South Korea Secures $950 Billion AI Semiconductor Deals in San Francisco

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung convened an AI summit in San Francisco on July 24, 2026, facilitating approximately $950 billion in semiconductor and infrastructure agreements. As part of the San Francisco AI Declaration, Samsung Electronics signed a $200 billion memorandum of understanding with Broadcom Inc to expand collaboration on memory and foundry technologies. SK Group secured deals totaling $750 billion, including a partnership with Nvidia valued at over $500 billion for memory supply and the development of large-scale data centers by 2027.

Additional investments include a $10 billion project by Nvidia and Brookfield to build an AI plant for the internet portal Naver, while Hyundai Motor Group agreed to collaborate with Nvidia on a robot reference platform. These announcements triggered a 1.05% rally in South Korea's KOSPI index on July 28.

Parallel to these business deals, a philosophical divide over AI development emerged in Silicon Valley and Washington. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg aligned with Nvidia and Microsoft in supporting open-source AI models. This coalition opposes efforts by OpenAI and Anthropic, who are lobbying the U.S. government for tighter regulatory controls on open-source software, citing competition from Chinese firms and national security risks.