Sam Altman took Samsung's top 50 bosses to AI school and handed out a 13-key keyboard

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met about 50 presidents of Samsung affiliates across electronics, finance and bio on Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026, at Samsung's leadership center in Yongin, South Korea, for a session titled "The next 10 years AI will change: choices for companies," Samsung said.

The most interesting part is not the celebrity CEO, it's the homework. Samsung sat its top 50 bosses down to actually use generative AI on their own documents before letting them talk to Altman, and it says every employee gets the same training by early 2027. That's what enterprise AI adoption looks like when it's real: mandatory, top-down, and a little awkward. The keyboard gift is the cheeky part: OpenAI handing a company that makes keyboards, screens and memory a gadget that says the future of work is pressing "approve" on whatever your agents did. Samsung also sells OpenAI the memory chips that make those agents run, so everyone in the room had a reason to smile.

Samsung held the session on Oct. 31 at the Samsung Human Resources Development Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, with about 50 affiliate presidents from electronics, finance, and bio. An affiliate president is the head of one company inside the Samsung group. They discussed where AI is heading, new markets and business opportunities, how AI will change corporate decision-making and operations, and what skills executives need. Those lines are Samsung's, from its newsroom post the same day.

Samsung said the session was part of executive training for a company-wide shift to AI. Before meeting Altman, the presidents did hands-on generative AI training, including using AI to organize scattered business documents into their own "knowledge repositories." Generative, here, means the tool writes or sorts new material, rather than only looking something up. A knowledge repository, in Samsung's wording, is a collected set of a person's work documents that an AI tool can draw on. It was their second intensive AI training, following one in June. Those lines are Samsung's.

Samsung says it has run AI training for about 2,300 executives since June and plans to train all employees by February 2027. It is setting up a dedicated AI organization at each affiliate. Those plans are Samsung's.

Samsung Electronics and OpenAI signed a letter of intent in October 2025 on global AI infrastructure, including supplying memory chips for OpenAI's Stargate project. A letter of intent is an agreement to keep working toward a deal. It is not, by itself, a finished supply contract. Stargate is OpenAI's name for its data-center buildout. Memory chips are the fast storage that sits next to the processors running an AI model. Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong visited OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters in July 2026. That history is Samsung's. Saturday's post does not announce a new contract, an investment, or a dollar figure.

Altman gave the people in the room a Codex Micro, a compact controller designed with keyboard maker Work Louder, Maeil Business and Herald Business reported. He said, in those reports: "In a world where you give computers verbal instructions and use AI, you may not need a full keyboard," and that it "really helps you use Codex faster." Codex is OpenAI's coding agent, software that writes and edits programs from instructions. The gift and the quotations are those reports, not a line in Samsung's newsroom post.

OpenAI's store page lists the Codex Micro at $230, and the page currently shows it out of stock. It has 13 mechanical switches, a touch sensor, a rotary dial, and a joystick. A mechanical switch is the individual key mechanism that clicks. Agent Keys light up to show whether a Codex task is thinking, running, waiting, or done, and the dial adjusts the reasoning level, which is how much work the agent does before it answers. It connects over Bluetooth or USB-C and works with Mac and Windows. The price, the stock line, and the specs are OpenAI's store page.

Yonhap, citing industry sources, reported that SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won also met Altman in Seoul the same day, with executives from SK hynix and SK Telecom. SK hynix makes memory chips. SK Telecom is the group's phone company. Yonhap's account is from industry sources. It does not report an agreement from that meeting.

The picture is Samsung affiliate presidents at long wooden desks in a lecture hall, watching OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on a large video wall, in conversation on stage in Yongin. The credit is Samsung Electronics Newsroom.

In plain terms, Samsung put about 50 affiliate presidents in a classroom in Yongin on Saturday, had them practice generative AI on their own documents, and then brought in Sam Altman. He handed out a $230 controller with 13 keys for OpenAI's coding agent. OpenAI's store currently lists that controller out of stock. Samsung says the same kind of training reaches every employee by February 2027. The company did not announce a new chip deal. Yonhap, citing industry sources, says SK's chairman met Altman in Seoul the same day.