OpenAI is working with Samsung on its next generation of chips

OpenAI says it is working with Samsung Electronics on next-generation chips as the ChatGPT maker expands its involvement in custom semiconductor development.

Harrison Kim, general manager of OpenAI Korea, said joint production and research on future chips is one of the areas where the companies have made the most progress.

OpenAI did not disclose technical details about the chips or explain exactly which parts Samsung will manufacture.

The collaboration nevertheless adds another major semiconductor company to OpenAI's increasingly complex infrastructure strategy.

OpenAI wants more control over the hardware behind AI

Advanced AI models currently depend heavily on accelerators produced by Nvidia.

Demand for those chips has become one of the defining constraints of the AI boom.

OpenAI has therefore been exploring custom silicon and deeper partnerships with chipmakers as it tries to secure enough computing capacity for future models and products.

Samsung already has expertise across memory, advanced manufacturing and semiconductor packaging.

It is also one of the companies supplying memory technology for large AI infrastructure projects.

OpenAI and Samsung have previously announced broader cooperation around the Stargate infrastructure initiative and enterprise adoption of ChatGPT.

The latest comments suggest that relationship now extends more directly into the design and production of future AI hardware.

AI labs are becoming hardware companies too

OpenAI is still primarily known as a model and software company.

But frontier AI increasingly forces model developers to make decisions far below the application layer.

Chips, memory, networking, power and data center architecture all influence how much models cost to train and operate.

As AI workloads grow, companies such as OpenAI have strong incentives to optimize that entire stack.

The result is a strange convergence.

Software companies are becoming infrastructure companies, cloud companies are designing chips, and semiconductor manufacturers are becoming central strategic partners to AI labs.

OpenAI's work with Samsung is another piece of that transition.