Summary
OpenAI has said it is expanding collaboration with Samsung Electronics on the development and production of next-generation chips while broadening enterprise use of its ChatGPT products within the company, according to comments made in Seoul. OpenAI officials outlined both their ongoing hardware work and the growth in corporate deployments in South Korea.
Collaboration on chips
At a press briefing in Seoul, Harrison Kim, General Manager of OpenAI Korea, said that one of the most significant areas of progress with Samsung Electronics has been "joint production and research" on the next-generation chips OpenAI is developing. Kim did not provide additional technical or commercial specifics at the event.
OpenAI previously disclosed in June that it had unveiled its first custom artificial intelligence chip, developed in partnership with Broadcom and named Jalapeno. The company said its engineers designed the chip with Broadcom for AI inference, the computational process used to process data and generate responses in applications such as ChatGPT. At that earlier announcement, OpenAI also said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. would handle fabrication of those chips.
Samsung's use of ChatGPT and enterprise adoption trends
Kim stated that Samsung Electronics is "one of the largest-scale deployments of ChatGPT globally," adding that the company’s staff in Korea and overseas utilize ChatGPT for work across research and development, marketing and sales. Samsung Electronics, when asked, issued a statement saying it could not confirm information related to customers.
OpenAI also reported a dramatic increase in usage among South Korean firms: the number of ChatGPT Enterprise users at South Korean companies and institutions rose about 28-fold as of the end of August compared with a year earlier, the company said. OpenAI declined to provide absolute user numbers while describing that expansion.
Memory supply links and hardware demand
The companies’ growing interaction on advanced chips follows earlier steps by South Korean suppliers to position themselves as memory partners for large AI projects. Last year, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix signed letters of intent to supply memory chips for OpenAI’s Stargate data centre project. In Seoul, Kim said demand for memory chips would continue to grow as more advanced chips are required to support faster and more complex computing, and he said cooperation with South Korean semiconductor suppliers is a priority for OpenAI’s local office.
Outlook and model rollout
On a related front, OpenAI said it expects adoption of its products to accelerate after the September 4 launch of GPT-6 Astra, which the company said offers improved performance in areas including computer use, professional work, science, coding and cybersecurity.
What was not disclosed
Several items remain unspecified. Kim did not elaborate on the technical or commercial terms of the joint chip production and research with Samsung. OpenAI did not provide absolute Enterprise user counts in South Korea, and Samsung declined to confirm customer-related information when asked. The scope of manufacturing arrangements and the timeline for any products tied to the Samsung collaboration were not detailed beyond previously announced relationships with Broadcom and TSMC for the Jalapeno chip.
Implications for markets and suppliers
The statements highlight areas of intersection between custom AI hardware development and enterprise software deployment. They also underline demand-side dynamics for memory and advanced semiconductor components and point to the importance of supplier relationships in South Korea for OpenAI’s hardware and infrastructure needs.
Note: This article reports statements and disclosures made by OpenAI representatives and reflects comments provided by Samsung Electronics and OpenAI as described at the time of the press briefing and prior company announcements. Where companies declined to provide specific figures or confirm customer details, that limitation is noted.