Nvidia CEO Jensen Hwang is visiting South Korea for the first time in 15 years to announce new plans and deepen cooperation with major Korean technology companies such as Hyundai Motors, Samsung, SK, and Naver. During the 2025 APEC Summit this week, Nvidia and the South Korean government announced an expanded partnership to strengthen the country’s AI infrastructure and physical AI capabilities.
The announcement came days after the United States signed technology agreements with Japan and South Korea, aimed at deepening strategic ties and fostering cooperation in emerging technologies such as AI, semiconductors, quantum computing, biotechnology and 6G.
The South Korean government announced Friday that it will secure more than 260,000 of Nvidia’s latest GPUs to meet growing demand for AI. Approximately 50,000 GPUs will support public initiatives such as the development of a national AI infrastructure model and a national AI data center. The remaining 200,000+ GPUs will be provided to companies such as Samsung, SK, Hyundai Motor Group, and Naver to power AI-based manufacturing innovation and industry-specific AI model development.
Nvidia and Samsung partner on AI Factory and AI-RAN for 6G
Samsung also announced plans to partner with Nvidia to build an AI megafactory to bring AI to every stage of manufacturing semiconductors, mobile devices, and robotics. The facility uses more than 50,000 Nvidia GPUs and the Omniverse platform to form an intelligent network that can analyze, predict, and optimize production in real time.
Samsung and Nvidia, partners for more than 25 years, are currently collaborating on HBM4, the next generation of memory designed to power future AI applications.
According to the South Korean Ministry of Science, Information and Communication, NVIDIA plans to jointly develop AI-RAN in cooperation with Samsung, three South Korean telecommunications carriers (SK Telecom, KT, and LG Uplus), and ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute).
AI-RAN combines mobile base stations and AI to improve performance and reduce battery usage, and under the new agreement, Nvidia and South Korean industry and research institutions will jointly develop next-generation AI-RAN and a global testbed, the South Korean government said.
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Nvidia announced in mid-October that Samsung Foundry will help manufacture custom CPUs and XPUs following its work with Intel to connect x86 CPUs directly to Nvidia platforms via NVLink Fusion.
Hyundai powers the future of mobility with AI Factory
Meanwhile, Hyundai and Nvidia are working together to build AI infrastructure and advance physical AI technology. The partnership will focus on autonomous mobility, smart factories, and robotics, while collaborating on the supply and investment of high-performance GPUs.
According to Nvidia, the two companies will use 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to train, validate, and deploy unified AI models, and will establish an AI research center in South Korea to strengthen the country’s physical AI industry.
“AI is revolutionizing every aspect of every industry, and from vehicle design and manufacturing to robotics and self-driving, even just in transportation, Nvidia’s AI and computing platforms are transforming the way the world moves,” said Huang. “Together with Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea’s industrial powerhouse and the world’s leading mobility solutions provider, we are building intelligent vehicles and factories that will shape the future of the multi-trillion dollar mobility industry.”
SK builds an AI cloud. Naver partners with physics AI
SK Group, the parent company of SK Hynix, has partnered with Nvidia to build Asia’s first enterprise-led manufacturing AI cloud, leveraging Nvidia’s simulation and digital twin platform and opening access to governments, public institutions, and domestic startups.
Naver Cloud, the cloud division of South Korean search engine Naver, is collaborating with Nvidia to develop a next-generation “physical AI” platform that connects the physical and digital worlds. According to Naver, the cloud company plans to deploy AI infrastructure across key industries such as semiconductors, shipbuilding, energy, and biotech, with the aim of accelerating the adoption of AI solutions optimized for real-world industrial environments.
“Just as the automobile industry is transitioning to SDV, the era of ‘physical AI’ has arrived, where AI operates directly within actual industrial sites and systems,” Naver founder Lee Hye-jin said in a Naver statement.
Nvidia’s collaboration with the South Korean big tech giant highlights a broader trend of AI and hardware convergence across industries, from Samsung’s AI network initiative to Hyundai’s software-defined vehicles, SK Group’s industrial AI applications, and Naver’s cloud and AI services. These partnerships demonstrate how the world’s technology leaders are joining forces to form the next generation of intelligent systems.
Earlier this week, the US tech giant along with the US Department of Energy announced a flurry of new partnerships with companies including Eli Lilly, Palantir, Hyundai, Samsung, Uber and Joby Aviation, as CEO Jensen Huang sought to downplay concerns about an AI bubble. The news made NVIDIA the first publicly traded company with a market capitalization of over $5 trillion, and the company’s stock price soared.
