NVIDIA, South Korea Government and Industrial Giants Build AI Infrastructure and Ecosystem to Fuel Korea Innovation, Industries and Jobs

Rhea-AI Summary

NVIDIA (NVDA) announced partnerships with the South Korea government, Samsung, SK Group, Hyundai Motor Group, NAVER Cloud and others to build national AI infrastructure deploying over 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs for sovereign clouds, AI factories, physical AI and LLM development.

Key facts: MSIT plans up to 50,000 GPUs for sovereign AI; initial 13,000 GPUs deployed by NAVER Cloud, NHN Cloud and Kakao; NAVER Cloud plans >60,000 GPUs; Hyundai collaboration includes an approximately $3 billion investment. Projects cover AI factories, digital twins, physical AI, sovereign LLMs, quantum-GPU research and startup support.

Positive

• Total deployment of >260,000 NVIDIA GPUs announced
• MSIT initial sovereign deployment of 13,000 GPUs
• NAVER Cloud expansion planning over 60,000 GPUs
• Hyundai-led initiative backed by an approximately $3 billion investment

Negative

• None.

Insights

Senior Infrastructure Strategist

Large-scale public-private GPU deployments and a $3 billion industrial AI investment materially expand Korea's sovereign AI capacity.

Bold investments by NVIDIA, the Korean government and industrial leaders commit over a quarter-million GPUs, including an initial 13,000 deployment and multiple >50,000‑GPU "AI factories" at Samsung, SK Group, Hyundai and NAVER Cloud. These assets create on‑nation compute capacity for model training, digital twins, robotics and physical AI, and explicitly name software and hardware stacks such as NVIDIA Nemotron, CUDA‑X, Omniverse and RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs.

The plan depends on multi‑year rollouts across sovereign clouds, industry clouds and research centers and includes an approximately $3 billion investment tied to Hyundai Motor Group collaborations; key risks include deployment timing, integration of heterogeneous stacks and availability of local data pipelines for the Sovereign AI Foundation Models project. Watch near‑term milestones: the initial 13,000 GPU deployment and establishment of the National AI Computing Center, progress on the Hyundai‑linked $3 billion program, and NAVER Cloud’s planned >60,000‑GPU expansion over the next several years (Oct. 31, 2025 context).

Korea Government, Computing and Manufacturing Leaders Adding Over 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs for Physical and Agentic AI

News Summary:

• The Korean government, through the Ministry of Science and ICT, is investing in sovereign AI infrastructure with over 50,000 of the latest NVIDIA GPUs to be deployed across the National AI Computing Center and Korean cloud service and IT providers NHN Cloud, Kakao Corp. and NAVER Cloud.
• Samsung Electronics is building an AI factory with over 50,000 GPUs to accelerate its AI, semiconductor and digital transformation roadmap.
• SK Group is building an AI factory featuring over 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs and Asia’s first industrial AI cloud featuring NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs for physical AI and robotics workloads.
• Hyundai Motor Group is collaborating with NVIDIA and the Korean government in building an NVIDIA AI factory with 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to enable integrated AI model training, validation and deployment for manufacturing and autonomous driving.
• NAVER Cloud is expanding its NVIDIA AI infrastructure with over 60,000 GPUs for enterprise and physical AI workloads.
• NAVER Cloud, LG AI Research, SK Telecom, NC AI, Upstage and NVIDIA are developing Korean foundation LLMs to accelerate Korean AI applications​ through public-private partnerships.
• The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information is establishing a Center of Excellence for the advancement of quantum computing and science.
  

GYEONGJU, South Korea, Oct. 31, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- APEC Summit—NVIDIA today announced that it is working with South Korea to expand the nation’s AI infrastructure with over a quarter-million NVIDIA GPUs across its sovereign clouds and AI factories. Built with public- and private-sector deployments, the infrastructure forms the foundation for AI-enabled economic growth and innovation across Korea’s industries, including automotive, manufacturing and telecommunications.

“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. “Just as Korea’s physical factories have inspired the world with sophisticated ships, cars, chips and electronics, the nation can now produce intelligence as a new export that will drive global transformation.”

“Now that AI has gone beyond mere innovation and become the foundation of future industries, South Korea stands at the threshold of transformation,” said Bae Kyung-hoon, Korea Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Science and Information and Communication Technologies. “Expanding our national AI infrastructure and developing technologies with NVIDIA is an investment that will further reinforce South Korea’s strengths, including its manufacturing capabilities. This will support South Korea’s prosperity as it strives to become one of the top three global AI powerhouses.”

Announced as world leaders gather in South Korea for the APEC Summit, the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) is accelerating its plans to deploy up to 50,000 of the latest NVIDIA GPUs to accelerate sovereign AI development for enterprises and industries. The AI infrastructure deployment will grow over the next several years from an initial deployment of 13,000 NVIDIA Blackwell and other GPUs by NVIDIA Cloud Partner NAVER Cloud, together with NHN Cloud and Kakao Corp., to expand computing infrastructure on the nation’s sovereign clouds through initiatives such as the establishment of Korea’s National AI Computing Center.

Research institutes, startups and AI companies will be able to use the sovereign infrastructure to build models and applications, supporting Korea’s national strategy to boost AI capabilities and infrastructure.

In addition, NVIDIA is working with industries, academia and research institutions in Korea on AI-RAN and 6G infrastructure. NVIDIA is collaborating with Samsung, SK Telecom, ETRI, KT, LGU+ and Yonsei University to develop intelligent, low-power AI-RAN network technology that can reduce computing costs and extend device battery life by offloading GPU computation tasks to the network’s base station.

Korea’s Industry Titans Build NVIDIA AI Factories for Advanced Manufacturing
Automotive, manufacturing and telecommunications leaders in Korea are developing significant AI infrastructure investments and expansions to accelerate enterprise and physical AI development.

Samsung is building a semiconductor AI factory with over 50,000 GPUs to advance intelligent manufacturing and bring AI to its products and services. It is using NVIDIA technologies, including NVIDIA Nemotron™ post-training datasets, NVIDIA CUDA-X™, the NVIDIA cuLitho library and NVIDIA Omniverse™, to build digital twins that improve the speed and yields of sophisticated semiconductor manufacturing processes. Samsung is also using NVIDIA Cosmos™, NVIDIA Isaac Sim™ and NVIDIA Isaac Lab to advance its home robot development portfolio.

SK Group is designing an AI factory that can host over 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs to advance semiconductor research, development and production, as well as cloud infrastructure to support digital twin and AI agent development. SK Telecom plans to provide sovereign infrastructure featuring NVIDIA RTX PRO™ 6000 Blackwell Server Edition GPUs, enabling domestic manufacturers to tap into NVIDIA Omniverse. The company will offer industrial cloud infrastructure to accelerate digital twin and robotics projects for startups, enterprises and government agencies.

Hyundai Motor Group and NVIDIA are entering a new phase of deepened collaboration and will codevelop AI capabilities across mobility, smart factories and on-device semiconductors, powered by 50,000 Blackwell GPUs for AI model training and deployment. In support of the Korean government’s initiative to build a national physical AI cluster, Hyundai Motor Group and NVIDIA will work closely with government stakeholders to accelerate ecosystem development. This will result in an approximately $3 billion investment to advance the physical AI landscape in Korea. Key initiatives include the creation of an NVIDIA AI Technology Center, Hyundai Motor Group Physical AI Application Center and regional AI data centers.

NAVER Cloud is also expanding its NVIDIA AI infrastructure and plans to deploy over 60,000 GPUs — including NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell and other NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs — for sovereign and physical AI. NAVER Cloud is preparing for the next stage of sovereign AI development in Korea, powered by NVIDIA Nemotron open models running on its NVIDIA AI infrastructure. NAVER Cloud plans to develop industry-specific AI models like shipbuilding and security, with a focus on inclusive AI for Korea’s citizens.

Korea Government and Developers Advance LLM Research With NVIDIA
Teaming with NVIDIA, Korea’s MSIT is advancing its Sovereign AI Foundation Models project to develop sovereign language models. The project will incorporate NVIDIA NeMo™ and open NVIDIA Nemotron datasets to tap local data for developing and distilling reasoning models.

LG AI Research, NAVER Cloud, NC AI, SK Telecom and Upstage are participating in the project to support sovereign model development. Enterprises, researchers and startups will be able to contribute to and use the models to create AI agents with speech, reasoning and other capabilities.

LG is working with NVIDIA to foster physical AI technology development and support the physical AI ecosystem. NVIDIA and LG are also working together to support startups and academia with LG’s EXAONE models — including the EXAONE Path healthcare model, built with the MONAI framework — to support cancer diagnosis.

Korea and NVIDIA Advance Quantum Computing and Scientific Research
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) is working with NVIDIA to establish a Center of Excellence designed to foster research collaboration using Korea's sixth-generation national supercomputer, HANGANG, which features NVIDIA accelerated computing.

KISTI also announced support for the new NVIDIA NVQLink™ open architecture for connecting quantum processors and GPU supercomputing. Working with the NVIDIA CUDA-Q™ platform, NVQLink equips KISTI to deepen research in areas like quantum error correction and hybrid application development to accelerate the development of tomorrow’s quantum-GPU supercomputers.

KISTI will also build foundation models for scientific research and development, and support researchers on developing physics-informed AI models using the open-source NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo™ framework.

New Startup Alliance Supports Korean Development
Furthering economic development and opportunities in Korea, NVIDIA and its partners are establishing an alliance to foster startups through the NVIDIA Inception program. Members will be able to access accelerated computing infrastructure from NVIDIA Cloud Partners including SK Telecom, with support from NVIDIA Inception and VC Alliance members including IMM Investment, Korea Investment Partners and SBVA. Startups will also have access to NVIDIA software and expertise, speeding growth for the next generation of companies.

Building on its work through the NVIDIA Inception program for startups, NVIDIA also plans to work with the Korean government to support the next generation of companies. It will participate in the N-Up AI startup incubation program operated by the Korea Ministry of SMEs and Startups.

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the world leader in AI and accelerated computing.

For further information, contact:
press@nvidia.com

Certain statements in this press release including, but not limited to, statements as to: just as Korea’s physical factories have inspired the world with sophisticated ships, cars, chips and electronics, the nation’s AI factories now being able to produce intelligence as a new export that will drive global transformation; the benefits, impact, performance, and availability of NVIDIA’s products, services, and technologies; expectations with respect to NVIDIA’s third party arrangements, including with its collaborators and partners; expectations with respect to technology developments; and other statements that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which are subject to the “safe harbor” created by those sections based on management’s beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause results to be materially different than expectations. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include: global economic and political conditions; NVIDIA’s reliance on third parties to manufacture, assemble, package and test NVIDIA’s products; the impact of technological development and competition; development of new products and technologies or enhancements to NVIDIA’s existing product and technologies; market acceptance of NVIDIA’s products or NVIDIA’s partners’ products; design, manufacturing or software defects; changes in consumer preferences or demands; changes in industry standards and interfaces; unexpected loss of performance of NVIDIA’s products or technologies when integrated into systems; and changes in applicable laws and regulations, as well as other factors detailed from time to time in the most recent reports NVIDIA files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Copies of reports filed with the SEC are posted on the company’s website and are available from NVIDIA without charge. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and speak only as of the date hereof, and, except as required by law, NVIDIA disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

© 2025 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, CUDA-Q, CUDA-X, NVIDIA Cosmos, NVIDIA Isaac Sim, NVIDIA NeMo, NVIDIA Nemotron, NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo, NVQLink and NVIDIA RTX PRO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at: https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7c314ac5-b097-4565-b340-ee61b3a9862f

FAQ

How many NVIDIA GPUs will be deployed in South Korea under the 2025 initiative (NVDA)?

Partners announced deployments totaling over 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs across sovereign clouds and AI factories.

What is the South Korea government’s initial GPU commitment and timeline for NVDA infrastructure?

The Ministry of Science and ICT plans up to 50,000 GPUs for sovereign AI, with an initial 13,000 GPUs deployment by NAVER Cloud, NHN Cloud and Kakao.

What are Hyundai Motor Group and NVIDIA jointly investing in and how much is committed?

Hyundai and NVIDIA will co-develop AI factory capabilities using 50,000 Blackwell GPUs, supported by an approximately $3 billion investment.

How many GPUs is NAVER Cloud planning to deploy and for what purposes?

NAVER Cloud plans to deploy over 60,000 GPUs for sovereign and physical AI, industry-specific models and Nemotron open models.

Which Korean companies are building AI factories with NVIDIA GPUs (symbol NVDA)?

Samsung, SK Group and Hyundai Motor Group each plan AI factories featuring around 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs for manufacturing, semiconductors and robotics.

Will the NVIDIA collaboration support Korean LLM and quantum research?

Yes; the program includes sovereign LLM development with Nemotron/NeMo and a KISTI Center of Excellence for quantum-GPU research using CUDA-Q and NVQLink.