Samsung and OpenAI have agreed on broad cooperation: the tech giants will develop infrastructure for artificial intelligence, including working on projects for floating data centers on water and separate floating power plants to power them.
Samsung and OpenAI have agreed on broad cooperation: the tech giants will develop infrastructure for artificial intelligence, including working on projects for floating data centers on water and separate floating power plants to power them.
TechRadar reports on the agreements. In Seoul, the parties signed a document on cooperation in several areas: microelectronics, data centers, shipbuilding, cloud services and marine technologies. Samsung Electronics will become a key partner of OpenAI in supplying memory for the Project Stargate initiative. The demand is estimated as «giant»: it is about hundreds of thousands of silicon wafers per month — in fact, these are millions of memory chips for servers. Samsung SDS will take on the design, launch and support of data centers, and will also sell ChatGPT Enterprise in Korea, helping local businesses implement enterprise AI.
A separate block of agreements concerns objects on the water. Samsung Heavy Industries and Samsung C&T, together with OpenAI, will develop floating platforms with servers and related infrastructure: from power supply to control systems. The idea is simple: it is easier to find a place for new capacities near the coast, seawater helps cool the equipment, and proximity to large Internet nodes reduces delays in accessing services. Floating power plants should act as their own source of electricity for such sites so as not to depend on shore networks.
For OpenAI, this is a way to quickly increase computing resources for new models, without waiting for land allocation and lengthy approvals on land. For Samsung, this is an opportunity to combine several of its competencies: from the production of memory and server components to shipbuilding and the construction of complex engineering facilities. The companies explain: if the concept proves successful, it will be possible to quickly scale both data centers and the energy for them on water, which reduces costs and carbon footprint.
Floating data centers are still rare, but interest in them is growing: there are already barges with servers in harbors, options powered by solar panels and batteries are being tested, and other energy sources are being discussed. Samsung’s partnership with OpenAI could be the first major testing ground to see if such a model can work on an industrial scale and meet the electricity, cooling, and access speed needs of AI services.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how Samsung Electronics confirmed a large-scale agreement with Tesla to supply semiconductors worth $16.5 billion. The news became public thanks to Samsung’s regulatory filing, and was later confirmed by Elon Musk at X.
