Shares of South Korean chip heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix surged Thursday, a day after the two companies partnered with artificial-intelligence major OpenAI as part of the U.S. firm’s Stargate initiative.

Samsung shares hit their highest since January 2021, rising over 4%, while SK Hynix stock surged more than 9% — highest since 2000.

OpenAI said in a statement that this partnership will “focus on increasing the supply of advanced memory chips essential for next-generation AI and expanding data center capacity in Korea.”

The ChatGPT-maker said the two South Korean firms plan to scale up production of advanced memory chips, which are critical to power its AI models.

The announcement came as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman met with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in Seoul, and the top leaders at Samsung and SK Hynix.

OpenAI has also signed a series of agreements to explore developing next-generation AI data centers in South Korea, including with the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT, telecommunications operator SK Telecom, as well as with Samsung subsidiaries.

Earlier this month, SK Hynix announced that it was ready to mass-produce its next-generation high-bandwidth memory chips, cementing its leading position in the AI value chain. HBM is a type of memory that is used in chipsets for artificial-intelligence computing, including in chips from global AI giant Nvidia — a major client of SK Hynix. 

HBM4 chips are expected to be the main AI memory chip needed for Nvidia’s next-generation Rubin architecture — a more powerful AI chip for global data centers.

SK Hynix has been a main chip supplier to Nvidia, while rival Samsung has reportedly been working to get its HBM4 chips certified by Nvidia. 

Samsung has traditionally been the market leader in memory, but its position has been threatened by SK Hynix that has taken a lead in the HBM space. A report from Counterpoint Research in July found that SK Hynix had caught up with Samsung’s memory revenues in the second quarter, with both now vying for the top position in the global memory market. 

Samsung’s second-quarter earnings missed expectations, as profits from its chip business declined almost 94% year on year, although its Chief Financial Officer Soon-cheol Park said that the company expects a rebound in the second half of the year.

— CNBC’s Dylan Butts contributed to this report.

NASA is requiring employees involved in Artemis missions with contractors SpaceX and Blue Origin to stay on the job during the government shutdown, CNBC has learned.

Their work will be unpaid during the shutdown furlough, but employees should record their time, NASA Chief Human Capital Officer Kelly Elliott wrote in an email to staffers on Wednesday. NASA employees are expected to receive pay for their work after a reopening.

In a separate memo from Monday, NASA’s acting finance chief, Steve Shinn, laid out details about missions that would be supported during a shutdown.

NASA will continue to support “planned operations” of the International Space Station, as well as any satellite mission that “is in the operations phase,” Shinn wrote. He added that NASA would support “Artemis operations during any funding lapse,” including employees and contractors working on those projects.

Shinn said NASA would furlough around 15,000 people and require around 3,000 staffers to keep working, part time or full time, during the shutdown.

The U.S. government’s shutdown began early Wednesday morning, setting the stage for the furlough of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and the closing of a number of key programs and services. Government employees who are considered “essential,” like Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers and air traffic controllers, are required to continue working.

On its website, NASA describes Artemis as a campaign to “send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits, and build the foundation for the first crewed missions to Mars.” The memos this week didn’t name the contractors associated with the various Artemis missions.

SpaceX, which is helmed by Elon Musk, won major Artemis contracts with its Starship rocket, the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. SpaceX has flown its full Starship rocket system on 10 test flights since April 2023, and plans to conduct another on Oct. 13. Its prior Starship test flights included five failures, a partial failure and four successes.

Blue Origin, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, was given another Artemis contract, and work on its lunar lander will also continue during the shutdown, NASA employees told CNBC.

Artemis III, scheduled for 2027, will be the first to involve SpaceX directly. The mission would land two NASA astronauts on the south polar region of the Moon.

Early Artemis missions involved NASA working with Lockheed Martin and Boeing to design, build, analyze and then buy rockets that the agency would own outright. With Artemis II, which is scheduled for early 2026, NASA aims to send four astronauts around the moon without landing before returning to Earth.

And the goal of Artemis IV+ HLS, with SpaceX, is to put astronauts into the first lunar space station, helping NASA and its partners to prepare for an eventual human mission to Mars. Artemis V is expected to involve Blue Origin.

Neither SpaceX nor Blue Origin has finalized the design of their lunar landers, and so far have only built test hardware.

Representatives of NASA, SpaceX and Blue Origin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. An autoreply from NASA said the agency “is closed due to a lapse in government funding.”

“I am in furlough status; therefore, I am unable to respond to your message at this time,” said the message from Cheryl Warner, news chief in NASA’s communications office.

WATCH: What to know about how government shutdown impacts economic data

Google has laid off more than 100 employees in design-related roles, CNBC has learned.

Earlier this week, the company laid off employees within the cloud unit’s “quantitative user experience research” teams and “platform and service experience” teams, as well as some adjacent teams, according to internal documents viewed by CNBC.

The roles often focus on using data, surveys and other tools to understand and implement user behaviors that inform product development and design.

Google has halved some of the cloud unit’s design teams, and many of those affected are U.S.-based roles. Some employees have been given until early December to find a new role within the company.

The company did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Business Insider first reported that some cloud roles were eliminated.

The latest layoffs come as Google accelerates cuts to focus spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Since the beginning of the year, the search giant has offered voluntary exit packages to many U.S.-based units across the company and eliminated more than one-third of its managers overseeing small teams.

It also recently began pushing employees to use more AI in their daily work. 

So far, the company has offered buyouts to U.S.-based employees from units such as human resources, hardware, search, ads, marketing, finance and commerce divisions. 

CNBC reported in August that Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees the company would need “to be more efficient as we scale up so we don’t solve everything with headcount.”

Other megacaps have also seen recent cuts.

In July, Microsoft laid off 9,000 employees across roles and geographies. Meta has also had layoffs.