Samsung Signs a $200 Billion MOU with Broadcom

South Korean companies announced billions in AI-related investments with Nvidia and Broadcom over the weekend, highlighting the nation’s growing central role in the global AI sector. The deals were revealed at an AI summit in San Francisco, where South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol attended.

In the most significant announcement, Samsung Electronics signed a five-year memorandum of understanding with Broadcom, covering memory chips and foundry production, with an estimated value of up to $200 billion. The two companies agreed to collaborate on HBM and other advanced memory products to support Broadcom’s next-generation AI accelerator chips. Broadcom will also engage Samsung’s foundry services to manufacture wireless broadband and other chips using its 2nm chip technology.

Charlie Kawwas, President of Broadcom Semiconductor Solutions, stated that this collaboration combines Samsung’s expertise in memory and foundry with Broadcom’s leadership in AI and connectivity to jointly create “technologies that will power the next generation of AI infrastructure.”

$9 billion commitment

In another transaction, cloud and internet company Naver signed an agreement with Nvidia and private equity firm Brookfield to build a 200MW AI data center in South Korea—three times its original scale. Part of the deal involves Nvidia investing $1 billion in Naver, making it the third-largest shareholder.

Brookfield stated that it would commit up to $9 billion to support the project, with Naver covering the remaining funds. Naver also announced plans to expand the deployment of Nvidia AI infrastructure to 1GW.

Sikander Rashid, Head of Global AI Infrastructure at Brookfield, stated: “This collaboration will combine Brookfield’s global AI infrastructure investment capabilities, Naver’s full-stack AI and data center operational expertise, with Nvidia’s accelerated computing platform.”

The collaboration is based on an agreement between Nvidia and Naver to jointly build a 55MW “AI factory” in early June. The expanded facility may utilize Nvidia’s Vera Rubin and Blackwell platforms, enabling large-scale deployment of AI models and applications.

The news drove Naver’s stock price up by 8.4% on Monday at the Korea Exchange.

SK Group’s $500 billion Global Partnership

In its second investment, Nvidia has established a $500 billion global partnership with SK Group—the parent company of SK Telecom and SK Hynix, a leading memory chip manufacturer—to build AI infrastructure worldwide. Earlier this month, SKT announced plans to utilize Nvidia chips to develop 15GW of AI data center capacity.