OpenAI CEO meets with Samsung's chairman amid partnership with Apple

TapTechNews on June 12th, according to The Korea Times citing informed sources, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently met with Samsung Group Chairman Lee Jae-yong who is on a business trip in the US. Meanwhile, OpenAI just signed a partnership with Apple.

It is reported that Altman and Lee Jae-yong met in Silicon Valley last weekend, which is the first time they met alone. Altman visited South Korea in January and toured Samsung Electronics' semiconductor factory.

The report mentioned that the two sides discussed the cooperation issue of artificial intelligence (AI) chips. Altman is promoting the development of his own AI chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia. And Samsung Electronics, as the largest memory semiconductor company with manufacturing capabilities, is considered a powerful key partner.

If the news is true, this meeting happened just before Apple's WWDC24 Developers Conference. In addition, Samsung Electronics is working closely with Google, but the report said the company is considering strengthening cooperation with Microsoft and making Microsoft's Bing the default search engine for its smartphones.

An industry insider said, "After OpenAI signed a partnership agreement with Apple, Altman met with Lee Jae-yong, it seems that he is determined to continue a solid cooperation with Samsung regardless of its relationship with Apple."

Regarding the meeting of the two, Samsung Electronics responded, "Chairman Lee is indeed on a business trip in the eastern and western parts of the US for about two weeks. Except for the meeting with the CEO of Verizon earlier this month, the specific schedule of Chairman Lee is not clear."

According to TapTechNews' previous report, OpenAI announced yesterday the appointment of a new chief financial officer and chief product officer, and announced a partnership with Apple, and the ChatGPT integration supported by GPT-4o will land on iOS, iPadOS and macOS later this year.