Lisa Su, AMD Chair and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), visited Korea again after seven months. During a short stay, she met with companies that lead the global memory market, such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, as well as a range of domestic artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor startups.

Together with CEO Su, the visits to Korea by global big tech leaders such as Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, and Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, are continuing. As competition in AI semiconductors expands beyond chip performance to securing memory supply chains, AI infrastructure, and robots and smart factories, global AI companies are accelerating cooperation with Korea, which has emerged as a central hub of this ecosystem, according to analysis.

● Lisa Su visits Korea again after 7 months… Madison Huang also returning

On the first day of her visit on the 7th, when asked by reporters about her schedule in Korea right after attending “AMD Gamer Day” held in Yongsan-gu, Seoul, CEO Su said, “I am meeting Samsung and also SK hynix,” adding, “Semiconductors are a team sport. It is important to meet partners frequently and on a regular basis.” On that day, she met successively with Jun Young-hyun, Head of Samsung Electronics’ Device Solutions (DS) Division (Vice Chairman), and Kwak Noh-jung, President and CEO of SK hynix, to discuss cooperation on AI semiconductors and memory.

CEO Su stressed, “Korea’s (AI) ecosystem is extremely important to AMD both in terms of supply and partnerships.” That morning, she also met with the Ministry of Science and ICT and 13 domestic AI semiconductor-related companies and agreed to work on building a “heterogeneous AI infrastructure”—which uses different types of chips together—by combining AMD’s central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) with domestically developed neural processing units (NPUs). The company plans to establish an AI research center in Korea within this year and hire hundreds of research personnel.

NVIDIA is also expanding its engagement with Korea. Madison Huang, Senior Director overseeing the Omniverse and robotics businesses and the eldest daughter of CEO Huang, is scheduled to visit Korea next month to attend “NVIDIA AI Day Seoul 2026” in Seoul. This will already be her fourth visit to Korea.

● World’s No. 1 and No. 2 in memory with a strong manufacturing base

The primary reason global AI semiconductor companies are flocking to Korea is the semiconductor supply chain. With AI data center investment surging, supply shortages are spreading across memory products, including not only high-bandwidth memory (HBM) but also server DRAM. In this environment, analysts say the importance of Korea—home to both SK hynix and Samsung Electronics, the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 in the DRAM market—has grown further.

CEO Su likewise emphasized on the day, “Memory is an essential part of computing, but supply is currently very tight.” Naming Samsung Electronics and SK hynix as key strategic partners in the memory segment, she said, “What is needed is not just a partnership of one to three years, but a medium- to long-term partnership of more than three to five years.”

Korea’s strength does not stop at memory. Fabless companies developing NPUs specialized for AI computation and AI model and software startups are also growing. AMD is working to build an open ecosystem that connects its CPUs and GPUs with domestically produced NPUs and to explore ways to leverage Korean companies’ technologies in global AI infrastructure. This is why AMD arranged a separate meeting with domestic NPU firms.

Korea’s robust manufacturing base is also emerging as a key strength. Global manufacturing companies capable of applying AI to actual products and factories are concentrated in the country. During his visit in June, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang described Korea as the “manufacturing center of the world” and emphasized that NVIDIA’s robotics and physical AI technologies could be applied to Korean industries.

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