OpenAI’s Sam Altman seals AI deal with South Korea’s Kakao amid rising competition

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has secured a partnership with South Korean tech giant Kakao, marking another strategic move as the AI leader seeks global allies amid growing competition from China’s DeepSeek.

Kakao, which operates South Korea’s largest messaging app, KakaoTalk, along with an online bank and a taxi-hailing service, announced on Tuesday that it will integrate ChatGPT into its AI-powered services. 

This deal places Kakao within OpenAI’s expanding global alliance, as tech firms race to keep pace in an increasingly competitive industry.

“We’re excited to bring advanced AI to Kakao’s millions of users and work together to integrate our technology into services that transform how Kakao’s users communicate and connect,” Altman said during his visit to Seoul. 

Kakao CEO Shina Chung echoed the sentiment, calling the partnership a “strategic collaboration” to enhance the company’s AI offerings.

Altman’s visit to South Korea also included high-level discussions with Samsung and SK hynix, two of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers. He met with SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won and SK hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung to explore potential collaborations on AI memory chips, including high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which is essential for AI-powered data processing. 

He is also expected to meet with Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Jae-yong.

The move comes as DeepSeek unsettles the global AI landscape with its high-performing and cost-effective models, raising concerns in Silicon Valley. 

Some industry leaders claim the Chinese AI firm may have reverse-engineered elements of US-developed models, particularly those underpinning ChatGPT.

In response, OpenAI has been increasing its cooperation with US authorities and raising concerns over a technique known as AI distillation, where smaller models are trained by mimicking larger, more advanced systems. 

Meanwhile, OpenAI itself faces scrutiny over intellectual property violations, particularly regarding the use of copyrighted content in training its generative AI models.

Altman’s latest deal with Kakao highlights OpenAI’s strategy to deepen its footprint in Asia. On Monday, OpenAI and Japan’s SoftBank announced a joint AI venture to service corporate clients in the country.

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