OpenAI's Altman makes surprise Korea trip, meets Samsung executives and gifts a "Codex micro keyboard"

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman visited Korea on a two-day trip starting Oct. 30 and met SK and Samsung leaders back to back.

Electronic Times reported on Nov. 1 that Altman had lunch with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won and SK hynix and SK Telecom executives. At Samsung's training campus in Yongin he spoke with about 50 Samsung affiliate CEOs on "The next decade AI will change: the choices companies face." It was his first visit in a year, after a planned June trip was postponed.

Altman told them, "You will no longer gain a lasting competitive advantage just by using AI," adding that advantage depends on how companies use it to move faster and build better products. He also gave executives a "Codex micro keyboard" meant to speed up using OpenAI's coding agent, explaining it reflects the idea that in a world where you instruct computers by voice, you may not need a full keyboard.

OpenAI signed a Stargate letter of intent with Samsung and SK last October and is pursuing Korean AI data centers, with Pohang (Samsung) and Jangseong in South Jeolla (SK) as candidate sites. A JTBC Newsroom video on the visit passed 90,000 views; comments included "Give us more HBM" (37 likes) and "Help me, bro!" (24).