South Korea and US AI Firms Sign $950 Billion in Deals

Korean semiconductor makers and American tech giants announced on Friday a series of deals worth a combined $950 billion spread over five years. The agreements were signed at an AI summit in San Francisco, organized by South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, bringing together the heads of Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic and Broadcom alongside top Korean business leaders.

The San Francisco summit drew around 150 participants, including Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Euisun Chung, and Naver founder Lee Hae-jin. Before the joint meeting, President Lee held separate talks with Nvidia's Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, and Broadcom's Hock Tan.

Deal Breakdown

The largest share of the package is the SK Group agreement, which together with its partners, primarily Nvidia, totals $750 billion. SK's partnership with Nvidia alone exceeds $500 billion and covers long-term supply of advanced memory chips as well as joint AI infrastructure projects. Samsung Electronics and Broadcom agreed to a separate $200 billion deal covering memory supply and manufacturing services using sub-2-nanometer technology.

Anthropic announced its own supply agreements with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, though the company did not disclose detailed financial terms. Dario Amodei described South Korea as currently the fastest place to build an AI data center.

This is currently the best place to build an AI data center quickly - Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic

Energy Infrastructure

One concrete project stemming from the agreements is SK Telecom's construction of a data center with up to 2 gigawatts of capacity, which will run on Nvidia's Vera Rubin systems and HBM4 memory produced by SK Hynix. Launch is planned for 2027. Separately, Nvidia will invest $1 billion in South Korea's Naver, whose AI Factory project is valued at $10 billion, with additional infrastructure support from Brookfield reaching $9 billion.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won signaled that memory demand could turn out to be even higher than the current agreements assume, pointing to talks with Jensen Huang about further increasing supply volumes.

I wouldn't be surprised if he told me those numbers were too low and that he wants more - Chey Tae-won, Chairman of SK Group

South Korea's Strategy

The agreements are part of a broader strategy by President Lee, who had previously unveiled a $576 billion industrial plan focused on semiconductor manufacturing clusters, physical AI, and data centers built around Samsung and SK Hynix. Presidential spokesman Kim Yong-beom confirmed the combined value of the announced agreements at $950 billion.

For South Korea, the deals secure long-term, highly predictable demand for HBM memory production at a time when the global memory chip market is already facing shortages driven by AI investment. For the American companies, in turn, they guarantee access to advanced manufacturing capacity without relying solely on Taiwan.

Global Market Implications

The scale of the agreements, nearly a trillion dollars over a five-year horizon, shows how far the race for AI infrastructure has shifted from language models alone toward the physical supply chains of energy, chips and memory. For Polish companies and investors tracking the semiconductor sector, this points to further price increases and limited availability of DRAM and HBM memory in the coming years, as global production is increasingly contracted years in advance by the biggest players.