THE CRUNCH
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman travelled to South Korea to meet about 50 senior Samsung executives, as reported by Bloomberg, in a bid to secure more memory for AI data centres amid a worsening shortage. The meeting took place at Samsung's Resources Development Centre in Yongin on October 30, drawing chiefs from the company's financial, electronics and biotechnology businesses. Samsung Korea confirmed the discussion covered strengthening ties under a letter of intent signed in October to cooperate on global AI infrastructure, including supplying memory semiconductors for OpenAI's Stargate project. Notably, Samsung emphasised AI transformation and future business opportunities rather than announcing a new memory supply agreement.
The visit follows Altman's recent comments arguing that DRAM sitting inside personal computers is often underused, which he called "quite terrible", and that data centres could use memory more intensively by sharing resources across AI workloads. The argument drew criticism, given that OpenAI's own services such as ChatGPT depend heavily on centralised computing infrastructure.
The shortage backdrop is stark. TrendForce estimates DRAM supply will fall 1% to 2% short of demand this year, with the imbalance expected to worsen in 2027, and Micron has reportedly warned the crunch could persist into 2028 because new manufacturing capacity takes time to build. AMD, per Tom's Hardware, forecasts DRAM revenue will jump 177% in 2026 to about $416 billion. High-bandwidth memory (HBM), a specialised form of DRAM used in AI systems, is especially contested: Counterpoint Research puts Samsung and SK Hynix at roughly 83% of global HBM revenue in the second quarter of 2026, and about 63% of DRAM revenue overall.
Altman is not the first to make the pilgrimage. AMD CEO Lisa Su visited Samsung earlier in October to discuss securing additional HBM supply, saying it is important to plan three to five years ahead with partners. Samsung and SK Hynix have also been upgrading Chinese factories to meet AI-related demand, though those upgrades concern NAND flash storage rather than DRAM.