Nvidia Corp has forged a landmark deal to supply technology to South Korea’s biggest companies, part of an aggressive push to expand artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure around the world.
Under agreements brokered with the country’s Ministry of Science and a trio of corporations — Samsung Electronics Co, Hyundai Motor Group and SK Group — Nvidia is to supply more than 260,000 of its accelerator chips to help jump-start South Korean AI projects. The US company did not disclose the financial terms of the deals.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) was in South Korea attending the APEC CEO Summit yesterday. He used the trip to continue a globe-trotting push to spread the use of AI computing — and fuel demand for his products. The deals in South Korea help further entrench Nvidia’s equipment in a country with a vibrant technology industry.
Photo: AP
As part of the agreements, the South Korean government is building what is known as sovereign AI — computing infrastructure that it controls. It is using more than 50,000 of Nvidia’s latest AI accelerators in data centers in locations such as the National AI Computing Center and facilities owned by companies such as Kakao Corp, Naver Corp and NHN Cloud Corp.
Samsung Electronics, a key supplier of memory chips and one of the world’s largest semiconductor makers, is building an “AI factory” using more than 50,000 Nvidia chips.
Hyundai Motor has committed to using a similar number of processors based on Nvidia’s Blackwell design. The chips are to be used to develop AI models and help advance manufacturing and autonomous driving.
SK Group, which includes affiliates SK Telecom Co and SK Hynix Inc, is deploying an array of Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell server chips in what Nvidia called Asia’s first “industrial AI cloud.” The facility is built to assist with robotics and other uses of AI in the physical world.
The AI frenzy has sent Nvidia’s sales — and market capitalization — soaring over the past two years. Earlier this week, it became the first company to reach a valuation of more than US$5 trillion. That followed a company conference in Washington where Huang pointed to strong demand for his products over the coming months.
A lingering question is whether Nvidia would be able to sell its Blackwell processors to China, the world’s largest market for chips. The US has curbed exports of the technology to the Asian nation.
Huang said Nvidia still hopes to sell chips from the company’s Blackwell line to customers in China, though he has no current plans to do so, he told reporters yesterday.
Asked whether Nvidia intends to sell AI accelerators from that family of products, the tech chief said, “I don’t know. I hope so someday.”
He added that chip sales were not discussed during his meeting with Ren Hongbin (任鴻斌), chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.
Blackwell is Nvidia’s latest generation of artificial intelligence semiconductors, figuring prominently as a potential bargaining chip in trade talks between the US and China. Licensing the sale of those products did not figure in the discussion between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping (習近平) this week, with Trump saying Nvidia and the Chinese government would have to keep talking about the US$5 trillion company’s access to the Asian nation’s market.
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