Historic move in South Korea: Nvidia partners with government and major corporations to build a world-scale national AI infrastructure
Nvidia officially announced a broad collaboration with the South Korean government and giants like Samsung, SK Group, Hyundai, Naver, LG, Kakao, and NHN, with the goal of establishing one of the world's most advanced artificial intelligence infrastructures.
The project includes the establishment of massive “AI Factories” with over 260,000 Nvidia GPUs, including the new Blackwell models.
Massive national and industrial infrastructure The Korean government will establish a National AI Computing Center that will include over 50,000 GPUs. Naver Cloud, Kakao, and NHN Cloud will lead the initial deployment of approximately 13,000 Blackwell GPUs. Samsung Electronics will establish an AI Factory with 50,000 GPUs to accelerate chip manufacturing, build “Digital Twins” for production processes, and develop NVIDIA Isaac-based robots. SK Group will establish a similar massive infrastructure – based on RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition – which will be used for chip research, digital development, and AI Agents. Hyundai Group will invest approximately $3 billion in establishing an industrial AI center for physical, learning AI, and autonomous systems. Naver Cloud will also expand its capabilities with over 60,000 additional GPUs, including the development of dedicated industrial models for sectors such as construction, security, and manufacturing.
Development of “Sovereign AI” – Korean LLM The Korean Ministry of Science and ICT and NVIDIA announced a collaboration to develop Sovereign AI Foundation Models, based on NVIDIA NeMo and Nemotron datasets.
The partners: LG AI Research, SK Telecom, Naver Cloud, NC AI, Upstage, and NVIDIA – all will jointly develop advanced Korean Large Language Models (LLM) and AI Agents for national use.
Scientific collaborations and Quantum AI The Korean KISTI institute will establish a new quantum research center based on the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform and NVQLink architecture. The center will focus on integrating quantum and classical computing, quantum error correction, and Physics-based AI (PhysicsNeMo).
Support for the local ecosystem and startups Nvidia will launch an Inception program integrated with Korean investors (such as IMM Investment, SBVA, Korea Investment Partners) to support AI startups – SK Telecom will provide the cloud infrastructure for these projects.
Leaders' statements Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO): “Korea is a global leader in technology and manufacturing. Just as Korean ‘steel factories’ became a global symbol, now comes the new era of export: the export of intelligence.” Korean Minister of Science: “The collaboration with NVIDIA is a strategic investment that will make Korea one of the top three AI powers in the world.” Strategic significance The initiative transforms Korea into a global hub for Physical AI and Agentic AI. This is one of the largest national AI projects in the world, reflecting Nvidia's vision to make AI the engine of the next industrial economy.
The South Korean AI revolution is underway – with Nvidia at its center.