South Korean President Lee Jae-myung met with artificial intelligence (AI) chip leader NVIDIA (Nvidia) CEO Jen-Hsun Huang and leaders of several leading Korean companies this afternoon. He announced that NVIDIA will provide South Korea with at least 260,000 AI chips and discussed multiple AI cooperation plans.

Huang Renxun met with Lee Jae-myung at the same venue as Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun, and NAVER founder Lee Hae-jin to exchange opinions on the overall innovation plan of the AI ecosystem. After this meeting, Huang Renxun will deliver a keynote speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Business Leaders Summit and hold a press conference.

The Office of the President of South Korea stated that this meeting hopes to promote cooperation with NVIDIA, a leading international AI company, lay the foundation for realizing the "three major AI powers" and an "AI basic society", and explore solutions that allow everyone to share innovative results and contribute to the international community.

Lee Jae-myung stated in his opening speech that South Korea’s goal is to become the AI capital of the Indo-Pacific region. International companies such as BlackRock and OpenAI have recently decided to join the plan to develop South Korea into an AI hub in the Indo-Pacific region. “We look forward to NVIDIA joining in to jointly create an AI ecosystem with a virtuous cycle of infrastructure, technology, and investment.”

During this meeting, cooperation plans related to infrastructure construction and technical cooperation in core areas such as physical AI, joint research on AI technology, AI talent cultivation, and support for new innovations were discussed.

In terms of AI infrastructure and technical cooperation, the Korean government will use at least 260,000 of the latest AI chips and GPUs provided by NVIDIA to significantly expand AI computing infrastructure in response to the needs of the public and private sectors, and simultaneously carry out construction and operational technical cooperation with NVIDIA.

Hyundai Motor and NVIDIA will also cooperate with NVIDIA on physical AI. South Korea’s Ministry of Science and Technology and Hyundai Motor have signed a memorandum of cooperation (MOU) with NVIDIA before the meeting, agreeing to cooperate to increase the capacity of Korean physical AI; Hyundai Motor and NVIDIA will cooperate on physical AI technology development and talent cultivation such as AI self-driving cars and AI automated manufacturing; NAVER stated that it will actively strengthen the competitiveness of physical AI in fields such as the cloud and "Software Defined Vehicles (SDV)".

SK and Samsung Electronics will use NVIDIA's GPUs to actively invest in physical AI and improve semiconductor production processes. The leaders of the three companies also discussed plans to strengthen their partnership, such as expanding the supply of high-bandwidth memory (HBM).

In terms of joint research on AI technology, the Korean government promotes industry-university-research cooperation with NVIDIA to jointly develop advanced AI technologies. For example, research institutions such as the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) will cooperate with NVIDIA to build a quantum hybrid computing environment for the No. 6 supercomputer "Hanjiang". Samsung Electronics, South Korea's three major telecommunications companies, SK Telecom, KT, LGU+, Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), and Yonsei University will cooperate to develop AI-RAN technology with the goal of commercialization.

In order to cultivate AI professionals and support new companies, South Korea and NVIDIA will also discuss expanding medium- and long-term cooperation plans such as on-site education centered on practical training, as well as new start-up support such as the N-UP program jointly promoted by NVIDIA and South Korea’s Ministry of Small and Medium Venture Enterprises.

Lee Jae-myung emphasized that if NVIDIA plays the role of promoting the speed of AI innovation, South Korea is the best partner to properly utilize this speed. He also said that the Korean government will do its best to support the cooperation plans discussed today so that these plans are not limited to South Korea but can also become successful cases that bring substantial contributions to the international community.

Further reading: Deploy 50,000 GPUs! Samsung joins hands with NVIDIA to build AI super factory