A weekend with no press release
Sam Altman flew to South Korea without announcing it. On Saturday he met around 50 executives from Samsung affiliates spanning electronics, finance and biotechnology at a company site in Yongin, south of Seoul. Local media reported talks with SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won as well. SK Hynix said it could not confirm the meeting, and neither side announced agreements on chip pricing, volumes or investment.
The subject was memory. OpenAI's data centre plans need enormous quantities of high-bandwidth memory, the stacked chips that sit beside AI accelerators, and ordinary DRAM for servers.
Why Seoul has the leverage
Samsung and SK Hynix controlled about 63% of global DRAM revenue in the second quarter of 2026, according to Counterpoint Research. In high-bandwidth memory their share was roughly 83%. Both companies have already sold out forward capacity: Samsung's 2027 HBM output is committed, and SK Hynix's is booked through 2029.
Industry estimates put supply about 1% to 2% below demand this year, with the gap widening in 2027. Micron has warned that new fabrication capacity takes years to build, so the shortage could last into 2028. That has turned memory from a commodity into a negotiating position. AMD's Lisa Su and Nvidia's Jensen Huang have both made similar trips to secure allocations.
Money is the other constraint
OpenAI has pared its latest fundraising goal to as much as $20 billion, down from earlier expectations, according to reports. The company has promised large data centre projects in South Korea with local partners, and the funding question affects how fast those proceed.
Seoul is also pushing its own agenda. The government has set a target of building what it calls the world's highest-performance sovereign AI model, with a record budget behind it, and wants domestic chip capacity tied to domestic AI programmes rather than exported wholesale.
For Altman, the trip bought goodwill and information rather than contracts. For the memory makers, it confirmed a market in which buyers queue rather than bargain. Neither outcome lowers the price of a chip.
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