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to fund this unprecedented infrastructure construction project. At the end of June, the Lee Jae-myung government announced the launch of “three major super projects.” The plan focuses on investing in semiconductors (the pillar industry of South Korea's economy) and "physical AI" (that is, the technology required for machines and robots to operate autonomously), and plans to build large-scale artificial intelligence data centers to promote the development of these industries. Lee Jae-myung explained that this is “the only way for South Korea to become the ultimate winner of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.” He also said that this will become "the driving force for the transformation of the entire South Korea into another Silicon Valley."