Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won are known to be attending "Google Camp," a private gathering of big tech titans. Following the recent "Sun Valley Conference," dubbed the "billionaires' summer camp," and the "San Francisco AI Summit," where a partnership worth $950 billion (about 1,400 trillion won) was formed, expectations are rising that Korea's memory companies will once again meet with big tech leaders and secure cooperative achievements.
According to business circles on the 28th, Lee and Chey are said to be attending "Google Camp," to be held by Google at the Rocco Forte Verdura Golf Resort in southern Sicily, Italy, at the end of this month. Google Camp is an event held every summer in Sicily by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. CEOs of tech companies from around the world attend, and everything from the event's planning to its content is kept private.
Industry sources say there is a strong likelihood that Lee will attend again this time, as he has consistently attended every year except for last year, and Chey also attended the 2024 event. In particular, as the two chairmen embarked on their overseas trip on the occasion of the San Francisco AI Summit, where the $950 billion partnership with big tech was signed, expectations are emerging that follow-up cooperative achievements could come out of Google Camp as well.
The two companies in particular are receiving love calls from big tech firms competing to establish memory supply cooperation. Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) has recently signed a series of long-term agreements (LTAs) to supply memory for artificial intelligence (AI) with global big tech companies, and is also delivering major achievements by leveraging its memory leadership to link up foundry orders. The cooperation with Broadcom in San Francisco this time is a representative recent example.
SK hynix (000660.KS) is likewise expanding cooperation with Nvidia, Microsoft (MS) and others beyond simple memory supply, to next-generation memory development and the construction of AI factories that combine the group's data center business capabilities. As it seeks to expand local investment cooperation on the occasion of its recent Nasdaq listing in the United States, some observers say Chey will approach Google Camp with particular enthusiasm.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at the San Francisco summit, "Without the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) innovation (of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix), Nvidia would not have been able to build supercomputers, and would not have the (AI) power it has today," adding, "Now is truly Korea's golden age."
