(Bloomberg) -- Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. are set to unveil major agreements involving "very large" sums with leading US technology companies during President Lee Jae Myung's visit to Silicon Valley, a senior presidential official said.
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The announcements would likely include new long-term memory chip supply deals, strategic investment partnerships and memorandums of understanding, presidential policy chief Kim Yong-beom told reporters Thursday. He declined to disclose the value of the deals ahead of company announcements.
Kim said the presidential visit acted as a "catalyst," helping wrap up long-running negotiations between Korean companies and their US counterparts.
Lee begins the overseas trip in San Francisco on Friday, where he is set to join an AI summit and hold separate meetings with Nvidia Corp.'s Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic PBC's Dario Amodei and Broadcom Inc.'s Hock Tan.
The AI summit will also bring together Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Co. Executive Chair Euisun Chung and Naver Corp. founder Lee Hae-jin.
Last month, Seoul unveiled an investment plan worth at least $880 billion, backed by Samsung Electronics, SK Group and Naver, to expand chip production, build AI data centers and strengthen its leadership in semiconductors and physical AI.
Kim said the trip is expected to turn much last month's planned investment into concrete projects. More than half of the government's planned roughly 8 gigawatts of first-phase AI data-center capacity is expected to take shape during the visit. Unlike the earlier announcement, which reflected initial investment intentions, the new projects will identify specific customers, sites and Korean engineering partners.
Earlier this month, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Samsung and SK Hynix to expand memory-chip production in the US. Kim said it was natural for a US commerce secretary to encourage companies to expand domestic manufacturing but there were no formal requests by Washington to make additional semiconductor investments in the US.
Kim added that the latest expansion plans at home are being driven by strong demand from American technology companies, which account for 80% to 90% of the underlying orders.