South Korea has emerged as a central stage in the global race to build artificial intelligence, with Korean and international tech companies agreeing to pursue partnerships worth more than $950 billion in total, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily.
Reuters reports that Samsung Electronics and SK Group sealed roughly $950 billion in deals as South Korea played host to the world's leading AI players. The agreements tie the country's two largest technology conglomerates to some of the biggest names driving the AI boom.
At the center of Samsung's side is a $200 billion partnership with Broadcom focused on AI chips. According to CNA, the deal is a boost to Samsung's foundry business — the contract manufacturing of chips designed by other companies. The News International frames the same agreement as one that could reshape the AI chip market, where Samsung has long trailed rivals in landing marquee customers.
SK Group, meanwhile, secured a $500 billion AI factory and memory deal with Nvidia, per Startup Fortune, which describes the agreement as rewriting South Korea's place in the global chip race. Nvidia's dominance in AI accelerators has made access to high-bandwidth memory and manufacturing capacity a strategic prize, and SK's involvement points to memory chips as a key piece of that supply chain.
Taken together, the announcements signal that the physical backbone of AI — the chips, memory, and factories that train and run large models — is increasingly being negotiated at the scale of national economies, with Korean manufacturers positioned as essential suppliers.
Why it matters: the size and concentration of these commitments show how a handful of companies and countries are locking in the hardware that will power the next phase of AI, making South Korea a linchpin in who gets to build it.