OpenAI CEO Sam Altman listens during a fireside chat during Kakao's media day event at The Plaza Seoul hotel, Tuesday. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman strengthened the company's ties with a variety of Korean tech firms during his tightly packed visit to Seoul, Tuesday, forming a strategic collaboration with a domestic mobile messenger operator and meeting the heads of the world's top artificial intelligence (AI)-specific memory chipmakers.

The move for strengthened and expanded partnerships comes amid fresh competition in the AI market with the recent emergence of R1 made by China's startup DeepSeek.

Altman appeared at Korean messaging giant Kakao's media day event at a hotel in central Seoul, where he announced the strategic cooperation between OpenAI and Kakao. It marked OpenAI's first-ever strategic collaboration with a Korean company.

Under the agreement, the two sides will focus on developing and enhancing Kakao's services by leveraging OpenAI's advanced AI technology, tailored to the unique needs of KakaoTalk users, and making it more accessible.

These efforts will include empowering Kakao's own AI agent Kanana with OpenAI's advanced models, integrating OpenAI technologies into Kakao's core services and jointly developing an AI product.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, right, shakes hands with Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a during Kakao's media day event at The Plaza Seoul hotel, Tuesday. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

"We have a shared vision of what AI can do and we are particularly interested in AI and messaging," Altman said during a fireside chat with Kakao CEO Chung Shin-a at the event. "I think there's a really rich thing to explore there that can improve the experience for a lot for users."

He added: "Our mission is to maximize the benefits of AGI (artificial general intelligence) for everybody, and to do that requires not just great research, but to build great products. And we'd love to do that in the partnership. So I'll hopefully figure out how to build many future products that make people's lives better."

Chung said the two sides came to the partnership because they share similar visions related to AI, and their partnership can bring opportunities for experimenting in AI services for consumers' direct use.

Chung noted that one of the reasons why Kakao believes OpenAI is its optimal partner is that OpenAI is drastically cutting costs for its AI services, which Altman also stressed as one of the most important matters.

"So the people talk a lot about the AI capability improvement curve, but the AI cost reduction curve, I think that's been getting as much attention," he said, adding that OpenAI brought the cost down by "about a factor of 10" last year and someday its latest ChatGPT model will be able to run on smartphones.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, center, and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, right, walk after their meeting at The Plaza Seoul hotel, Tuesday. Yonhap

Hours before the event, Altman held a closed-door Builder Lab workshop bringing together over 100 Korean AI developers. During the event, the OpenAI CEO stated the company's intention to expand its presence in the Korean market, acknowledging the country's industrial infrastructure for AI services.

He also met SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and the CEOs of SK hynix and SK Telecom. Details of their talks were unavailable, but they are assumed to have exchanged their opinions on SK hynix's AI-specific high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chip supply and SK Telecom's AI data center business.

SK Telecom said on Tuesday that six global companies, including itself and OpenAI, will team up with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to establish an MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium to research commercialization and industrial applications of generative AI.

Altman also met domestic game developer Krafton CEO Kim Chang-han. Last year, Krafton released Uncover the Smoking Gun, an AI-based chat game powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o.

Following the Kakao event, Altman had a luncheon with a number of Korean conglomerate leaders, including HS Hyosung Vice Chairman Cho Hyun-sang, GS E&C CEO Huh Yoon-hong and SK Networks President Choi Sung-hwan.

The OpenAI CEO then joined SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Lee Jae-yong as well as Samsung's chip division heads at a Samsung office in southern Seoul's Seocho District.

Further details of their meetings were unknown, but Son told reporters that their talks would be about "updates to (OpenAI's) Stargate project and potential cooperation with Samsung Group." After the three-way meeting, he told reporters that they had a good discussion, with more to come.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son speaks to reporters during his visit to Samsung Electronics' office in Seocho District, Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap

The Stargate project is a $500 billion AI infrastructure project led by OpenAI and SoftBank, announced by U.S. President Donald Trump last month. It is a project by private companies, but is widely viewed as a driver to give the U.S. the leadership in the global AI competition while blocking China.

Throughout his visit, Altman received questions on OpenAI's intentions for setting up a Korean unit and investing into Korea's national data center initiatives. The CEO refused to provide detailed answers, but said "AI adoption (in Korea) generally has been quite incredible, and there's so much in Korea that makes AI a good fit."

"If you think about all the industry here, from energy to semiconductors to internet companies, it's really a sort of unlimitedly strong place for the adoption of AI," Altman said during the Kakao event. "It's an important market to us, it's growing superfast and we love to do partnerships like this."

Altman's Seoul visit did not result in concrete deals or detailed plans for cooperation, but is viewed as a critical effort to expand the company's AI ties with Korean tech giants. This follows the rise of China's DeepSeek, which created a shock in the global tech world by demonstrating performances on par with ChatGPT with up to 95 percent less costs.

"Stargate is meant to be a truly global initiative," Altman said. "The amount of companies in the supply chain that have to come together to make that happen is remarkable, and that is relevant to our earlier comments about Korea's (strength in the AI industry). There is so much happening in Korea that will be critical for that."

Reportedly, Altman also said during the luncheon that Stargate will play an important role in bringing down AI infrastructure costs and improving performances, stressing the importance of AI infrastructure.