OpenAI is planning an inference residency in South Korea to run AI inference at domestic data centres, with talks underway to secure GPUs and cloud capacity from local partners.

The effort faces bottlenecks in obtaining enough domestic GPUs and a robust cloud infrastructure, as negotiations continue with several South Korean partners who can provide the needed compute and support.

The initiative aims to bring the residency to Korea in response to rapid growth of ChatGPT in the market, ensuring local computing power to support expansion.

Samsung Electronics is highlighted as a major deployment, using OpenAI products across R&D, marketing, overseas sales, and production management, with about 50,000 users at Seoul National University also leveraging ChatGPT and Codex for research and work.

OpenAI is expanding its Korea partner ecosystem, engaging with Samsung SDS, LG CNS, SK AX, MegazoneCloud, Bespin Global, Cloucus, and cloud partners, while exploring platform integrations and new startup collaborators to accelerate adoption.