Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who’s touring Asia international locations this week, mentioned in a gathering with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Thursday that Meta desires to beef up its cooperation with Samsung Electronics for AI chips to offset geopolitical danger subject in Taiwan, the place TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip producer, is headquartered.
Zuckerberg and Yoon additionally mentioned methods to increase cooperation in synthetic intelligence and prolonged actuality industries, a South Korean presidential official mentioned in a briefing right now (in Korean).
AI processors — the manufacturing and procurement, and the event of cutting-edge applied sciences which might be extra environment friendly than the present era of chips — have turn out to be a serious precedence for any firm working within the area of AI, and so too they’ve turn out to be a spotlight for Meta for the way forward for its social media and {hardware} units companies.
Zuckerberg reportedly met Samsung’s executives, together with Samsung government chairman Jay Y. Lee, Wednesday night time to debate potential collaborations round AI chips, semiconductors, and prolonged actuality. A Samsung spokesperson declined to touch upon Zuckerberg’s assembly with Samsung when contacted by TechCrunch for a response to the report, but additionally didn’t dispute it.
TSMC opened its first chip fabrication plant in Japan to diversify its provide chains away from Taiwan because the U.S.-China tech warfare intensifies. TSMC-owned Japan Superior Semiconductor Manufacturing (JASM), which was established by the Japanese authorities and the firms in 2020, began the plant’s building course of in April 2022. JASM is set to set up its second chip plant in Japan, with building begin in 2024-end.
Meta’s founder additionally met Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Tuesday to debate AI and semiconductors. Japan has been seeking to revitalize its chip making industry, which is about 10 years behind Taiwan and South Korea in relation to next-generation chips.
Zuckerberg’s tour coincides with what has turn out to be a serious international AI chip race. Nvidia continues to dominate the worldwide marketplace for AI chips, leaving an enormous alternative for international locations which have historically been sturdy in processors or reignite their innovation instincts. That’s one thing that tech corporations constructing AI companies are eager to assist to ease their Nvidia dependence. To that finish, the social media giant has been ramping up its efforts to secure AI chips, and has been working on its own in-house AI chip, Artemis, for its information facilities. Massive tech corporations like Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, and Google have equally been scrambling for AI chips to assist their AI ambitions.
Meta’s ambition on XR: Assembly with LG
The conferences right now are the most recent in a string of visits that the Meta CEO has been making within the area. Simply yesterday, Zuckerberg met LG Electronics CEO William Cho in Seoul throughout his tour of Asia. LG Electronics said it had a two-hour-long assembly with Zuckerberg to debate the 2 corporations’ potential strategic collaboration on prolonged actuality (XR) system improvement.
When TechCrunch requested if the dialogue included concrete plans between the 2 events, a spokesperson of LG Electronics mentioned that LG Electronics and Meta “have been working closely even before the top management meeting yesterday,” and that the 2 corporations have been anticipating extra alternatives going ahead. No particulars on monetary phrases or what merchandise particularly a collaboration would contain.
The LG spokesperson additionally mentioned, citing the corporate CEO Cho, who advised native reporters after the assembly, “The top management of the two companies discussed the strategic directions and timelines of the collaboration.”
On the a part of LG, the Korean tech big desires to deliver Meta’s prolonged actuality (XR) platform to LG’s content material and shopper units — for instance, its TVs — to forge a “distinctive ecosystem” within the Korean firm’s newly arrange XR enterprise, LG mentioned in an announcement.
LG, like each different tech firm on this planet right now, is blowing the AI horn for the time being. However realistically, it has not made many waves so far within the AI race — neither as a chipmaker, nor as a developer of AI-centric merchandise, nor in providers. Meta presents an opportunity for LG to associate with an organization that has made extra headway, but which doesn’t current a direct competitor to LG when it comes to its bigger shopper electronics enterprise, and furthermore offsets the dominance of another huge gamers within the AI house like Google and OpenAI.
Working example: the corporate particularly has identified that Cho “expressed a keen interest in Meta’s advanced technology demonstrations, notably focusing on Meta’s large language models and its potential for on-device AI integration,” whereas experiencing the Quest 3 headset Meta just lately launched and Ray-Ban Meta sensible glasses, the corporate mentioned.
After LG shut down its struggling mobile business globally in April 2021, the Korean electronics and equipment big shifted its enterprise focus to different development areas, together with sensible houses, related units, the Web of Issues (IoT), electrical car (EV) parts and robotics and — for sure — synthetic intelligence platforms.
In late November, LG said that its home entertainment division had newly set up an extended reality (XR) team as a part of the group reshuffle to expedite the event of an XR system, aiming for 2025.
“We’re excited to see a longtime leader in consumer electronics share our commitment to building the next generation of XR devices,” a spokesperson at Meta mentioned. “Meta’s vision for a more open ecosystem depends on collaboration among the industry’s most innovative companies and we look forward to our work with LG resulting in more ways for people across the world to benefit from the computing platforms of the future.”
