NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) has announced a sweeping collaboration with the South Korean government and leading industrial players to strengthen the country’s artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities through the deployment of more than 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs across national cloud systems and AI factories.
South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT is spearheading the initiative with an investment aimed at developing sovereign AI infrastructure. Plans include the rollout of up to 50,000 of NVIDIA’s latest GPUs through the National AI Computing Center and local cloud providers such as NAVER Cloud, NHN Cloud, and Kakao Corp.
Several of South Korea’s major conglomerates are also making large-scale commitments to AI infrastructure. Samsung Electronics is constructing an AI factory equipped with over 50,000 GPUs to accelerate its semiconductor manufacturing and AI integration efforts.
SK Group is building an AI facility with more than 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs and is set to launch Asia’s first industrial AI cloud powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs. Hyundai Motor (KS:005380), meanwhile, is partnering with NVIDIA to develop an AI factory utilizing 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs — an investment of roughly $3 billion aimed at driving innovation in AI-powered mobility. NAVER Cloud will expand its infrastructure with more than 60,000 GPUs to support enterprise and physical AI workloads.
“Korea’s leadership in technology and manufacturing positions it at the heart of the AI industrial revolution — where accelerated computing infrastructure becomes as vital as power grids and broadband,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA.
The announcement coincided with the APEC Summit in South Korea and aligns with the country’s strategy to become one of the top three global AI leaders.
NVIDIA is also collaborating with Korean institutions on the development of AI-RAN and 6G infrastructure, partnering with Samsung, SK Telecom, ETRI, KT, LGU+, and Yonsei University.
In addition, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information is launching a Center of Excellence for quantum computing research, which will support NVIDIA’s NVQLink open architecture to connect quantum processors with GPU-based supercomputers.
To further boost innovation, NVIDIA and its partners are forming an alliance under the NVIDIA Inception program to assist startups, offering access to cutting-edge computing infrastructure, software, and technical expertise.