OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly took a quiet trip to Taiwan this week to hold meetings with representatives of TSMC and Foxconn and discuss collaborating on chip design and manufacturing, as well as AI server infrastructure development, according to Digitimes. These kinds of partnerships will be crucial if OpenAI is to meet its commitments as part of major initiatives like Stargate, to build hundreds of billions of dollars worth of data centers and "AI factories," over the next few years.
Although not announced by any of the involved companies or Altman himself, there's no denying he's in the region, as it was confirmed just one day later, Wednesday, September 30, that Altman had been in South Korea meeting with President Lee Jae Myung. Korea Times reported that he secured non-binding deals to build a 20-megawatt data center in Phang in partnership with Samsung, and another in the South Jeolla province with SK Hynix.
