Samsung SDS Co., the information technology services arm of South Korea's Samsung Group, announced Tuesday that it will broaden cooperation with major global artificial intelligence companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, as it seeks to drive innovation through AI transformation.

The company unveiled the plan at its annual summit, where it presented its vision for accelerating AI transformation — dubbed AX — across businesses and work processes. The push reflects a broader shift among enterprise IT services firms, which are moving beyond pilot-stage AI projects toward overhauling core business processes for clients.

Samsung SDS said it will become the first South Korean company to take part as a pilot partner in OpenAI's Daybreak Partner Program. Daybreak is OpenAI's cybersecurity initiative, designed to integrate frontier AI models into software security workflows from the earliest stages of development. Embedding security checks early in development aligns with the "shift-left" approach widely adopted in enterprise software practices.

The company also established a strategic partnership with Anthropic PBC in San Francisco in July, becoming the first South Korean company to do so. The two firms will work together to identify new AX business opportunities by combining their technological capabilities and business expertise. Partnering with multiple frontier model providers — rather than a single vendor — has become a common enterprise strategy for reducing dependence on any one AI supplier.

"AX is not simply about reducing time and costs. It means completely redesigning the way businesses and work are done from the ground up," Samsung SDS CEO Lee Joon-hee said in his opening speech. "AI changes the way we work, but AX changes the business."

Samsung SDS is pursuing a "client zero" strategy, under which it first applies and validates AX solutions within its own operations before expanding them to customers. The company is building AX capabilities across seven major internal processes — including development, procurement and quality management — before applying the results to customer operations. Demonstrating results internally first is a positioning move relevant to how the company competes for AX projects against other IT services providers. (Yonhap)