Cristiano Amon, chief executive of Qualcomm, met with senior executives at Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and LG Electronics during a visit to South Korea on Tuesday, as the chip designer moves to expand its data center artificial intelligence business and secure memory supply chains. The CEO reportedly arrived in Korea on Monday.
According to industry sources, Amon met with Samsung’s foundry head and president, Han Jin-man, to discuss producing Qualcomm’s next-generation application processor, the Snapdragon 8 Elite 2, on Samsung’s 2-nanometer process.
Amon said at CES 2026 in January that Qualcomm had begun discussions with Samsung on 2nm contract manufacturing and that the chip design had already been completed.
Amon also met with executives at SK hynix on Tuesday to discuss memory supply, as Qualcomm broadens its portfolio beyond smartphones into automotive semiconductors, the internet of things and on-device AI, and more recently into data center AI inference.
Industry officials said Qualcomm is seeking to secure stable memory supplies ahead of its data center push, with discussions believed to cover a wide range of products including high bandwidth memory, SOCAMM and LPDDR.
Separately, Amon held a closed-door meeting with LG Electronics CEO Ryu Jae-cheol and other LG executives in Seoul, where the two sides are expected to explore cooperation in “physical AI,” a key growth area for Qualcomm.
At CES 2026, Qualcomm showcased a broad lineup of physical AI platforms, including its Dragonwing IQ10 robotics processor, as well as automotive AI and humanoid systems, signaling a push into robotics and embodied AI.
The two companies previously partnered in LG’s mobile business and have since expanded cooperation into areas such as audio products and automotive components.
herim@heraldcorp.com
