Mukesh Ambani, India’s wealthiest businessman and head of Reliance Industries, is set to visit South Korea next week with his son Akash Ambani for a two-day trip focused on deepening Reliance’s partnership with Samsung. The visit begins on November 25 and includes a tour of Samsung’s Suwon complex with Chairman Lee Jae-yong, where the Ambanis will look at the company’s 5G equipment lines and its early work on 6G. This is the first time they will step inside a Samsung facility, something industry watchers see as a sign that larger commercial deals may follow.
After Suwon, the two will head to Seoul for a private dinner with Lee and senior leaders from Samsung’s networks division, the arm that competes with Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia across global telecom markets. The meeting stands out because Ambani, who oversees a vast empire across energy, retail and telecom, is often described as the most influential business figure in India. Reliance is currently building what could become the world’s largest AI-ready data-center hub, and global tech leaders including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai have been seeking closer ties with him as India’s digital infrastructure expands at breakneck speed.
Reliance has been one of Samsung’s most important telecom customers for more than a decade. Since 2012, the Indian company has poured roughly 40 trillion won into building a nationwide 4G LTE network, with Samsung supplying all of the equipment. Under Akash Ambani’s leadership, Jio has grown to over 506 million subscribers. India’s shift to 5G has created fresh competition, especially after the Indian government blocked Huawei from local networks. Much of the early 5G equipment went to Ericsson and Nokia, but Samsung hopes to strengthen its foothold as Reliance rolls out its next phase.
Reliance is also building a massive three-gigawatt data-center complex in Gujarat and planning another in the southeast, both of which could open the door for Samsung to supply high-speed networking systems designed for AI workloads.
For Samsung, this meeting comes at a delicate moment. Its networks business has struggled to land big international wins, and its semiconductor foundry has only recently regained momentum thanks to a major AI-chip order from Tesla. Lee has been extremely active on the diplomatic front, meeting global tech leaders and nurturing personal ties with the Ambani family. He is the only Korean business leader who has been invited to all three Ambani family weddings, and his appearance in Indian traditional attire at Akash Ambani’s ceremony in 2019 made headlines.
In recent months, Lee has met with Nvidia’s Huang, Meta’s Zuckerberg, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Xiaomi’s Lei Jun and Mercedes-Benz chief Ola Källenius. His casual fried-chicken dinner with Huang preceded Samsung’s announcement that it would pre-purchase 50,000 Nvidia GPUs despite shortages, and a video call with Elon Musk helped secure a Tesla order for Samsung-made AI chips. Lee also maintains close ties with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed, which has fueled speculation that Samsung may explore AI data-center partnerships in the Gulf as well.
