Last week, Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee met OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in South Korea in a bid to create an open partnership in which the two companies help out each other. However, OpenAI appears to be planning to let TSMC, Samsung's primary rival, make its in-house AI chips.

OpenAI's in-house 3nm AI chips could be fabricated by TSMC, not Samsung Foundry

It was speculated that OpenAI could use Samsung Foundry, Samsung's chip manufacturing (fabricating) division, to make its in-house AI chips. However, according to a report from Reuters, OpenAI is entering the final stages of designing its long-rumored in-house AI chips.

OpenAI reportedly wants to reduce its reliance on Nvidia, which is currently the world's most popular and successful AI chip maker, and reduce operational costs.

While ChatGPT maker hasn't announced it officially, the company could send its chip designs to TSMC within the next few months so that the latter could make those chips using its 3nm process node. The chips could enter mass production sometime in 2026.

In the chipmaking industry, Samsung Foundry has received a bad reputation over the past 3-4 years. The chips it made for Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Samsung's System LSI (Exynos) division showed signs of overheating and higher power consumption. Since then, multiple clients (Nvidia and Qualcomm) have backed off from Samsung and switched to TSMC.

While Samsung Foundry has launched newer generation 3nm and 4nm process nodes, no major client has used them yet. Only Samsung has used those processes to make its in-house Exynos chips. Now, even OpenAI seems to be moving to TSMC despite its partnership with Samsung.

OpenAI could still buy HBM chips from Samsung

OpenAI could still buy Samsung's high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for its in-house AI chips. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft make their in-house AI chips instead of relying on Nvidia. Creating such a single custom chip could cost upwards of $500 million, and Sam Altman has been traveling worldwide to raise funds for OpenAI.

Samsung is also said to be interested in investing in OpenAI's Stargate Project to gain a foothold in the AI segment. The company is already using OpenAI's algorithms in its new high-end TVs to power AI features.

Image Credits: Samsung

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