SK Chairman Chey Tae-won Holds Lunch Meeting With OpenAI's Sam Altman, Joined by SK Hynix and SK Telecom Chiefs

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won met OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman for lunch during Altman's visit to South Korea, where the two sides appear to have held in-depth talks on strengthening their AI alliance.

According to business circles on Oct. 31, Chey and Altman held the luncheon at an undisclosed location in Seoul. Senior executives from key SK Group affiliates, including SK Hynix and SK Telecom, also attended.

The details of the conversation were not disclosed. The talks are believed to have focused on ways to deepen their existing strategic partnership, including cooperation in the high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, supply chain and the construction of next-generation AI data centers.

SK Group and OpenAI signed a strategic partnership in October 2025 at SK's headquarters in Seorin-dong, Seoul, to build global AI infrastructure. At the time, the two sides signed a letter of intent on memory supply and a memorandum of understanding on cooperation for an AI data center in South Korea's southwest region. They also agreed to work together on Stargate, OpenAI's large-scale AI infrastructure project.

In line with that effort, SK Hynix has focused on building a mass-production system to respond steadily to OpenAI's request for large-scale HBM supplies, which at the time was said to be as much as 900,000 DRAM wafers a month. SK Telecom has also been working with OpenAI to jointly build an AI data center in South Korea's southwest region and to cooperate on next-generation data center technology as well as B2B and B2C AI services.

Chey and Altman previously met at the AI Summit in San Francisco in July. Their latest meeting during Altman's South Korea trip underscores continued cooperation as they seek to secure leadership in the global AI ecosystem.

Han Kyung-woo, Hankyung.com reporter case@hankyung.com