SK Hosts 'SK AI Summit 2025' with Vision to Solve AI Challenges through Memory, Infrastructure and Advanced AI Solutions

• Korea’s largest AI conference held November 3-4 at COEX Seoul under the theme “AI Now & Next”
• SK aims to become the most efficient AI solution provider by combining memory leadership, efficient infrastructure and aggressive AI adoption
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman : “Building the future of AI together,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy: “Driving practical AI innovation with SK”

SEOUL, November 3, 2025 – SK opened the “SK AI Summit 2025” at COEX Convention & Exhibition Center in Seoul on Monday, November 3.

Running through Tuesday, the SK AI Summit is a platform for collaboration where SK shares its integrated AI capabilities and vision accumulated across semiconductors, energy solutions and AI data centers. The event brings together diverse partners from global big tech companies, startups and academia to explore ways to strengthen the future AI ecosystem.

Last year's inaugural event attracted over 30,000 participants both online and offline, establishing itself as Korea's largest AI conference. This year's summit, held under the theme “AI Now & Next,” diagnoses the present state of AI and presents directions for future development.

SK’s Strategy to Accelerate Global AI Transformation

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won delivered the opening keynote at the SK AI Summit 2025, highlighting SK’s commitment to advancing the AI ecosystem and charting a path for future innovation. 

Reflecting on the recent 2025 APEC CEO Summit in Gyeongju, Chey emphasized, “AI is now at the center of global economic, industrial and social transformation. Ensuring sustained competitiveness will require relentless innovation.”

Chey pointed to a surge in global investment in AI infrastructure, explaining that new data center spending by major players like OpenAI and Meta is now surpassing previous trends. However, he added that, unlike in established sectors such as energy or oil, there is currently no reliable model to predict how quickly the AI infrastructure market will ultimately grow.

Chey identified several key drivers behind rising AI demand: the scale-up of inference as a core AI function, broader enterprise (B2B) adoption of AI, the rise of agent-based AI, and intensifying competition among nations to develop sovereign AI capabilities. He explained that as AI systems deepen their reasoning and continually verify their responses, overall computing requirements inevitably increase. 

He also pointed to the rapid expansion of AI adoption among businesses seeking greater efficiency, and the spread of autonomous agents that work around the clock without human intervention. Chey said, “Every company now sees AI as necessary for business survival and is implementing it for competitive reasons. As a result, the B2B AI market is set for explosive growth, with cost not being seen as a barrier.” He added that the emergence of sovereign AI competition among countries will accelerate demand even further by drawing in national governments as investors alongside companies.

Chey emphasized that SK’s role in meeting soaring AI demand is to deliver the most efficient AI solutions—addressing the bottleneck between supply and demand highlighted at last year’s summit—by focusing on memory chips, innovative AI infrastructure and real-world AI applications, and by shifting the industry paradigm from a race for scale to a competition for efficiency.

As for memory, although the performance of AI chips such as GPU continues to improve each year, the industry is facing a growing mismatch in the supply pace of memory essential for AI computing. Chey said, “We are entering an era where supply is becoming a bottleneck. We are receiving a flood of requests from companies for memory, and it is a serious challenge figuring out how to respond to them all.” Chey emphasized, “Taking responsibility for supply is the right path forward for our customers.” 

Chey stated that last month OpenAI requested a supply of 900,000 HBM wafers per month for its large-scale AI infrastructure project ‘Stargate’. 

Chey highlighted SK hynix`s strategic expansion plans to meet surging demand for AI memory, introducing two key facilities: its new M15X fab in Cheongju, set to begin full-scale operations next year, and the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster, scheduled to begin operation in 2027. 

“We will respond efficiently to the growing demand for AI memory,” Chey stated, emphasizing the scale of the Yongin project. “Each fab within the Yongin Semiconductor Cluster will be equivalent to six M15X fabs in Cheongju. Once all four fabs in Yongin are completed, it will be like building 24 of M15X fabs in total.”

In addition to expanding production, Chey also proposed developing high-capacity and cost-competitive NAND flash memory products as an alternative solution.In addition to expanding production, Chey also proposed developing high-capacity and cost-competitive NAND flash memory products as an alternative solution.

Chey concluded by highlighting collaboration over competition. “None of these problems can be solved alone. The core of SK’s AI strategy is working together with partners—Big Tech, governments, startups—to co-design and deliver the most efficient AI solutions.”

Global Tech Leaders Express Commitment to Partnership

During Chairman Chey's keynote, video messages from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy were presented. Both CEOs discussed collaboration achievements with SK in AI data centers and AI computing, expressing their commitment to expanding cooperation.

CEO Altman remarked, "We imagine a future where each person has their own intelligent AI assistant working on their behalf continuously, but achieving this requires massive, coordinated infrastructure investment. No single company can achieve this alone, making partnerships like ours essential." He added, "We're also excited to work with SK and explore opportunities to build AI data centers in Korea, enhancing Korea's AI sovereignty while contributing to global progress."

CEO Jassy commented, “We’re driving innovation across the entire AI stack—not just by developing powerful technology, but by making it practical and accessible so every customer can innovate and transform their business.” He added, “That’s why our work with SK is so exciting. The AI Data Center in Ulsan we’re building together shows what happens when two organizations think big about how to best serve customers.”

Platform for Exchanges in AI Involving Global and Domestic Experts

Following Chairman Chey, SK Telecom CEO Jung Jaihun and SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung delivered keynote speeches.

SK Telecom CEO Jung presented "The Core of AI Innovation: SKT AI Infra's Now & Next," introducing SK's AI infrastructure technologies and capabilities. SK hynix CEO Kwak delivered "SK hynix, New Vision & New Technology in AI Era," presenting SK hynix's future as an AI computing solution company.

Vision sharing from domestic and international AI leaders continued. Tim Costa, NVIDIA's General Manager of Semiconductor Engineering who leads quantum computing initiatives, delivered a presentation titled "AI Supercomputing for Next-Generation Semiconductor Design and Manufacturing," sharing NVIDIA's semiconductor development experience necessary for implementing manufacturing AI.

Kakao CEO Shina Chung presented “Agentic AI: Turning Possibilities into Reality,” discussing the future of AI agents for sustainable development of individual lives and society. Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann is scheduled to share views with Korea's AI industry on “Claude Development Environment and AI Innovation: Building Safe and Reliable AI Agents” on the afternoon of November 4.

Expanded Exhibitions and Side Events

This year's SK AI Summit expanded the scale and diversity of exhibition booths to allow participants to experience more diverse AI technologies and services. Big tech companies including AWS, NVIDIA, and Schneider Electric showcased their AI technologies—AI data centers, AI agents, and AI factories—in Korea, while startups and academia also set up booths, drawing significant interest from attendees.

The summit also featured side events, including the "SK AI Summit 2025 Claude Code Builder Hackathon" on November 3, co-hosted by SK Telecom, Anthropic, and Coxwave. At the AI developer hackathon, Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann joined participants to discuss AI development.

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About SK

SK Group, South Korea’s second-largest conglomerate, is a global technology leader delivering innovations to build the backbone for a new era of industry. Based in Seoul, SK has 198 companies and over 100,000 employees worldwide with a focus on developing and producing advanced solutions in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, energy and life sciences. SK businesses have a shared commitment to create economic value while having a positive impact on society. For more on SK, visit sk.com