Samsung appears to be putting more focus on its AI semiconductor business, as Chairman Lee Jae-yong attended this year’s Sun Valley Conference in the US alongside the head of the foundry business, Han Jin-man. While Samsung has maintained a solid position in the memory chip space, its foundry business continues to lag behind industry leader TSMC. Securing more contract manufacturing orders has become increasingly important for the Korean firm to help its foundry business return to quarterly profitability and narrow the gap with its rival. Samsung is already expanding its cutting-edge chip manufacturing capabilities and securing orders from clients including Tesla, but still needs more large and long-term customers. Since Han took charge of the foundry business late last year, his presence at Sun Valley shows Samsung’s strong push to grow its customer base. This year’s conference brought key executives from global tech companies, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, giving Samsung an opportunity to hold AI chip manufacturing talks with potential big clients. The trip is described as a two-top sales effort by Lee and Han, with Lee building relationships and Han focusing on foundry and packaging orders.