Samsung's Lee to redefine growth roadmap with focus on new drivers

Samsung Group leader Lee Jae-yong wrapped up a 22-day US business trip on Friday after meeting with nearly two dozen chief executives of multinational companies to discuss issues ranging from chips to artificial intelligence to bio, namely South Korea’s most powerful business group’s future growth engines.

His meetings with big figures like Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft Corp. CEO Satya Nadella were seen as Lee's latest push to fully restore his international business network, disconnected by the pandemic, which is expected to lay the ground for Samsung’s new future growth roadmap centered on its next growth drivers like AI, industry observers expected. 

Lee, the chairman of the world’s biggest memory chip and smartphone producer Samsung Electronics Co., returned home early Friday from his stay of just over three weeks in the US, the company said, adding that he met with about 20 CEOs of major companies there.

It was Lee’s longest business trip to the world’s biggest economy since 2014, when he emerged as Samsung’s de facto leader to fill the void left by his then-bedridden father, the late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee.

The new chairman, widely known in international business circles as Jay Y. Lee, traveled around the US after joining the economic delegation of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s first state visit to Washington, D.C. in late April.

NVIDIA, MS, GOOGLE, BIOGEN AND MORE

Lee toured the US from the East Coast to the West Coast to visit the country’s bio cluster and the Silicon Valley information technology hub. He met with the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, Organon, Flagship Pioneering and more.

Those tech and bio companies are dominant players in the global AI, automotive electronic chip, next-gen telecom device and bio markets, in which Samsung has vowed to stay competitive for future growth.

The leaders were known to have shared their visions and discussed cooperative measures to lead future industries.

Especially, his one-on-one meeting with Jensen Huang, the leader of Nvidia that is the dominant player in the much-hyped generative AI industry, underscores Samsung’s strong commitment to AI technology, one of its next growth drivers.
 
The two chiefs met at a Japanese restaurant in Silicon Valley on Wednesday (local time) and reportedly discussed their future cooperation in creating synergy in AI chip technology and chip foundry.

Nvidia is the world’s leading designer of graphics processing units (GPUs) for generative AI servers, and it commissions foundry companies such as the global foundry leader TSMC Co. and Samsung Electronics to manufacture its chips.

Their meeting has heightened expectations that it could lead to the American GPU producer’s orders of Samsung’s High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) chips.

Lee is also known to have actively built a network with world-renowned AI scholars during his latest US stay, with whom he discussed diverse AI applications and their future collaboration.

BREAKTHROUGHS TO FUTURE CHALLENGES

After the trip, Lee is expected to reorganize Samsung to foster its new growth drivers like AI.

He is expected to work on measures to make the group’s corporate culture more agile to deal more effectively with the rapidly changing business landscape reshaped by the latest industry trends.

At his inauguration ceremony as Samsung Electronics’ chairman in October last year, Lee emphasized the importance of creating a corporate culture that can inspire enough creativity and passion among employees to embolden them to take on challenges. Talent has been a core pillar driving Samsung's ascent along with technology since its inception, Lee added.

Based on these core values, Lee is expected to apply takeaways from his trip to the US, the global leader in AI, automotive chip, bio and next-generation telecom technologies, to redefine the company’s future growth strategy.

Some industry observers said that Lee should have used his US trip to search for breakthroughs to steer the group through the choppy waters of the current global ICT slump. 

Write to Jeong-Soo Hwang at hjs@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.