Seoul: SK Group will actively respond to overcome a supply bottleneck in memory chips by boosting its production capacity, the head of the South Korean conglomerate, Chey Tae-won, said Monday amid a rapid growth in demand for memory products in the artificial intelligence field.
According to Yonhap News Agency, Chey made these remarks during a keynote speech at the SK AI Summit held in southern Seoul. The industry is currently facing concerns over a shortage in the supply of memory chips as demand from the AI sector continues to increase. To address this, SK hynix Inc., the group's chipmaking arm, is set to begin operating the M15X fab in Cheongju next year. Additionally, the Yongin semiconductor cluster, slated to have production capacity equivalent to 24 Cheongju fabs by 2027, will support SK's memory chip production efforts.
Chey emphasized SK's technological capabilities, noting that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang no longer questions the speed of SK's technology development. This statement follows a recent meeting between Chey and Huang, where they discussed expanding ties in the AI sector, particularly after Nvidia's announcement to deploy up to 260,000 GPUs in South Korea, including 50,000 for SK Group.
SK and Nvidia are exploring collaboration on a manufacturing AI cloud powered by Nvidia's Omniverse platform, a digital twin system for modeling the manufacturing process online. Chey stated that AI is crucial for solving AI-related challenges and outlined plans to accelerate memory chip production while expanding AI applications in automating data centers.
Chey also discussed the outlook for the AI industry, citing a 24 percent annual increase in global tech giants' investment in AI infrastructure over the past five years. He noted that while the future demand for AI is unpredictable, it is expected to grow as more businesses and countries adopt AI technologies.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, delivering a virtual message, expressed his optimism for closer cooperation with SK Group in the AI sector. During a recent meeting with President Lee Jae Myung, Altman discussed AI's potential contributions to building a more connected society. OpenAI has partnered with SK Group for the Stargate project, with SK hynix aiming to meet the demand for 900,000 wafers of high-performance dynamic random access memory per month.
Altman praised Korea's leadership in global AI adoption, driven by government vision, national goals, and world-class tech talent. He also expressed excitement about working with SK to explore opportunities for building AI data centers in Korea, enhancing the country's AI sovereignty while contributing to global progress.