Meta's Zuckerberg in South Korea, expected to discuss AI

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrived in South Korea late on Tuesday, where he is expected to hold talks on artificial intelligence and have meetings with President Yoon Suk Yeol and the heads of some of the country's tech powerhouses.

Zuckerberg is on a tour of Asian countries including Japan, South Korea and India, media reports said. Meta has been ramping up its AI efforts this year including plans for a custom chip and adding AI functions into products.

He was due to meet with Yoon as well as Samsung Electronics 005930.KS Chairman Jay Y. Lee and leaders at LG Electronics 066570.KS, according to a government source with knowledge of the matter.

The source declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to media.

It is Zuckerberg's first known visit to South Korea in about 10 years.

He is expected to discuss AI chip supply and expanding ecosystems for generative AI, as Meta Platforms seeks to get generative AI technology into its core social media products and hardware devices this year.

Meta plans to deploy into its data centers this year a new version of a custom chip  aimed at supporting its AI push, Reuters reported earlier this month. It also plans to secure about 350,000 H100 GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia by end-year to support the push.