Sam Altman Samsung Meeting: 50 Executives Talk AI in Yongin
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met about 50 top Samsung Group executives in Yongin, South Korea, on Saturday, October 31, 2026, to discuss how AI will reshape corporate strategy over the next decade. The Sam Altman Samsung session comes as OpenAI races to lock in memory chips for its data centers, although neither side announced a new supply deal.
What Happened at the Sam Altman Samsung Meeting
According to a statement on the Samsung Newsroom, the meeting took place at the Samsung Human Resources Development Center south of Seoul. Presidents and senior leaders from Samsung affiliates in electronics, finance and biotechnology attended, including Samsung Electronics.
The session ran under the theme “The Next 10 Years Shaped by AI: The Enterprise’s Choice.” Samsung said the group discussed where AI technology is heading, the new markets it could create, and how it will change decision-making inside large companies. Samsung framed the event as part of a leadership training program for its company-wide AI transformation push.
Altman told the executives that a competitive edge does not come from simply adopting AI, but from using it to move faster, build better products and get ahead of rivals, Yonhap News Agency reported.
Why Memory Chips Are Part of the Story
The visit lands in the middle of a global memory shortage driven by AI data center demand. DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) prices have climbed sharply this year, a trend we covered in our explainer on why RAM is so expensive.
Altman himself recently argued that scarce DRAM is better used in data centers than in personal computers. His full comments are in our report on the Sam Altman RAM remark.
Samsung and OpenAI already have a framework in place. In October 2025, the two companies signed a letter of intent covering global AI infrastructure, including memory supply for OpenAI’s Stargate project. Samsung SDS agreed to work on AI data centers and enterprise AI services, while Samsung C&T and Samsung Heavy Industries joined a plan to develop floating offshore data centers, as The Korea Herald noted. Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong also visited OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters in July 2026.
SK Group Also Met Altman
Altman’s schedule in Korea reportedly went beyond Samsung. Industry sources told Yonhap that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won met Altman in Seoul on the same day, together with executives from SK hynix and SK Telecom. Analysts expect HBM supply and AI data centers were on that agenda, though no details were made public.
What It Means
No volumes, prices or contracts came out of Saturday’s meetings, so this is a relationship signal rather than a deal. Still, with the largest tech companies planning more than $3 trillion in AI infrastructure spending, as outlined in our look at Big Tech AI spending, access to Samsung and SK hynix memory remains one of the most important bottlenecks for OpenAI. Any memory supply agreement would also matter for consumers, since tighter chip supply has pushed up prices for PCs, phones and graphics cards.
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