Google DeepMind CEO and co-founder Demis Hassabis met all four heads of Korea’s major conglomerates in a single day on the 28th.
He met Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Euisun Chung in the morning, LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo around noon, Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong in the afternoon, and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won in the evening. It was his first visit to Korea in 10 years.
Hassabis had already disclosed the list of meetings the day before, saying at a memorandum of understanding signing with the Ministry of Science and ICT that he was scheduled to meet Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, Hyundai Motor, Boston Dynamics, and LG Electronics. It was a trip in which he came having already identified the people he wanted to meet.
Agendas lined up across memory chips, robots, and home appliances
The topics differed at each meeting. At Samsung’s Seocho headquarters, DX Division head Roh Tae-moon also attended. In addition to cooperation on Gemini, the generative AI that has been installed in the Galaxy S24 series, the table also included expanding supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for Google’s own AI accelerator, the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). The meeting lasted about two hours.
At the evening dinner, SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung joined Chey. SK hynix is also supplying HBM for Google’s TPU. The move suggests an intention to work with both Korean memory-chip makers from the early stages of next-generation AI semiconductor development.
At the LG Twin Towers meeting, LG Electronics CEO Ryu Jae-cheol and LG AI Research co-research head Lee Hong-lak were present. They discussed physical AI for home appliances and home robots. With Chairman Chung, the key agenda was advancing the brains of Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot Atlas. The two companies had already formalized cooperation earlier this year at CES.
Google’s first overseas AI hub to be established in Seoul
The biggest announcement of this visit was separate. On the 27th, Google DeepMind decided to establish an “AI campus” in Seoul for the first time anywhere in the world outside its UK headquarters. The presidential office said at least 10 Google researchers are expected to be dispatched to Korea.
The hub, to be set up in the space of Google for Startups Campus in Gangnam, Seoul, will be linked with the government’s “K-Moonshot” project. It will create a channel through which academics, researchers, and startups can directly experience Google DeepMind’s research environment. The deal was finalized during President Lee Jae-myung’s request at the presidential office on the 27th, when he asked Google to “serve as a key partner in the global AI hub.”
Why big-tech leaders keep heading to Seoul
Since OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met together with Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son in February last year, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang held a “chicken meetup” with Lee and Chung at a Gangnam fried chicken restaurant in October, global tech chiefs have continued to visit Seoul.
Nvidia Omniverse and Robotics business senior director Madison Huang also met with Samsung and SK executives earlier this month. Visits by global big-tech CEOs to Seoul are now occurring quarter after quarter.
Korea has in one country all the hardware and manufacturing capabilities needed for AI model advancement: HBM, mobile devices such as Galaxy phones, and interfaces that extend into physical spaces such as home appliances, automobiles, and robots.
A business source said, “It is one of the few countries with the hardware allies and manufacturing competitiveness to support nearly every piece of hardware where AI can be embedded, from semiconductors to home appliances and automobiles,” adding that it has strong significance in securing powerful hardware partners.
At the MOU signing ceremony on the 27th, Hassabis said, “Since the AlphaGo match, which became a starting point for the modern AI era, Korea has held very special meaning for Google.”
Ten years after AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol 9-dan at that very Four Seasons Hotel, the next chapter has opened there. The one-day route of the four conglomerate chiefs was a condensed snapshot of Korea’s position in the AI ecosystem.