Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage at last week’s APEC Summit with the news that 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.
South Korea, with a heritage of rapid technology-driven progress, is taking the next big step with its AI industrial revolution.
At the centre 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 Centre 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.