During his recent visit to the US, Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong met with the CEOs of Meta, Amazon, and Qualcomm to discuss potential commercial ventures in AI and cloud computing.
As part of the two-week schedule, Lee received an invitation to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Palo Alto home on June 11 local time. There, the two talked about potential collaboration in artificial intelligence and virtual and mixed reality technology.
Although Samsung would not disclose further, Meta and Samsung could work together to produce Meta’s semiconductor in the AI space which would speed up AI training.
During his February visit to Seoul, Zuckerberg discussed the significance of Samsung as a source of contract chipmaking that could lessen reliance on TSMC.
The Meta CEO was cited in a statement issued by Samsung Electronics on Thursday as saying, “Samsung is a foundry giant and holds an important position in the global economy, the factors that can serve as critical points in cooperation with Samsung.” A meeting between the two presidents took place in Seoul during their February visit.
Regarding the mixed reality headset, LG Electronics and Meta formed a strategic alliance in February. However, LG has begun to scale back the headgear project because of doubts about its viability and marketability.
Samsung and Meta do not currently have any publicly accessible headset partnerships, but the Korean tech titan is working with Google and Qualcomm to develop a mixed-reality headset.
At Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, Lee also spoke with CEO Andy Jassy about potential new collaborations and common market opportunities in cloud computing and generative AI.
Although Samsung did not specify the specific areas of future cooperation, it did say that Amazon is a major customer because a large number of its memory chips are utilized in Amazon’s data centers.
Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun, the president of Samsung’s semiconductor division, President Lee Jung-bae, the head of the company’s memory business, and Executive Vice President Han Jin-man, the head of the chip division’s U.S. operations, accompanied Lee.
The parties’ continuous collaboration on cutting-edge semiconductors, like those customized for artificial intelligence, and next-generation telecommunication processors is the key item on the agenda of their June 10 meeting with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon.
Samsung receives Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm for the Galaxy series.
During the current trip, Lee also had a meeting with Hans Vestberg, the CEO of Verizon, to talk about potential collaboration on the sales of the forthcoming Galaxy smartphone series.
CEOs of chip, home appliance, and smartphone companies will get together for a conference at the end of June to transform the discussions from the trip into concrete plans.