Amidst Gyeongju, South Korea’s historic temples and fashionable skylines, Jensen Huang hit the stage on the APEC Summit with historic information: South Korea is leaping into the longer term with sovereign AI supported by greater than a quarter-million NVIDIA GPUs.
“It’s important that we construct the ecosystem, not simply the AI infrastructure, of Korea,” he mentioned.
With that, NVIDIA’s founder and CEO unveiled a sweeping initiative to construct out South Korea’s AI ecosystem and infrastructure — a national-scale deployment of GPUs throughout sovereign clouds and industrial AI factories.
The announcement marks one of many largest nationwide investments in agentic and bodily AI up to now, and it’s backed by a coalition of Korea’s prime organizations: the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), Samsung Electronics, SK Group, Hyundai Motor Group, NAVER Cloud, LG and extra.
The trouble additionally comes as world leaders, together with President Trump and President Xi, are amongst 21 APEC nations — the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore and others — gathered close by for a separate APEC Summit.
Celebrating 25 Years of GeForce in Korea
The information is a continuation of NVIDIA’s decades-long historical past of constructing a wealthy ecosystem with Korea. The nation has performed an outsized position as a nation that spearheaded esports and helped drive the PC-bang increase.
Kindling that custom, NVIDIA celebrated GeForce’s 25-year run in Korea with a GeForce Gamer Competition in Seoul this week. The pageant featured the newest GeForce RTX know-how, with NCSOFT giving attendees an unique hands-on with unreleased video games AION 2 and CINDER CITY, each that includes NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi-Body Era.
KRAFTON showcased PUBG Ally, an AI co-playable character powered by NVIDIA ACE, for its world hit PUBG:Battlegrounds. There have been additionally giveaways, dwell esports matches together with a particular StarCraft match between legendary professional avid gamers Hong Jin-ho (YellOw) and Lee Yoon-yeol (NaDa), and performances by famend taekwondo group Okay-TIGERS and worldwide Okay-POP sensation LE SSERAFIM.
South Korea, with a heritage of fast technology-driven progress, is taking the subsequent large step with its AI industrial revolution.
On the middle of the trouble is a sovereign AI infrastructure program led by MSIT, which is able to deploy as many as 50,000 of the newest NVIDIA GPUs via cloud suppliers NHN Cloud, Kakao Corp. and NAVER Cloud. The preliminary wave contains 13,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, with extra to observe within the coming years.
Constructing AI Factories: Korea’s Industrial Titans
The size of private-sector funding is staggering. Samsung, SK Group and Hyundai Motor Group are every constructing AI factories with as much as 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs apiece, whereas NAVER plans to deploy greater than 60,000. That is forming the spine for Korea’s AI-powered transformation throughout manufacturing, mobility, telecommunications and robotics.
- Samsung is utilizing NVIDIA CUDA-X, cuLitho, Nemotron fashions and Omniverse to construct digital twins for semiconductor manufacturing, whereas advancing its robotics portfolio with NVIDIA Cosmos and Isaac GR00T.
- SK Group is designing an AI manufacturing unit able to internet hosting as much as 60,000 GPUs, together with an AI cloud powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Version GPUs. SK Telecom will supply sovereign infrastructure for home producers and startups to construct digital twins and robotics functions.
- Hyundai Motor Group is collaborating with the Korean authorities and NVIDIA to construct an NVIDIA AI manufacturing unit with 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to allow AI mannequin coaching, validations and deployment for manufacturing, autonomous driving and robotics. The corporate plans to make use of NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor, NeMo, Nemotron and Omniverse to simulate manufacturing unit operations.
- NAVER is including one other 60,000 GPUs to its NVIDIA AI infrastructure, focusing on sovereign and bodily AI workloads. It plans to develop industry-specific fashions for shipbuilding, safety and AI companies for Korean residents.
Korean Language Fashions and Quantum Analysis
The Korean authorities can be investing in foundational AI analysis. MSIT is main a Sovereign AI Basis Fashions undertaking in collaboration with LG AI Analysis, NAVER Cloud, NC AI, SK Telecom, Upstage and NVIDIA. The initiative will use NVIDIA NeMo software program and open NVIDIA Nemotron datasets, tapping native knowledge to develop Korean language fashions with reasoning and speech capabilities.
NVIDIA and LG are collaborating to assist academia and startups with LG’s EXAONE fashions, together with the EXAONE Path healthcare mannequin — constructed with the MONAI framework — to assist most cancers prognosis. The corporate can be working with NVIDIA to assist bodily AI startups and tutorial analysis.
In the meantime, the Korea Institute of Science and Expertise Data (KISTI) is partnering with NVIDIA to ascertain a Heart of Excellence for quantum computing and scientific analysis. Utilizing its sixth-generation HANGANG supercomputer and the NVIDIA CUDA-Q platform, KISTI will discover hybrid quantum computing, physics-informed AI fashions and scientific basis fashions constructed with the NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo framework.
AI-RAN and 6G: The Subsequent Frontier
In a transfer to drive next-generation cellular networks, NVIDIA is collaborating with Samsung, SK Telecom, ETRI, KT, LGU+ and Yonsei College to develop AI-RAN and 6G infrastructure.
The clever, low-power community know-how offloads GPU computation from gadgets to base stations, lowering power prices and increasing battery life — a essential enabler for widespread robotics adoption.
Fostering Innovation With Startups and Coaching
To assist Korea’s subsequent technology of AI corporations, NVIDIA is increasing the NVIDIA Inception program with a brand new startup alliance. Members will acquire entry to accelerated computing infrastructure from companions like SK Telecom, together with assist from VC companies together with IMM Funding, Korea Funding Companions and SBVA.
A brand new Heart of Excellence powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs will assist startups construct bodily AI functions, whereas the NVIDIA Deep Studying Institute will supply AI upskilling packages to coach Korea’s future workforce.
Rewiring a Nation for Synthetic Intelligence
The size and ambition of Korea’s AI initiative is almost unprecedented.
It’s not nearly deploying GPUs. It’s about rewiring a nation’s industrial base for intelligence. From sovereign clouds to quantum labs, autonomous factories and AI brokers — Korea is constructing the infrastructure of the longer term.
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