• Nvidia has positioned itself at the heart of South Korea’s AI infrastructure developments
• The vendor is providing its DSX reference architecture for SK Telecom’s new gigawatt-scale AI Cloud infrastructure deployment
• It has struck a deal with SK Hynix for the development of next-gen memory chips for AI factories
• LG Group is building an AI factory based on Nvidia tech 

To coincide with a visit by its CEO Jensen Huang to the country, Nvidia has announced multiple engagements with South Korean companies that lay the foundations for significant AI infrastructure deployments and related technology developments. 

The country’s leading telco, SK Telecom (SKT), has unveiled plans to build a gigawatt-scale AI Cloud – a “large-scale AI infrastructure comprised of AI factories that manufacture tokens, building blocks of intelligence, from data” – using Nvidia’s DSX full stack reference architecture of software, hardware and operations that, when combined, aim to produce “the lowest cost tokens at maximum energy efficiency”. The first AI factory that is part of this development is due to start operations in 2027.

The telco noted in this announcement that its AI Cloud “will power training, inference and agentic workloads including sovereign, physical and enterprise AI services for companies and industries across Korea, with the vision to expand to greater Asia regions.”

Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group (SKT’s parent company), noted: “Through our close partnership with Nvidia, we have now secured full-stack AI infrastructure capabilities, from chips to datacentre operations. We will work with Nvidia to tackle GPU, memory and energy challenges, and become a leading AI cloud company shaping Asia’s AI ecosystem.”

SK Group and Nvidia also announced plans to pursue joint research to “co-develop next-generation AI factory architecture, extending their collaboration beyond infrastructure deployment. The companies will focus on silicon-to-grid innovation across accelerated computing, memory technologies and datacentre operations. Nvidia and SK Group companies, including SKT, will also explore projects for full-stack AI factory optimisation to drive more efficient, scalable and resilient AI services.”

Another of those SK Group companies, memory chip specialist SK Hynix, struck a multiyear technology partnership with Nvidia, already a long-time collaborator, to “advance next-generation memory for the global AI factory buildout and accelerate semiconductor design and manufacturing”. The relationship is an important one for Nvidia as high-bandwidth memory (HBM) products are set to be in short supply for years, due to the massive demand created by the ongoing investment in AI infrastructure, and SK Hynix is one of the leading companies in the sector.  

According to Nvidia, this partnership will enable memory supply to “keep pace with Nvidia’s infrastructure roadmap and the sustained buildout of AI infrastructure worldwide. Through this partnership, SK Hynix will diversify into new markets Nvidia is creating – spanning AI infrastructure, personal AI and physical AI – codeveloping memory for Nvidia Vera Rubin AI supercomputers, Nvidia Vera CPUs, Nvidia RTX Spark-powered PCs and Nvidia Jetson Thor robotic computing platforms.

“SK Hynix and Nvidia have been building toward this for years, and this partnership reflects the depth of that collaboration,” stated SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won. “Together, we are codeveloping the next generation of memory for AI factories and applying AI to how we design and manufacture semiconductors – work that will shape the future of AI infrastructure.”

Nvidia’s Huang added: “AI factories are the engines of the next industrial revolution, and advanced memory is essential to their performance. SK Hynix has been an extraordinary partner to Nvidia, playing a central role in delivering advanced memory technologies for Nvidia AI computing platforms. Together, we will codevelop the next generation of memory for AI factories and support the accelerating global expansion of AI infrastructure – from frontier model training to agentic and physical AI.”

Nvidia is also working with another of South Korea’s major tech developers, LG Group (the parent of mobile operator LG U-plus), on the construction of an AI factory that will “accelerate LG Group’s next wave of AI-driven businesses, spanning robotics, autonomous driving, datacentre technologies and GPU cloud services,” the companies announced. 

The AI factory will “provide LG Group with accelerated computing infrastructure to train, simulate, validate and deploy AI-based applications across its key businesses,” while the partners plan to connect “AI model development, physical AI data generation, robot simulation and training, edge deployment and factory-scale digital twins into a unified workflow for building physical AI systems.” 

And there’s more… South Korean AI infrastructure developer Naver is to add significant capacity to its GAK Sejong datacentre facility to develop an AI cloud based on Nvidia’s DSX reference architecture, starting with 55 megawatts but with plans to achieve gigawatt scale in the future, the companies announced. 

“Naver is building sovereign AI infrastructure that can serve Korea’s industries and global customers with trusted, high-performance AI,” stated the company’s founder and chairman, Haejin Lee. “By building on the Nvidia DSX platform, we can help customers move from AI experimentation to production-scale AI factories that power models, agents and real-world services.”

Nvidia’s Huang added: “Useful AI has arrived, and demand for AI factories is extraordinary. Naver is building AI factory infrastructure that will serve its companies, developers and industries. With Nvidia DSX, we can help Korea scale sovereign intelligence infrastructure for the agentic era – from AI agents to AI factories and physical AI.”

Nvidia is also expanding its collaboration with South Korean industrial automation, power-generation and advanced electronics materials specialist Doosan Group “to advance new opportunities across physical AI, robotics and AI factory infrastructure, spanning Doosan Robotics, Doosan Bobcat, Doosan Enerbility and Doosan Corporation Electro-Materials BG,” noted the AI tech giant. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV