Korea Joins AI Industrial Revolution: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Unveils Historic Partnership at APEC Summit

Amidst Gyeongju, South Korea’s ancient temples and modern skylines, Jensen Huang hit the stage at the APEC Summit with historic news: South Korea is leaping into the future with sovereign AI supported by more than a quarter-million NVIDIA GPUs.

“It’s vital that we build the ecosystem, not just the AI infrastructure, of Korea,” he said.

With that, NVIDIA’s founder and CEO unveiled a sweeping initiative to build out South Korea’s AI ecosystem and infrastructure — a national-scale deployment of GPUs across sovereign clouds and industrial AI factories.

The announcement marks one of the largest national investments in agentic and physical AI to date, and it’s backed by a coalition of Korea’s top organizations: the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), Samsung Electronics, SK Group, Hyundai Motor Group, NAVER Cloud, LG and more.

The effort also comes as world leaders, including President Trump and President Xi, are among 21 APEC nations — the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore and others — gathered nearby for a separate APEC Summit.

Celebrating 25 Years of GeForce in Korea

The news is a continuation of NVIDIA’s decades-long history of building a rich ecosystem with Korea. The country has played an outsized role as a nation that spearheaded esports and helped drive the PC-bang boom.

Kindling that tradition, NVIDIA celebrated GeForce’s 25-year run in Korea with a GeForce Gamer Festival in Seoul this week. The festival featured the latest GeForce RTX technology, with NCSOFT giving attendees an exclusive hands-on with unreleased games AION 2 and CINDER CITY, both featuring NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation.

KRAFTON showcased PUBG Ally, an AI co-playable character powered by NVIDIA ACE, for its global hit PUBG:Battlegrounds. There were also giveaways, live esports matches including a special StarCraft match between legendary pro gamers Hong Jin-ho (YellOw) and Lee Yoon-yeol (NaDa), and performances by renowned taekwondo group K-TIGERS and international K-POP sensation LE SSERAFIM.

South Korea, with a heritage of rapid technology-driven progress, is taking the next big step with its AI industrial revolution.

At the center of the effort is a sovereign AI infrastructure program led by MSIT, which will deploy as many as 50,000 of the latest NVIDIA GPUs through cloud providers NHN Cloud, Kakao Corp. and NAVER Cloud. The initial wave includes 13,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, with more to follow in the coming years.

Building AI Factories: Korea’s Industrial Titans 

The scale of private-sector investment is staggering. Samsung, SK Group and Hyundai Motor Group are each building AI factories with up to 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs apiece, while NAVER plans to deploy more than 60,000. This is forming the backbone for Korea’s AI-powered transformation across manufacturing, mobility, telecommunications and robotics.

• Samsung is using NVIDIA CUDA-X, cuLitho, Nemotron models and Omniverse to build digital twins for semiconductor manufacturing, while advancing its robotics portfolio with NVIDIA Cosmos and Isaac GR00T.
• SK Group is designing an AI factory capable of hosting up to 60,000 GPUs, including an AI cloud powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs. SK Telecom will offer sovereign infrastructure for domestic manufacturers and startups to build digital twins and robotics applications.
• Hyundai Motor Group is collaborating with the Korean government and NVIDIA to build an NVIDIA AI factory with 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to enable AI model training, validations and deployment for manufacturing, autonomous driving and robotics. The company plans to use NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor, NeMo, Nemotron and Omniverse to simulate factory operations.
• NAVER is adding another 60,000 GPUs to its NVIDIA AI infrastructure, targeting sovereign and physical AI workloads. It plans to develop industry-specific models for shipbuilding, security and AI services for Korean citizens.

Korean Language Models and Quantum Research

The Korean government is also investing in foundational AI research. MSIT is leading a Sovereign AI Foundation Models project in collaboration with LG AI Research, NAVER Cloud, NC AI, SK Telecom, Upstage and NVIDIA. The initiative will use NVIDIA NeMo software and open NVIDIA Nemotron datasets, tapping local data to develop Korean language models with reasoning and speech capabilities.

NVIDIA and LG are collaborating to support academia and startups with LG’s EXAONE models, including the EXAONE Path healthcare model — built with the MONAI framework — to support cancer diagnosis. The company is also working with NVIDIA to support physical AI startups and academic research.

Meanwhile, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) is partnering with NVIDIA to establish a Center of Excellence for quantum computing and scientific research. Using its sixth-generation HANGANG supercomputer and the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform, KISTI will explore hybrid quantum computing, physics-informed AI models and scientific foundation models built with the NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo framework.

AI-RAN and 6G: The Next Frontier

In a move to drive next-generation mobile networks, NVIDIA is collaborating with Samsung, SK Telecom, ETRI, KT, LGU+ and Yonsei University to develop AI-RAN and 6G infrastructure.

The intelligent, low-power network technology offloads GPU computation from devices to base stations, reducing energy costs and extending battery life — a critical enabler for widespread robotics adoption.

Fostering Innovation With Startups and Training

To support Korea’s next generation of AI companies, NVIDIA is expanding the NVIDIA Inception program with a new startup alliance. Members will gain access to accelerated computing infrastructure from partners like SK Telecom, along with support from VC firms including IMM Investment, Korea Investment Partners and SBVA.

A new Center of Excellence powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs will help startups build physical AI applications, while the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute will offer AI upskilling programs to train Korea’s future workforce.

Rewiring a Nation for Artificial Intelligence

The scale and ambition of Korea’s AI initiative is nearly unprecedented.

It’s not just about deploying GPUs. It’s about rewiring a nation’s industrial base for intelligence. From sovereign clouds to quantum labs, autonomous factories and AI agents — Korea is building the infrastructure of the future.

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