South Korea unveils AI push at San Francisco summit

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung hosted an AI ​summit in San Francisco on Friday, bringing together the heads of leading AI developers with top South Korean business figures to accelerate efforts by ‌Seoul to make the country a global AI powerhouse.

Lee said South Korea would lead the way to a new era of AI in partnership with global technology companies, making available its "dynamic AI ecosystem" to expand the global market for industrial and personal AI use.

Lee separately met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Broadcom CEO Hock Tan, before joining the summit.

Samsung Electronics Executive ​Chairman Jay Y. Lee, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung and Naver founder Lee Hae-jin also attended.

President Lee unveiled a "San Francisco ​AI Declaration" that outlined South Korea's AI ambitions for technological cooperation with the United States.

"I'd like to present a vision for the ⁠future of AI and propose global cooperation to make it happen," Lee said.

President Lee's push to make South Korea a central player in the global AI supply chain comes as ​demand for chips and computing infrastructure outpaces supply, driving tech companies into closer partnerships with the country's semiconductor and memory leaders.

According to South Korean officials, about 150 executives, investors, researchers ​and startup founders attended the summit.

On the sidelines of the conference, Nvidia and SK Group unveiled a $500 billion-plus initiative spanning large-scale AI data centres and next-generation memory.

As part of the agreement, SK Telecom plans to build a 2-gigawatt data centre powered by Vera Rubin chips and SK Hynix HBM4 high-bandwidth memory chips.

The data centre is due online in 2027.

-Reuters