Sam Altman is heading back to South Korea. The OpenAI CEO is scheduled to visit Samsung Electronics on June 15 for the “2026 Device eXperience (DX) Insight Talk” at the company’s Suwon campus, where the conversation will center on AI adoption and deeper collaboration between the two tech giants.

To understand why Altman keeps booking flights to Seoul, you need to understand Stargate. That’s OpenAI’s plan to build a global network of hyperscale AI data centers by 2029, representing the company’s largest infrastructure endeavor to date. The project carries a reported price tag of $500B.

AI data centers are extraordinarily hungry for one thing above all else: memory chips. Specifically, DRAM and high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the silicon that lets AI models process massive datasets at speed. Samsung happens to be one of the world’s largest producers of both.

The groundwork for this partnership was laid well before the June visit. In October 2025, Altman met with Samsung leadership in a high-profile gathering that also included South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. That meeting produced letters of intent for Samsung and fellow Korean chipmaker SK Hynix to supply OpenAI with up to 900,000 DRAM wafers per month, representing approximately 40% of the world’s total production capacity for those chips.

Altman’s engagement with Samsung isn’t a recent development. He visited Samsung’s fabrication facilities back in January 2024, followed by additional discussions on AI collaboration in February 2025. The June 2026 visit marks at least the third significant touchpoint in roughly two and a half years.

The DX Insight Talk framing is notable. Samsung’s DX division covers its consumer electronics and mobile businesses, suggesting the conversation may extend beyond data center supply into how OpenAI’s models get embedded in Samsung’s broader product lineup, including Galaxy phones.

The semiconductor implications here are significant. Following the October 2025 memory supply agreements, DRAM contract prices reportedly spiked by up to 171% in certain segments.

OpenAI isn’t the only company building massive AI data centers. Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are all pursuing similar infrastructure expansions. If OpenAI has already claimed a massive slice of DRAM production through its Samsung and SK Hynix agreements, rivals may need to either pay premiums for remaining capacity or find alternative suppliers.

Samsung itself sits in an interesting position. The company is simultaneously a supplier to OpenAI and a competitor in the AI device space through its consumer electronics business. The DX Insight Talk suggests Samsung sees value in being both, leveraging OpenAI’s models to enhance its products while profiting from the hardware that makes those models possible.