NVIDIA Powers South Korea's Vision for AI Industrial Leadership with Massive GPU Investment

South Korea is poised to become a leading force in the global artificial intelligence landscape, thanks to an ambitious collaboration with NVIDIA. Announced during the APEC Summit, this extensive partnership involves deploying over a quarter-million NVIDIA GPUs throughout the nation’s sovereign clouds and burgeoning AI factories. This massive undertaking is designed to lay the groundwork for AI-driven economic expansion and technological breakthroughs across diverse sectors, including automotive, manufacturing, and telecommunications.

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, underscored the significance of the initiative. He remarked that Korea's strong leadership in technology and manufacturing places it at the forefront of the AI industrial revolution, making accelerated computing infrastructure as crucial as traditional utilities. Huang envisions Korea producing intelligence as a new export, much like its sophisticated physical exports.

Echoing this sentiment, Bae Kyung-hoon, Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT, highlighted AI's role as a foundational element for future industries. He emphasized that expanding national AI infrastructure and developing technologies with NVIDIA is a strategic investment. This will further bolster South Korea's strengths, particularly its manufacturing capabilities, as it strives to rank among the top three global AI powerhouses.

The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) is spearheading efforts to accelerate sovereign AI development, committing to deploy up to 50,000 of the latest NVIDIA GPUs. These GPUs, including NVIDIA Blackwell and other advanced models, will be rolled out across the National AI Computing Center and leading Korean cloud providers like NAVER Cloud, NHN Cloud, and Kakao Corp. This infrastructure will empower research institutes, startups, and AI companies to build advanced models and applications, aligning with Korea's national strategy to enhance AI capabilities.

Additionally, NVIDIA is collaborating with Korean industries, academia, and research institutions on AI-RAN and 6G infrastructure. This includes partnerships with Samsung, SK Telecom, ETRI, KT, LGU+, and Yonsei University, focusing on developing intelligent, low-power AI-RAN network technology.

Korea’s manufacturing, automotive, and telecommunications giants are making substantial investments to establish advanced AI factories and infrastructure. These initiatives are set to accelerate enterprise and physical AI development, fostering a new era of intelligent operations.

• Samsung Electronics is constructing an AI factory equipped with over 50,000 GPUs to advance intelligent manufacturing and integrate AI into its products. The company leverages NVIDIA Nemotron™ datasets, CUDA-X™, cuLitho, and Omniverse™ for digital twin creation, aiming to improve semiconductor manufacturing processes. Samsung is also utilizing NVIDIA Cosmos™ and Isaac Sim™ for its home robot development.
• SK Group is designing an AI factory to house over 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs, dedicated to semiconductor R&D and cloud infrastructure for digital twin and AI agent development. SK Telecom plans to offer sovereign infrastructure featuring NVIDIA RTX PRO™ 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs, enabling domestic manufacturers to access NVIDIA Omniverse for industrial cloud solutions.
• Hyundai Motor Group and NVIDIA are deepening their collaboration, committing to a $3 billion investment to co-develop AI capabilities across mobility, smart factories, and on-device semiconductors. This partnership will utilize 50,000 Blackwell GPUs for AI model training and deployment. Key initiatives include an NVIDIA AI Technology Center, Hyundai Motor Group Physical AI Application Center, and regional AI data centers.
• NAVER Cloud is significantly expanding its NVIDIA AI infrastructure with plans to deploy over 60,000 GPUs, including NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and other Blackwell GPUs. This expansion supports sovereign and physical AI development, with a focus on creating industry-specific AI models for sectors like shipbuilding and security, ultimately benefiting Korea's citizens.

The Korean government, through MSIT, is partnering with NVIDIA to advance its Sovereign AI Foundation Models project. This initiative will integrate NVIDIA NeMo™ and open NVIDIA Nemotron datasets to develop and refine reasoning models using local data. LG AI Research, NAVER Cloud, NC AI, SK Telecom, and Upstage are actively participating in this project to foster sovereign model development.

Furthermore, LG is collaborating with NVIDIA to cultivate physical AI technology and support its ecosystem. They are also working together to assist startups and academia with LG’s EXAONE models, including the EXAONE Path healthcare model built with the MONAI framework, for applications like cancer diagnosis.

In the realm of scientific research, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) is partnering with NVIDIA to establish a Center of Excellence. This center will facilitate research collaboration utilizing Korea's sixth-generation national supercomputer, HANGANG, which features NVIDIA accelerated computing. KISTI also announced support for the new NVIDIA NVQLink™ open architecture, designed to connect quantum processors and GPU supercomputing. This will enable KISTI to deepen research in quantum error correction and hybrid application development using the NVIDIA CUDA-Q™ platform.

To further stimulate economic development and opportunities in Korea, NVIDIA and its partners are establishing an alliance to nurture startups through the NVIDIA Inception program. Participants will gain access to accelerated computing infrastructure from NVIDIA Cloud Partners, including SK Telecom, with support from NVIDIA Inception and VC Alliance members like IMM Investment, Korea Investment Partners, and SBVA. Startups will also benefit from NVIDIA software and expertise, accelerating growth for the next generation of companies. NVIDIA plans to participate in the N-Up AI startup incubation program, operated by the Korea Ministry of SMEs and Startups, reinforcing its commitment to the nation's entrepreneurial spirit.