US chip titan Nvidia on Monday announced a large-scale data center construction project in South Korea with SK Telecom, among a number of other business deals in the country.
Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, also said it would work with chipmaker SK hynix to develop advanced memory components that help AI systems run and are currently in short supply.
The connections were revealed after CEO Jensen Huang spent the weekend barbecuing in Seoul with the country’s tech leaders and appearing on a popular TV show.
SK Telecom and Nvidia plan to “build a gigawatt-scale artificial intelligence cloud in Korea… with the first AI factory scheduled to come online in 2027,” it said in a joint statement.
The project “will support sovereign, physical and AI agent services for enterprises and industries across Korea, with a vision to expand to the larger regions of Asia,” he added.
No figure has been given on how much the two companies will invest in the data centers.
SK Telecom operates under the same parent company – SK Group – as SK hynix, which on Monday announced a “multi-year technology partnership” for memory chips with Nvidia.
“The agreement supports supply for advanced memory, addressing extended development cycles, advanced fabrication and capital investments to support the global construction of AI factories,” their statement said.
“Through this partnership, SK hynix will diversify into new markets that Nvidia is creating – including AI infrastructure, personal AI and physical AI,” through co-development of memory components for Nvidia hardware, he said.
As governments and companies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, Nvidia’s value has surpassed $5 trillion, more than the gross domestic product of Japan or India.
– ‘Please do more’ –
The race to build AI data centers has created a global shortage of memory chips — sending profits soaring for manufacturers such as SK hynix and rival Samsung Electronics, whose workers’ union recently agreed a deal with management on bonuses, avoiding a strike.
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won last week pledged to double production capacity of the silicon wafers used to make memory chips.
But he also repeated his prediction that shortages could continue until 2030, with chip factories taking at least three years to build.
Nvidia’s Huang signed a memory chip display at the SK hynix booth at Computex in Taipei, writing: “Please do more.”
When he landed in South Korea on Friday, Huang said he had “brought a lot of business to Korea”, promising some new “surprises”.
On Monday, the California-based company also announced AI-related collaborations with tech giant Naver and Doosan Group in robotics.
Nvidia is best known for its GPUs, specialized computer chips originally designed to deliver high-speed video game graphics.
These chips have become the engine behind AI tools from chatbots to image generators and agents that can perform tasks for users.
Nvidia last week unveiled a powerful laptop chip for Windows machines, staking its claim to the market for next-generation AI-embedded consumer PCs.
