Photo by Jordan Harrison on Pexels

NVIDIA is deepening its collaboration with South Korea to establish robust sovereign AI infrastructure nationwide. The partnership will see the deployment of hundreds of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs across both sovereign cloud platforms and dedicated “AI factories,” empowering key industries such as automotive, manufacturing, and telecommunications.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang lauded South Korea’s technological prowess and manufacturing capabilities, highlighting its pivotal role in the burgeoning AI industrial revolution. The South Korean government intends to deploy up to 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs to bolster sovereign AI initiatives for businesses and research institutions. This includes 13,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs via providers like NAVER Cloud, NHN Cloud, and Kakao.

Leading Korean corporations are making significant investments in AI infrastructure. NVIDIA and Samsung are collaborating to construct an “AI factory” linking chip manufacturing and accelerated computing, utilizing over 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs. SK Group is also establishing an AI factory with more than 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs, offering GPU-as-a-service solutions. Hyundai Motor Group plans to leverage NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs within an AI factory to advance autonomous driving, factory automation, and robotics.

NAVER Cloud is set to deploy over 60,000 GPUs to support sovereign and physical AI workloads. The Ministry of Science and ICT is spearheading the Sovereign AI Foundation Models project, leveraging NVIDIA NeMo and open Nemotron datasets. The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) intends to incorporate NVIDIA accelerated computing into its sixth national supercomputer, HANGANG. Furthermore, NVIDIA and local partners are establishing a startup ecosystem through the NVIDIA Inception program.