South Korean Tech Giants Lock In $950B AI Deals With U.S. Big Tech

South Korea's three largest conglomerates announced $950 billion in artificial intelligence and semiconductor partnerships with U.S. tech leaders during a high-level summit in San Francisco on July 24-25, 2026, cementing the country's role as the hardware backbone of the global AI boom.

President Lee Jae Myung hosted the summit, meeting with CEOs from Nvidia, Anthropic, OpenAI, Broadcom, and other tech leaders as Korean firms moved to transition from AI consumers to innovation hubs.

Chip Supply Locked Through 2030

Samsung Electronics signed a $200 billion memorandum of understanding with Broadcom to supply high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips and provide sub-2-nanometer foundry manufacturing services through 2030. The deal addresses the critical bottleneck facing AI developers: secure access to advanced memory and logic chips.

"In the era of AI, semiconductor solutions that tightly integrate memory, logic chips and advanced packaging are becoming increasingly important," said Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun.

SK Group committed approximately $750 billion across multiple partnerships, including a $500 billion letter of intent with Nvidia for AI infrastructure and long-term HBM memory supply. The agreement covers construction of a 2-gigawatt AI data center in Korea. SK hynix separately secured long-term memory supply agreements with Microsoft, while SK Telecom signed an MOU with Anthropic for gigawatt-scale data center cooperation.

"Competitiveness in the AI era depends not only on how well AI is utilized, but also on how much intelligence can be generated," said SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won.

Physical AI and Enterprise Deployment

Hyundai Motor Group is collaborating with Nvidia to develop an AI Robot Reference Platform and establish a Robot Application Center in Korea, extending its autonomous driving partnership with Waymo using IONIQ 5 vehicles. The move positions Hyundai at the intersection of automotive manufacturing and "physical AI" for robotics.

Samsung SDS signed a strategic partnership with Anthropic to deploy Claude Enterprise across approximately 70,000 employees at 20 Samsung affiliates and train "Applied AI Engineers" to integrate the models into domestic business operations.

Infrastructure Build-Out

Naver announced a 200-megawatt AI factory at its GAK Sejong data center, with Nvidia investing $1 billion and Brookfield providing up to $9 billion in financing. The project reflects the massive power requirements of training and running frontier AI models.

Strategic Dependency

The $950 billion total, confirmed by South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT, underscores the mutual dependency between U.S. AI software leaders and Korean hardware manufacturers. Nvidia, Microsoft, and Anthropic require Korean-made HBM chips to sustain AI development, while Korean firms secure long-term demand for their semiconductor fabs and gain access to cutting-edge AI models.

By locking in supply chains through 2030 and integrating AI into automotive, robotics, and enterprise software, South Korea is positioning itself as the indispensable foundry and infrastructure layer for the global AI economy.