SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won recently met with the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of Amazon and Intel in the United States to discuss collaboration in digital businesses, including artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors. Particularly, they explored expanding specific AI business areas such as large language models (LLMs) and industrial AI.

According to SK Group on July 1, Chairman Chey visited Amazon’s headquarters in Seattle last week and discussed AI and semiconductor cooperation with CEO Andy Jassy. Jassy, an AI and cloud expert, previously served as the CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and has been Amazon’s CEO since 2021.

Amazon has been expanding its business across the AI domain, from semiconductor design to services, by developing its own AI semiconductors, ‘Trainium’ and ‘Inferentia,’ specialized in machine learning (ML) training and inference, respectively.

Both semiconductors were developed specifically for AI and require high-performance high-bandwidth memory (HBM). In March of this year, SK Hynix began mass production and client delivery of the world’s first fifth-generation HBM, ‘HBM3E,’ positioning itself as a leader in the AI memory semiconductor market.

Chairman Chey also met with CEO Pat Gelsinger at Intel’s headquarters in San Jose to discuss cooperation in the semiconductor sector. Both leaders acknowledged the long-standing semiconductor partnership between SK Hynix and Intel, exploring ways to expand advanced semiconductor manufacturing collaboration in the AI era.

Through its collaboration with Intel, SK Hynix developed the world’s fastest server DRAM, ‘DDR5 MCR DIMM,’ achieving speeds of over 8 Gb/s in December 2022.

In January of last year, the 10-nm fourth-generation (1a) DDR5 server DRAM and Intel’s server CPU, the ‘4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors,’ were certified for compatibility, further solidifying the cooperation between the two companies. This collaboration was publicly documented in a White Paper.

Intel, which holds a significant market share in the server CPU market, has also strengthened its AI competitiveness by launching AI accelerators like ‘Gaudi 3.’ Additionally, Intel is expanding its semiconductor foundry business, showcasing world-class competitiveness across all stages of AI semiconductor design and production.

Chairman Chey embarked on this trip on June 22 and had previously met with key IT industry figures, including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft (MS). Through these discussions with industry leaders across the AI spectrum, from semiconductors to services, Chairman Chey has been actively working to enhance SK’s AI capabilities and align the company’s AI business strategy towards human-centric applications.

Starting with NVIDIA in April, Chairman Chey has been on a vigorous pursuit to build a collaborative network and explore joint business opportunities with global AI industry leaders, including TSMC, OpenAI, MS, Amazon, and Intel.

In this regard, SK Group announced during its management strategy meeting held on June 28-29 that it plans to secure 80 trillion KRW in investment resources by 2026 to invest in future growth sectors such as AI and semiconductors.

SK Hynix plans to strengthen its semiconductor business competitiveness by investing a total of 103 trillion KRW in AI-related fields, including 82 trillion KRW in HBM and other AI-related business sectors by 2028.

An SK representative stated, “SK will continue to foster an ‘AI ecosystem’ encompassing everything from semiconductors to services, contributing to national competitiveness and the advancement of humanity.”

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