SK's Chey Tae-won meets OpenAI's Sam Altman for lunch in Seoul

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won had lunch with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in Seoul on 31 October, according to a report by inews24.com. Executives from SK hynix and SK Telecom attended the meeting, industry sources said.

The specific content of the conversation was not disclosed. The report did not state what the two sides discussed or whether any agreement was reached.

Altman also met with the presidents of major Samsung Group affiliates on the same day. About 50 executives from Samsung Electronics and other affiliates attended that meeting.

The lunch follows earlier cooperation between SK Group and OpenAI. On 1 October 2025, the two companies signed a strategic partnership on global AI infrastructure at the SK Seorin Building in Jongno-gu, Seoul, including a letter of intent on memory semiconductor supply and a memorandum of understanding on an AI data center in the southwest region of the country.

Through that partnership, SK Group joined OpenAI's Stargate project as a key partner. SK hynix said it would build production capacity to meet OpenAI's request for HBM supply of up to 900,000 wafers per month on a DRAM wafer basis, while SK Telecom agreed to jointly build the AI data center in the southwest. In July 2026, Chey and Altman met at an AI summit in San Francisco and exchanged views on long-term AI infrastructure cooperation.