At AI Summit, South Korea Outlines Its AI Future With NVIDIA and Partners

At this week’s AI Summit in San Francisco, South Korean President Jae Myung Lee and some of the country’s top business leaders and researchers are meeting with NVIDIA and ecosystem partners to chart Korea’s AI progress. Building on NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to Korea last month, this week’s discussions and announcements advance the nation’s full-stack push to expand Korea’s AI infrastructure and expertise on its path toward becoming a global center for AI innovation.  To start, NVIDIA and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) today 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. It’s the first joint AI lab between a Korean university and any global technology company. The collaboration will establish a robust academic AI research program, bringing together NVIDIA full-stack AI expertise, NVIDIA Nemotron open models and NVIDIA AI Cloud partner computing with the world-class scientific talent at KAIST, one of Asia’s premier research universities. Check back here for updates as the summit continues, including Huang’s meetings with President Lee as well as Korea and U.S. business leaders. Friday, July 24, at 10:10 p.m. PT NVIDIA and Korea Partners Announce Next Wave of AI Innovation NVIDIA and its Korea ecosystem partners — from NAVER, SK Telecom and Hyundai Motor Group to the nation’s top research universities, KAIST and Seoul National University (SNU) — are committing to developing national AI factories and physical AI platforms, as well as advancing joint research in agentic AI.  Core to it all: NAVER, Brookfield and NVIDIA will expand 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.  Plus, SK Group and NVIDIA today announced plans for a $500-billion-plus comprehensive partnership to establish AI infrastructure serving the surging demand for global compute. Broadening initial plans announced in June, the expanded collaboration will deploy NVIDIA Vera Rubin infrastructure powered by SK hynix HBM4 memory. And Hyundai Motor Group outlined a physical AI strategy anchored by a robot reference platform developed with NVIDIA, extending a buildout with 50,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs. The collaboration also includes the integration of NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion — an autonomous vehicle development platform combining NVIDIA DRIVE AGX in-vehicle computing running on the safety-certified NVIDIA DriveOS operating system — with HMG’s vehicle platforms. NVIDIA Deepens Collaboration With Top Korea Universities NVIDIA and KAIST’s Department of Mechanical Engineering are planning an NVIDIA AI Technology Center (NVAITC) for collaborative research, talent development and knowledge exchange in physical AI — including projects that tap into NVIDIA Nemotron open models.  This is in addition to the NVIDIA-KAIST joint research lab for agentic AI at the KAIST Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI in Seoul — built for the Korean language and local industry, backed by a multiyear commitment to fund and train Korean researchers. 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, with potential cooperation on AI infrastructure. This will include work harnessing NVIDIA Nemotron and NVIDIA Cosmos open world foundation models. Friday, July 24, at 10:10 p.m. PT Huang and President Lee Meet to Discuss Future of AI President Lee met with Huang Friday at the Fairmont San Francisco ahead of the AI Summit to discuss deepening the partnership behind Korea’s national AI ambitions. President Lee opened by noting he’d seen reports of Huang eating beer and fried chicken in Seoul — and that he’d hoped to join.  Huang said the enthusiasm he fel