Bill Gates, founder and chairman of American nuclear energy company TerraPower, is set to meet with HD Hyundai Chairman Chung Ki-sun in Seoul on Friday to discuss ways to deepen cooperation in the small modular reactor (SMR) sector, according to sources.

This will be their first meeting in seven months, following a previous encounter at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The meeting comes as South Korea's leading shipbuilding group, HD Hyundai, continues to expand its partnership with TerraPower, which specializes in advanced nuclear technology.

In 2022, HD Hyundai's shipbuilding subsidiary, HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co., invested $30 million in TerraPower. Since then, the group has been involved in building reactor support equipment for TerraPower's Natrium project, a 345-megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor located in Wyoming, USA.

In March 2025, Chung and Gates signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly advance the commercialization of the Natrium reactor. Five months later, the two are meeting again to discuss further measures to expand nuclear energy collaboration.

In May of this year, the two companies signed a framework agreement for the supply of the Natrium reactor. Under the agreement, HD Hyundai has been designated as the preferred manufacturing partner for the reactor enclosure system (RES) components.