NVIDIA & Korea AI Partnership: APEC Summit Announcement
South Korea Launches Ambitious National AI Programme backed by NVIDIA
Table of Contents
- South Korea Launches Ambitious National AI Programme backed by NVIDIA
- Celebrating 25 Years of GeForce in Korea
- Sovereign AI Infrastructure
- AI Factories: Investment from korea’s Industrial Titans
- Korean Language Models and Quantum Research
- AI-RAN and 6G: The Next Frontier
- Fostering Innovation with Startups and Training
- Rewiring a Nation for Artificial Intelligence
South Korea is embarking on a sweeping artificial intelligence initiative, investing billions of dollars and leveraging cutting-edge NVIDIA technology to transform its industrial landscape. The effort, spearheaded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), involves major partnerships with leading Korean organizations including Samsung Electronics, SK Group, Hyundai Motor Group, NAVER Cloud, and LG, among others.
The initiative coincides with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit, where leaders from 21 nations – including the U.S. and China - are gathered to discuss regional cooperation.
Celebrating 25 Years of GeForce in Korea
NVIDIA’s commitment to Korea spans decades, recognizing the nation’s pioneering role in esports and the PC-bang culture. This legacy was celebrated this week with a GeForce Gamer Festival in Seoul.
The festival showcased the latest GeForce RTX technology, featuring exclusive hands-on demos of unreleased games AION 2 and CINDER CITY, both enhanced with NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation. KRAFTON demonstrated PUBG Ally, an AI co-playable character powered by NVIDIA ACE, for its popular PUBG:Battlegrounds. The event also included esports competitions, featuring legendary StarCraft players Hong Jin-ho (YellOw) and Lee Yoon-yeol (NaDa), alongside performances by the K-TIGERS taekwondo group and K-POP group LE SSERAFIM.
Sovereign AI Infrastructure
At the heart of Korea’s AI revolution is a sovereign AI infrastructure program led by MSIT.This program will deploy up to 50,000 of the latest NVIDIA GPUs through cloud providers NHN Cloud, Kakao Corp., and NAVER Cloud. The initial deployment includes 13,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, with further expansion planned in the coming years.
AI Factories: Investment from korea’s Industrial Titans
Private sector investment is considerable. Samsung, SK Group, and Hyundai Motor Group are each constructing AI factories equipped with up to 50,000 NVIDIA GPUs, while NAVER plans to deploy over 60,000 gpus. This infrastructure will underpin Korea’s AI-driven transformation across key sectors like manufacturing, mobility, telecommunications, and robotics.
- Samsung is utilizing NVIDIA CUDA-X, cuLitho, Nemotron models, and Omniverse to create digital twins for semiconductor manufacturing and advance its robotics capabilities 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 provide sovereign infrastructure for domestic manufacturers and startups to develop 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, enabling AI model training, validation, and deployment for manufacturing, autonomous driving, and robotics. The company will leverage NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Thor, NeMo, Nemotron, and Omniverse to simulate factory operations.
- NAVER is adding 60,000 GPUs to its NVIDIA AI infrastructure,focusing on sovereign and physical AI workloads,and developing 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, collaborating with LG AI Research, NAVER Cloud, NC AI, SK telecom, Upstage, and NVIDIA. This initiative will utilize NVIDIA NeMo software and open NVIDIA Nemotron datasets to develop Korean language models with advanced reasoning and speech capabilities.
NVIDIA and LG are collaborating to support academic and startup research with LG’s EXAONE models, including the EXAONE Path healthcare model – built with the MONAI framework – for cancer diagnosis.
The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Details (KISTI) is partnering with NVIDIA to establish a Center of Excellence for quantum computing and scientific research. Utilizing 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
To advance next-generation mobile networks, NVIDIA is collaborating with Samsung, SK Telecom, ETRI, KT, LGU+, and Yonsei University to develop AI-RAN and 6G infrastructure. This technology aims to reduce energy consumption and extend battery life by offloading GPU computation from devices to base stations, facilitating wider robotics adoption.
Fostering Innovation with Startups and Training
To support Korea’s emerging 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, alongside support from venture capital firms including IMM Investment, Korea Investment Partners, and SBVA.
A new Center of Excellence powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs will assist startups in building 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 are unprecedented. It’s a complete effort to rewire the nation’s industrial base for intelligence, encompassing sovereign clouds, quantum labs, autonomous factories, and AI agents – building the infrastructure of the future.
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