SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, right, and Open AI founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sam Altman, center, leave the room after a meeting in Seoul, Feb. 4. Yonhap

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won met with Open AI founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sam Altman in Seoul on Tuesday, discussing ways to enhance cooperation in artificial intelligence (AI), industry sources said.

Chey was accompanied by SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung, and the discussion focused on collaboration in AI memory chips, including high bandwidth memory (HBM), as well as AI services, according to the sources.

This meeting followed the previous discussions between Chey and Altman in Seoul in January 2024 and in the United States in July.

Altman is visiting Seoul as part of an event hosted by OpenAI for local AI startups and developers.

He was also expected to meet with Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong later in the day. During his visit last year, he toured a Samsung Electronics facility.

Altman's Seoul trip is drawing close attention as the global AI industry is undergoing seismic shifts, particularly after the recent launch of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's latest models.

In what appeared to be a strategic alliance move, OpenAI was set to announce a collaboration with Korean tech giant Kakao later in the day. (Yonhap)