Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to Discuss AI Partnership with Samsung’s Lee Jae Yong

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, is set to visit South Korea. His visit, which marks the first in 10 years, is drawing attention as it is known that he will meet with Lee Jae Yong, the chairman of Samsung Electronics, and discussions are expected, focusing on the construction of an “Artificial Intelligence (AI) Semiconductor Alliance.”

According to industry sources on the 21st, Zuckerberg is expected to visit South Korea at the end of this month and meet with Lee Jae Yong, the chairman of Samsung Electronics. It is speculated that they will discuss cooperation in the AI field, including the supply of AI semiconductors between Meta and Samsung Electronics. Zuckerberg’s visit to Korea is the first in about 10 years since October 2014, when he met with Chairman Lee (then Vice Chairman).

Meta is aggressively enhancing its competitive edge by prioritizing AI as its primary business, including declaring the full-scale development of General Artificial Intelligence (AGI). Last year, they also launched a large language model (LLM) called “Lama 2.”

AGI is an AI capable of learning in all situations and possessing intelligence beyond the human level. Last month, Zuckerberg announced plans to secure 350,000 NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) H100 by the end of this year for the independent construction of AGI. The H100 is a high-performance semiconductor chip necessary for AI learning, priced at around $37,600.

NVIDIA dominates more than 80% of the global AI semiconductor market. As the competition for AI semiconductors among global big tech companies intensifies due to the craze for generative AI, securing semiconductor supplies is tricky. In response, big tech companies like Meta and Google are exploring ways to develop or produce their own AI semiconductors to reduce their dependence on NVIDIA.

For big tech companies to produce AI semiconductors, collaboration with companies like Samsung Electronics that possess the relevant technology is required. This is why Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, known as the “Father of ChatGPT,” visited Korea last month to meet with Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and others.

In particular, Samsung Electronics is pouring all its efforts into securing AI semiconductor technology, including setting up an “AGI Computing Lab” organization in Silicon Valley, USA, to produce AGI-specific semiconductors. As the implementation of AGI by Meta requires advanced semiconductor technology, it is expected that the upcoming meeting between Zuckerberg and Chairman Lee will focus on discussing collaboration with Samsung Electronics.

Meanwhile, it was reported that Zuckerberg is also arranging a schedule to meet with President Yoon Suk Yeol during his visit to Korea. Zuckerberg previously met with President Park Geun Hye during his visit to Korea in 2013.