In Seoul, a package of agreements was closed that reflects how far the career is coming for artificial intelligence. Openai sat down with Samsung and SK to advance their Stargate project and the companies pointed to a goal that surprises on its own: 900,000 DRAM wafers per month. The plan, according to the parties, goes through reinforcing memory production and studying new data centers in South Korea. All this was announced after a series of meetings of Sam Altman, business leaders and President Lee Jae-Myung himself.
The appointment at the Seoul presidential office brought together Sam Altman with the leaders of the aforementioned Asian technological conglomerates, in the presence of President Lee Jae-Myung. The tone was shared: Korea seeks to consolidate as one of the three global powers in artificial intelligence and OpenAi needs to anchor its Stargate project in regions with technological muscle. This lace explains the interest of both parties in formalizing agreements that cover from the memory supply to the construction of new data centers, with a long -term view.
An objective that can tension the entire memory sector
When we talk about wafers we refer to silicon records that serve as a basis for making chips. Of each one, once the process is completed, dozens or even hundreds of circuits are cut that later become the dram memory modules or the HBM batteries that feed servers and data centers.
The volume that has been put on the table is disproportionate if compared to the market. According to Techinsights, the global capacity of production of 300 millimeter drama was about 2.07 million per month in 2024 and would grow up to 2.25 million in 2025. Reach 900,000 would mean about 39% of all that capacity. No individual manufacturer reaches such a figure alone, so that the magnitude of the agreement reflects both Openai’s ambition and the growing pressure to ensure the supply of advanced memory.
Signed documents include preliminary commitments to expand memory production and evaluate additional infrastructure in South Korea. Among them is the participation of Samsung SDS in the development of data centers, as well as Samsung C&T and Samsung Heavy Industries in its design and construction. The Ministry of Science and ICT contemplates evaluating site outside the Metropolitan Area of Seoul, and SK Telecom has signed an agreement to study the viability of a center in the southwest of the country. It is also proposed to explore the deployment of Chatgpt Enterprise and API capacities in corporate operations.
Stargate Data Center in the United States
A key point in all this is in the difference between using and training a model. When someone consults a chatbot, infrastructure of inference is activated, much less demanding. But to train a new generation system, thousands of chips are needed working in parallel, each accompanied by High performance memory modules. This scale multiplies the need for servers, cooling systems and electrical power. In that context, guaranteeing hundreds of thousands of wafers per month does not seem an excess, but a way of ensuring that the next wave of models has the necessary material support.
Openai’s computing muscle relies on huge draft alliances. With Oracle and Softbank, the company prepares five data centers that would provide several capacity gigawatts. Nvidia, on the other hand, has announced that it would invest up to 100,000 million dollars and that it would give access to more than 10 gigawatts through its training systems.
Openai’s trajectory is not understood without Microsoft, his first great partner. The initial commitment of 1,000 million in 2019 and the subsequent investment of 10,000 million gave access to the Azure cloud, Key to train models They promoted chatgpt. Over time, however, Sam Altman’s company has begun to reduce that dependence. The last movements mark a change of course towards infrastructure in which OpenAI has more direct control, a way of making sure they are not conditioned to a single supplier.
It should be remembered that many of the ads remain preliminary. Letters of intention and memoranda mark the will to advance, But concrete details have not yet closed. At the scale that Stargate raises, the risks are evident: from bottlenecks in the production of high performance memory to energy availability to feed facilities of several gigawatts. To this are added the necessary permits and the complexity of coordinating projects with so many actors. At the moment, the signed opens a path, but it remains to be seen what materializes and in what deadlines.
Imágenes | Sam Altman | Samsung | SK Hynix | XATAKA C GROK
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