Nvidia strikes major AI partnerships with South Korea’s top tech giants

Nvidia unveils an ambitious AI plan for Korea

Nvidia struck a sweeping set of partnerships with South Korea’s government and top tech groups to expand AI infrastructure and applications across the country.

Nvidia said it will supply about 260,000 GPUs to the South Korean government and private companies for sovereign AI buildouts and private sector AI factories over the next several years.

The announcement coincided with Jensen Huang’s APEC visit, and Nvidia framed the deals as strengthening capacity in allied markets as U.S. export controls complicate top-tier chip sales to China.

Sovereign AI becomes a national priority

Seoul plans a sovereign AI computing program that will include roughly 50,000 Nvidia GPUs for state-run data centers, including the National AI Computing Center.

The goal is to secure computing resources for foundation models, public services, and research, while catalyzing domestic AI ecosystems led by firms such as Kakao, Naver, and NHN Cloud.

The effort complements industry deployments and positions Korea to host critical AI capacity on shore under its own policies.

Samsung commits to an AI megafactory vision

Samsung will build an AI factory leveraging more than 50,000 Nvidia GPUs and the Nvidia Omniverse platform to accelerate intelligent manufacturing across semiconductors, mobile devices, and robotics.

The project leverages Nvidia Omniverse for simulation and digital twins, enabling real-time linking of design to factory floors.

Samsung said it is in close talks with Nvidia to supply next-generation HBM4 memory, while SK Hynix and other memory makers are also progressing HBM4 development; these discussions could help meet the bandwidth needs of future Nvidia systems, but are not finalized supply contracts.

Hyundai targets autonomous mobility and smart plants

Hyundai Motor Group plans to deploy approximately 50,000 Nvidia processors based on the Blackwell architecture to accelerate autonomous driving research, robotics, and software-defined factory initiatives.

The companies also outlined their participation in a multi-billion-dollar national physical AI center to support large-scale training, simulation, and validation, thereby tying mobility R&D directly into Korea’s expanding compute backbone.

SK Group builds an industrial AI cloud

SK Group, including SK Telecom and SK hynix, will establish what Nvidia describes as Asia’s first industrial AI cloud, targeting robotics, digital twins, and factory optimization.

SK Hynix will use Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell server GPUs in its early deployments, starting at the Icheon site, with planned expansion toward Yongin, and SK Telecom will coordinate industrial AI cloud operations.

The cloud will offer enterprise-grade AI services to manufacturers and startups, translating advanced compute into practical productivity gains.

Naver scales physical AI for heavy industries

Naver Cloud will receive approximately 60,000 Nvidia accelerators to develop a physical AI platform that bridges the cyber and real worlds for sectors such as semiconductors, shipbuilding, energy, and biotech.

The objective is to operationalize AI through simulation, planning, and perception stacks that run near production lines and logistics networks, reducing downtime and increasing throughput as Korea’s industrial base digitizes.

Korea’s computing capacity takes a significant leap forward

Taken together, the government’s 50,000 chips and private allocations to Samsung, SK, Hyundai, and Naver propel Korea’s available AI compute into the global first tier.

Officials frame the buildout as strategic infrastructure akin to power grids and broadband, enabling domestic model training and exportable AI services.

For Nvidia, the deal anchors years of demand while diversifying away from geographies complicated by U.S. export controls.

Nvidia’s strategy emphasizes physical and agentic AI

Nvidia casts the Korean initiatives as foundations for physical and agentic AI, where models perceive, decide, and act in the real world.

The architecture pairs Blackwell GPUs with Omniverse and CUDA software to simulate factories, robots, and vehicles before deploying to production.

By standardizing on Nvidia platforms, partners shorten development cycles and share a familiar toolchain that spans design, training, and inference at an industrial scale.

The HBM4 storyline matters as much as GPUs

Beyond GPUs, memory supply is pivotal. Samsung publicly discussed talks to supply HBM4 for Nvidia’s next-generation systems, highlighting the speeds and densities necessary for post-Blackwell systems.

With SK hynix already a major HBM supplier and Samsung pursuing HBM4, Korea strengthens its role across the AI stack from fabs and memory to end-user AI deployments, reducing bottlenecks that have defined the recent GPU cycle.

Why South Korea is a natural AI hub

Korea combines world-class chipmakers, device OEMs, network operators, and a heavy industry rare cluster capable of both building AI infrastructure and applying it at scale.

The government’s sovereign AI stance provides stable demand and clear data governance, while private giants bring use cases from cars to fabs.

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang called Korea central to the AI industrial revolution, where accelerated computing becomes basic economic infrastructure.

What Hyundai gains from deeper Nvidia integration

For Hyundai, Nvidia’s stack unifies simulation, training, and deployment across autonomous driving and smart factories, letting engineers iterate faster with digital twins before touching physical assets.

The aim is safer autonomy pilots, predictive maintenance in plants, and quicker software releases for software-defined vehicles.

The GPU commitment signals Hyundai’s belief that differentiated AI capabilities will be a core competitive edge in next-generation mobility.

How Samsung’s AI factory could ripple through supply chains

Samsung’s AI factory vision links chip design, yield tuning, and equipment maintenance under a shared AI layer. Combining Omniverse simulations with real sensor data can reveal process drifts early, shorten ramp times for new nodes, and optimize energy consumption.

If successful, it becomes a blueprint other fabs could adopt, especially as HBM4 and advanced packaging become chokepoints for global AI capacity.

SK Group’s industrial cloud targets fast ROI

SK’s plan emphasizes immediately useful workloads, defect detection, line balancing, autonomous material handling, and digital twin-driven scheduling.

By offering these as managed services over an industrial AI cloud, SK lowers the barrier for Korea’s mid-sized manufacturers to adopt AI. That diffusion effect could multiply productivity gains beyond SK’s own fabs and into suppliers that feed Samsung and Hyundai.

Naver’s role shows AI is not just for Big Tech

As Korea’s leading internet platform, Naver brings developer tools, data platforms, and cloud orchestration that can productize physical AI for enterprises outside electronics and autos.

Its 60,000 GPU tranche suggests ambitions to host industry-specific foundation models and vertical copilots, serving customers that prefer Korean language, compliance, and support models tuned to local workflows.

The China question looms in the background

Nvidia’s push in Korea arrives as U.S. export controls limit sales of top-tier chips to China. Huang said he hopes to find a path to serve the market, but has no immediate plan under the current rules.

In the meantime, anchoring capacity in allied regions, such as Korea, helps Nvidia sustain growth and hedge against geopolitical risk, while partners gain reliable access to high-end computing.

Discover how Microsoft’s latest hardware shift could reshape the AI chip race as Microsoft CTO aims to ditch AMD, Nvidia GPUs for homegrown.

South Korea takes a decisive step toward AI leadership

By combining sovereign computing, industrial AI clouds, and mega-factory-scale deployments, South Korea is transitioning from an AI adopter to an AI producer.

Nvidia’s role supplies the horsepower and software scaffolding, while Samsung, Hyundai, SK, and Naver bring world-class manufacturing and platforms.

The result is a national blueprint for AI-era competitiveness that other advanced economies may strive to emulate in the years ahead.

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What do you think about Nvidia’s partnership with Korea’s biggest tech companies to dominate the chip market globally? Please share your thoughts and drop a comment.

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This slideshow was made with AI assistance and human editing.