Samsung shot itself in the foot in 2018 when it turned down NVIDIA's Jensen Huang

Samsung was approached by NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang in 2018 to enter into a long-term collaboration, but the Korean tech giant turned Huang down in what might be one of its most regrettable decisions in recent memory.

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A new report by Korean media has revealed that Samsung turned down an offer by Huang for a long-term collaboration on joint HBM development, which included a partnership with the foundry business and work on the CUDA ecosystem together. Fast forward to today, Samsung's semiconductor and HBM businesses aren't looking very healthy at all, with reports saying that both are operating at a loss and are unable to maintain healthy yields or pick up on market trends.

The report states that NVIDIA had the forward-thinking to know that HBM development was going to be integral for the future and approached Samsung to be its supplier due to how prominent the company is in the DRAM and NAND chip spaces.

At the time, Samsung was leading in both of those areas, hence Huang's decision to approach them with an offer. However, Samsung leadership reportedly rejected the offer from NVIDIA as no one at the company was ready for a long-term partnership at the level that NVIDIA was requesting.

Unfortunately for Samsung, it was unaware that NVIDIA was about to balloon into a now $4 trillion company through the explosion of artificial intelligence software that requires GPU horsepower to function. With Samsung off the table, NVIDIA approached SK Hynix, a direct competitor to Samsung, for an HBM partnership, which the company accepted and has maintained until today. Now, SK Hynix is making its way to the top of the food chain when it comes to supplying HBM and memory products.