Samsung SDS, the IT services arm of the Samsung empire, just deepened its relationships with both OpenAI and Anthropic in a pair of deals that position the company as the go-to AI infrastructure provider for Korean enterprise. The announcements came during the company’s annual Real Summit 2026 event on September 8.
The headline move: Samsung SDS became the first South Korean organization to join OpenAI’s Daybreak Partner Program, a tier that grants access to cutting-edge AI models for integration into cybersecurity workflows. Separately, the company is building on a strategic partnership with Anthropic that was formalized in July 2026, also a first for a Korean firm.
What the partnerships actually look like
The OpenAI relationship isn’t new. Samsung SDS became OpenAI’s first Korean reseller partner for ChatGPT Enterprise back in December 2025. The Daybreak Partner Program upgrade takes that from “we sell your product” to “we’re building with your technology at the platform level,” particularly around cybersecurity applications.
The Anthropic side of things is equally ambitious. Under the July 2026 strategic partnership, the two companies are collaborating on identifying AI transformation opportunities across Samsung’s sprawling business units. That includes training specialized engineers and accelerating the adoption of Anthropic’s Claude models across the Samsung ecosystem.
The scale is already significant. Claude Enterprise has been deployed to roughly 70,000 employees across 20 Samsung affiliates. Those users have exchanged over 1 million messages internally through the platform.
Samsung SDS CEO Lee Joon-hee framed the ambition in broader terms than simple efficiency gains.
“AI transformation is more than just reducing operational time and costs; it represents a fundamental redesign of business processes.”
The strategic positioning play
What Samsung SDS is building here is essentially a one-stop shop for enterprise AI in Korea. The company is layering reselling, consulting, security, and deployment services into a comprehensive stack.
By partnering simultaneously with OpenAI and Anthropic, Samsung SDS avoids the trap of betting on a single foundation model provider, offering both GPT and Claude models to enterprise customers.
For Anthropic, the partnership offers distribution. Getting Claude Enterprise embedded across 20 Samsung affiliates and tens of thousands of users creates institutional stickiness. Once employees build workflows around a particular AI assistant, switching costs become real.
What this means for the enterprise AI landscape
Samsung SDS’s early-mover status with both OpenAI and Anthropic creates a barrier for rival Korean IT services firms. Being designated the first Korean partner in multiple programs likely comes with preferential access to models, engineering support, and go-to-market resources that late entrants won’t easily replicate.
For Samsung Group as a whole, the internal deployment numbers tell a story about AI adoption velocity. Going from initial ChatGPT Enterprise reseller agreement in December 2025 to 70,000 Claude Enterprise users and over a million messages across 20 affiliates by mid-2026 suggests genuine organizational momentum, not a pilot project gathering dust.