Intel CEO to come to Seoul for AI Summit in June

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, left, speaks with Ha Jung-woo, head of AI Innovation at Naver Cloud, on Tuesday, April 9, 2024, at the Intel Vision event in Phoenix, Arizona.[INTEL]

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is coming to Seoul in June to participate in the Intel AI Summit, which will be attended by Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Naver.

Making its Korean debut, the Intel AI Summit is a series of events held across the world with its global partners to accelerate the deployment of AI that has been held in Taiwan and India among others so far this year, and will move to Germany, Turkey and the U.K. in the coming months.

Executives from Samsung Electronics' memory chip division and Naver are expected to take to the stage to share their insights on the business with their partners, although the final candidates haven't been confirmed, according to the two companies.

Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon, who was rumored to be presenting at the event, however, will not attend, the Korean IT company said.

SK hynix will also take part, according to industry sources.

Intel has been forging a number of chip partnerships with Korean companies as it looks to regain dominance in the face of an AI era. Early this month, the U.S. firm joined forces with Naver to establish an AI chip ecosystem that doesn't need Nvidia chips and software.

Gelsinger described Naver as "one of the fastest growing Asian cloud service providers in the industry" during the Intel Vision event where the partnership was publicized in a surprise announcement.

Naver is one of very few companies around the world that runs its own large language model (LLM), the HyperCLOVA X, which was released last year. The company, which has relied on Nvidia processors, said it will verify Intel's Gaudi 2 processor to see its performances and power efficiency.

The two also agreed to establish an AI research lab where universities and startups regularly share their studies on AI.

Intel is also known to be collaborating with Samsung Electronics and SK hynix to deploy their memory chips, including the premium HBM (high bandwidth memory), in its logic processors.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]