Nvidia Expands AI Ties with Hyundai, Samsung, SK, Naver

Why It Matters

The deal accelerates South Korea’s AI infrastructure rollout, giving domestic firms a competitive edge in manufacturing, mobility and cloud services, and deepens Nvidia’s foothold in the Asia‑Pacific AI hardware market.

Summary

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visited South Korea during the APEC 2025 summit, announcing a $5‑trillion‑valued company’s expanded partnership with the Korean government and leading firms Hyundai Motor, Samsung, SK Group and Naver. South Korea will procure over 260,000 Nvidia GPUs—about 50,000 for public AI initiatives and the remainder for corporate use—to build AI‑powered factories, a national AI data centre, and industry‑specific models. Samsung will create an AI Megafactory and co‑develop next‑gen HBM4 memory and AI‑RAN with telecom operators, while Hyundai will deploy 50,000 Blackwell GPUs for autonomous mobility and smart‑factory research. SK Group will launch Asia’s first enterprise‑led AI cloud and Naver will build a Physical AI platform linking digital twins to real‑world industrial sites.