South Korea is establishing itself as a critical hub in the global AI infrastructure and semiconductor supply chain thro
President Jae Myung Lee and South Korea's top business leaders met with NVIDIA and ecosystem partners in San Francisco this week to advance the nation's full-stack AI infrastructure development. NVIDIA and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) announced a joint AI research lab at the KAIST Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI in Seoul, dedicated to advancing agentic AI for South Korea. This marks the first joint AI lab between a Korean university and any global technology company. The collaboration will combine NVIDIA's full-stack AI expertise, NVIDIA Nemotron open models and NVIDIA AI Cloud partner computing with KAIST's scientific talent.
NVIDIA and its Korea ecosystem partners, including NAVER, SK Telecom, Hyundai Motor Group, KAIST and Seoul National University, are committing to develop national AI factories and physical AI platforms while advancing joint research in agentic AI.
A centerpiece of the partnership involves NAVER, Brookfield and NVIDIA expanding NAVER's NVIDIA DSX AI factory at its GAK Sejong data center to 200 megawatts, roughly 100,000 GPUs built on the NVIDIA Vera Rubin platform, more than tripling the initial buildout announced in June. SK Group and NVIDIA announced plans for a $500-billion-plus comprehensive partnership to establish AI infrastructure serving global compute demand, with the expanded collaboration deploying NVIDIA Vera Rubin infrastructure powered by SK hynix HBM4 memory. Hyundai Motor Group outlined a physical AI strategy anchored by a robot reference platform developed with NVIDIA, involving 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs, along with integration of NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion for autonomous vehicle development.
NVIDIA and KAIST's Department of Mechanical Engineering are planning an NVIDIA AI Technology Center for collaborative research, talent development and knowledge exchange in physical AI. NVIDIA and Seoul National University are also planning an NVAITC covering AI research, talent development and education spanning foundation models, accelerated computing, physical AI and AI for science.
President Lee met with NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang ahead of the summit to discuss deepening Korea's partnership in pursuing national AI ambitions. Huang noted that NVIDIA and Korea have been partners for over 25 years, from PC gaming to the AI revolution, and committed to deepening that partnership. "From AI chips and physical AI to AI infrastructure, Korea has achieved remarkable results under your leadership over the past year. This is truly the beginning of a golden age for Korea," Huang said.
At a major stage event at the Midway in San Francisco, President Lee laid out a bold vision for South Korea to become one of the key engines of the global AI revolution. The gathering brought together an eye-popping lineup of tech leaders including Jensen Huang, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Broadcom's Hock Tan and Anthropic's Dario Amodei, alongside South Korea's industrial leaders including Samsung Electronics Chairman Jay Y. Lee, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung and NAVER founder Hae-jin Lee.
President Lee opened with his "San Francisco AI Declaration," drawing a line from the city's rebirth after the 1906 earthquake to Korea's post-war rise into an IT powerhouse. He pitched a multitrillion-dollar push into AI semiconductors, hyperscale data centers and physical AI, comparing the emergence of artificial intelligence to "humanity discovering fire anew." He framed Korea's ambition around compute infrastructure, education and public services designed to spread AI's benefits broadly.
Huang underscored the significance of Korea's role, noting that Korea's invention of HBM memory was essential to NVIDIA's development of supercomputers that power AI today. "This really is the golden age for Korea," he said. Altman stated directly: "There really would not have been what we have, this incredible AI revolution, without Korea." Amodei said Korea plays a role throughout the stack, from semiconductors to infrastructure to an incredible concentration of talent.