President Lee Jae Myung has declared a vision to establish South Korea as a trustworthy production base and supply chain partner for artificial intelligence semiconductors, unveiling his "San Francisco AI Declaration" at a high-level gathering in San Francisco on July 24, 2026.

The meeting brought together leaders of major global technology companies and the heads of prominent South Korean conglomerates, including Samsung Electronics Co. Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang also attended the event.

"South Korea will make a leap forward to become an irreplaceable, core nation in the AI supply chain," President Lee said.

"Based on the world's highest-level competitiveness and production capacity in memory semiconductors we have, (South Korea) will become a trustworthy AI chip production base and supply chain partner," he added.

South Korea is home to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, two of the world's largest memory chip manufacturers. Both companies play significant roles in the global semiconductor industry, producing DRAM, NAND flash memory, and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) — components increasingly critical to AI computing infrastructure. Nvidia, a leading designer of graphics processing units used widely in AI workloads, relies on advanced memory chips supplied by these manufacturers. SK Hynix is currently the dominant supplier of HBM3 chips used in Nvidia's latest AI accelerators. OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, operates some of the world's most demanding AI computing systems.

The declaration comes as governments worldwide race to secure access to advanced semiconductors, driven by surging demand for AI training and inference capacity following the rapid commercial adoption of generative AI technologies. The United States, Japan, and the European Union have each launched multi-billion-dollar semiconductor incentive programs aimed at strengthening domestic production and reducing supply chain concentration risks.

South Korea has moved to reinforce its own position, with both Samsung and SK Hynix committing large-scale investments to expand HBM production and advanced packaging capacity. Samsung is also developing a major semiconductor manufacturing cluster in Yongin, south of Seoul, intended to consolidate domestic chipmaking capabilities across logic, memory, and foundry operations.

The declaration signals South Korea's intent to leverage its established semiconductor manufacturing capabilities to secure a central position in the rapidly expanding global AI supply chain, which spans chip design, fabrication, advanced packaging, and distribution. The San Francisco venue, situated at the center of the U.S. AI industry, underscored the summit's focus on deepening ties between Korean hardware producers and American AI platform companies whose computing requirements continue to scale.