Lee Jae-yong Heads to the U.S. with Han Jin-man to Focus on Foundry Business

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong appeared at the Sun Valley Conference in the United States with Han Jin-man, head of Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division (DS Division) and Samsung Electronics Foundry Business, where global big tech leaders gather. Because Lee traveled with Han, who oversees Samsung Electronics' foundry business, expectations are rising that the trip could expand networks with global companies and lead to additional Samsung Foundry orders.
According to business circles on the 8th, Lee attended the Sun Valley Conference, which is being held at the Sun Valley Resort in Idaho through the 11th local time. Han accompanied him.
The Sun Valley Conference is a closed-door event hosted every July since 1983 by the U.S. investment bank Allen & Company. It is often called the "billionaires' summer camp" because it draws major figures from global media, information technology and finance.
This year's event reportedly included Amazon founder and board chairman Jeff Bezos, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, among other top leaders from global big tech.
Business circles say Lee may meet executives from key client companies at the event to discuss ways to expand cooperation in foundry and AI semiconductors. In particular, because Han is accompanying him, there is also hope that the trip could go beyond networking and lead to concrete foundry contract discussions.
Samsung Electronics Foundry has recently been stepping up efforts to secure more global customers. Last year, it signed a foundry supply deal with Tesla worth about 22.7 trillion won. It is also working with NVIDIA on autonomous driving semiconductors and with Grok on AI chip production. Possibilities for expanded cooperation with major fabless customers such as Qualcomm and AMD are also being discussed.
[email protected] Jung Won-il Reporter