Nvidia is cutting deals across South Korea to lock down more AI infrastructure and keep its data centre gravy train rolling.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the move is meant to strengthen Nvidia’s data centre footprint and widen its AI ecosystem, because apparently the world still needs more token-crunching sheds.
The string of deals came as Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang made his second visit to South Korea in less than a year. For those not in the know, South Korea is home to the world’s top memory chip makers, which makes it a handy stop after Taiwan, another chip manufacturing hub.
Mobile carrier SK Telecom said it and Nvidia had agreed to push ahead with their first gigawatt-scale AI cloud services in South Korea. The companies plan to expand the effort into other parts of Asia once the Korean setup is moving.
The project will combine Nvidia’s platform and advanced graphics processing units with SK Telecom’s network and data centres. The companies want to create AI factories that generate tokens, the basic building blocks of intelligence derived from data.
The first AI factory is expected to come online in 2027, according to the statement.
The deal shows the deepening partnership between Nvidia and South Korean conglomerate SK Group, the parent of SK Hynix.
SK Hynix is a key supplier of high-bandwidth memory products used in Nvidia’s AI accelerators, which explains why everyone is being so chummy. SK Hynix separately struck a multiyear technology agreement with Nvidia today.
The pair will work on next-generation memory chips for the global AI infrastructure buildout and speed up semiconductor design and manufacturing.
South Korea’s Naver is joining Nvidia’s global AI infrastructure initiative as well. The internet and cloud computing company said it had agreed to work with Nvidia on AI factories as part of the gigawatt-scale initiative.
Huang and Naver chairman Lee Hae-jin discussed a concrete roadmap to jointly enter AI markets in Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region.
Naver has developed its own large language model and has become central to South Korea’s sovereign AI push.
