How South Korea Became OpenAI’s Unlikely Stronghold

South Korea has emerged as a premier overseas market for OpenAI, with the country holding the highest number of paying ChatGPT subscribers outside the United States as of late last year. The San Francisco-based developer is now expanding its computing infrastructure and commercial enterprise base, with the Asian nation serving as a critical hardware partner in these efforts. Corporate user accounts for ChatGPT Enterprise among South Korean companies and institutions grew 28-fold by the end of August compared to the same period a year earlier, according to OpenAI. That retail footprint has been accompanied by rapid enterprise expansion, positioning the country as a central hub for the company’s global operations. South Korean firms are increasingly integrating AI across multi-departmental operations—including legal, sales, finance, operations, and marketing—rather than limiting the software to isolated technical assignments, OpenAI reported. This surge in regional corporate demand coincides with the release of GPT-6 Astra, OpenAI’s newest AI model designed to handle complex computer tasks, cybersecurity, coding, scientific research, and professional enterprise workflows. At a news conference in Seoul, Harrison Kim, general manager of OpenAI Korea, highlighted an expanding partnership with Samsung Electronics centered on hardware research and chip production. “One of the areas where we have made the most progress and gained the most recognition with Samsung Electronics is our joint production and research on the next-generation chips we are developing,” Kim said. Among OpenAI’s largest enterprise deployments worldwide is South Korean conglomerate Samsung Electronics, where employees across international offices use ChatGPT for research, development, marketing, and sales. Kim did not disclose specific technical specifications or outline Samsung’s exact role in the chip production pipeline. A spokesperson for Samsung Electronics stated that the company could not confirm details regarding individual customer relationships. In June, Samsung expanded internal access within its Device eXperience (DX) division—the core unit responsible for consumer electronics including Galaxy smartphones, smart TVs, and home appliances—authorizing staff to deploy ChatGPT along with competing tools, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. The collaboration with Samsung comes as OpenAI actively works to build out custom silicon to support its growing AI compute demand. In June, OpenAI announced Jalapeno, its first custom artificial intelligence chip designed for AI inference. Developed in partnership with fabless designer Broadcom Inc., Jalapeno is scheduled to be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). While custom logic chips handle processing workloads, large AI models require high-capacity, high-bandwidth memory chips to serve millions of concurrent user queries in data centers. South Korea dominates the global dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) markets, led by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix Inc. To secure memory components for its long-term infrastructure, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix signed non-binding letters of intent last year to supply memory chips for OpenAI’s “Stargate” project, a planned multi-billion-dollar supercomputing data center initiative. Kim noted that building deeper supply relationships with South Korean memory makers remains a top priority for OpenAI’s operations in the region. Beyond software integration, South Korea’s advanced semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem has become central to OpenAI’s hardware strategy.