NVIDIA deals in South Korea cover AI memory, cloud and robotics

• NVIDIA’s deals in Korea cover AI memory, cloud, robotics, power, and gaming.
• SK hynix, SK Telecom, and NAVER will work with NVIDIA on memory and AI infrastructure.

NVIDIA has outlined new agreements with SK hynix, SK Telecom, NAVER and Doosan Group during CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to South Korea. The deals cover AI infrastructure, advanced memory, semiconductor manufacturing, robotics, power systems and gaming.

SK hynix to develop next-generation memory

SK hynix will work with NVIDIA on next-generation memory under a multiyear technology partnership for AI computing platforms. The companies said the agreement builds on existing engineering work between them and is intended to support longer development cycles for advanced memory products.

Under the partnership, SK hynix will work with NVIDIA on memory for several platforms, including NVIDIA Vera Rubin AI supercomputers and NVIDIA Vera CPUs. The work also covers RTX Spark-powered PCs and Jetson Thor robotic computing systems.

SK hynix is also using NVIDIA CUDA-X libraries and AI tools to speed up semiconductor simulation, including technology computer-aided design and computational lithography workflows.

The company is applying CUDA-X and NVIDIA PhysicsNeMo to internal simulation codes and AI physics workflows. NVIDIA said the work could support collaboration with electronic design automation software providers and chipmakers.

SK hynix is developing fab digital twins using NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and OpenUSD pipelines for semiconductor manufacturing environments.

The digital twins are also being linked to operational tools, including NVIDIA cuOpt and NVIDIA Metropolis. The companies are studying how these models can connect with existing software and agentic AI workflows for fab operations.

SK Telecom plans gigawatt-scale AI Cloud

SK Telecom plans to build a gigawatt-scale AI Cloud in Korea using NVIDIA DSX, with the first AI factory expected to come online in 2027.

The companies described the AI Cloud as GPU-based infrastructure designed for AI training, inference and agentic AI workloads. SK Telecom said the infrastructure will support sovereign, physical and enterprise AI services for companies and industries in Korea. The company also plans to expand the service into other parts of Asia.

SK Telecom will also become an NVIDIA Cloud Partner, giving it access to NVIDIA AI infrastructure, software and developer tools for AI cloud services.

The project builds on SK Telecom’s earlier use of NVIDIA technologies in Korea. The company has used NVIDIA Omniverse libraries for digital twin work linked to SK hynix semiconductor fabs. It has also adopted open-source NVIDIA Nemotron datasets to train its A.X K1 model under Korea’s Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project.

SK Group and NVIDIA also plan to pursue joint research on next-generation AI factory architecture. The work will cover accelerated computing, memory technologies and data centre operations.

NAVER expands sovereign AI infrastructure

NAVER will expand its sovereign AI infrastructure with NVIDIA DSX, starting with a 55-megawatt deployment. The company said it plans to scale the project to gigawatt-level infrastructure.

The infrastructure will expand NAVER’s GAK Sejong data centre in Sejong, South Korea. The facility is designed for high-density accelerated computing and includes automation and energy efficiency features. It also has disaster-response capabilities.

NAVER said the AI infrastructure will serve enterprises, industries, government organisations and AI cloud customers. The company is also using its data centre capabilities for sovereign AI projects in Europe and the Middle East.

The agreement also extends NVIDIA and NAVER’s work on model development. NAVER is fine-tuning NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra with proprietary data and training methods for its HyperCLOVA X models.

The company is the first Korean participant in the NVIDIA Nemotron Coalition. The coalition focuses on open model development across pretraining, post-training and reinforcement learning. NAVER plans to launch an AI Agent Platform in Korea in the second half of the year, using NVIDIA NemoClaw blueprints.

NAVER is also developing a Seoul World Model using its urban street-view data and spatial modelling technology. The project uses NVIDIA Cosmos world foundation models.

Doosan collaboration covers robotics and power

Doosan Group’s expanded collaboration with NVIDIA covers robotics, physical AI and AI factory infrastructure. It also includes power systems and electronics materials. The companies involved include Doosan Robotics, Doosan Bobcat, Doosan Enerbility and Doosan Corporation Electro-Materials BG.

Doosan Robotics is integrating NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, Cosmos, the Newton physics engine and Jetson Thor into its Agentic Robot OS. The platform covers perception, reasoning, simulation, learning and on-device inference for industrial robots.

The companies are also looking at industrial use cases such as depalletising and sanding. They are studying additional robot form factors, including dual-arm and humanoid platforms.

Doosan Bobcat plans to explore the use of NVIDIA physical AI technologies in construction, landscaping, agriculture and material handling equipment. The work includes world models for operating environments and autonomous equipment functions.

Doosan Enerbility’s role centres on power infrastructure for NVIDIA AI factories and the NVIDIA DSX platform. This includes gas turbines, steam turbines, small modular reactors and hydrogen fuel-cell systems from Doosan Fuel Cell.

The work may cover power supply design for AI factory deployments, generation equipment optimisation, and low-carbon sources such as small modular reactors.

Doosan Corporation Electro-Materials BG is supporting AI data centre infrastructure through copper clad laminate, a material used in printed circuit boards. High-performance copper clad laminates are used in networking equipment, AI accelerators and AI server motherboards, where low signal loss and reliability are required.

The company’s work is linked to the NVIDIA MGX ecosystem. MGX is a modular reference architecture that helps system manufacturers build accelerated servers and rack-scale AI infrastructure.

RTX Spark introduced to Korean gaming market

Huang’s Korea visit also included the introduction of RTX Spark to the country’s gaming community. The platform was first shown at GTC Taipei at COMPUTEX and is designed for slim Windows laptops and compact desktop PCs.

RTX Spark supports local AI, content creation and gaming workloads. NVIDIA said the superchip enables AAA games at 1440p and more than 100 frames per second with ray tracing, DLSS and Reflex technologies.

Korean game developers KRAFTON and NC are working to bring titles to RTX Spark-powered systems, while NVIDIA and Riot Games are collaborating on League of Legends and VALORANT support.

At T1 Base Camp, a PC bang owned by esports organisation T1, NVIDIA showed RTX Spark to gamers and esports fans. Huang also visited PC bangs in Seoul’s Gangnam district with KRAFTON and NC.

At Optimum Zone PC, NVIDIA and KRAFTON showed PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and Subnautica 2 on RTX Spark. Gamers were also shown PUBG Ally, a co-playable character built with NVIDIA ACE technologies.

At Portal PC, NVIDIA and NC showed CINDER CITY and AION 2 on RTX Spark. The companies have worked together since the early 2000s on titles including Lineage, AION, Blade & Soul, AION 2 and CINDER CITY.

CINDER CITY will support DLSS 4.5 Dynamic Multi Frame Generation and Super Resolution at launch. NVIDIA said the title will also run on RTX Spark laptops and compact desktops when it is released later this year.

NVIDIA said more than 100 Windows software providers and game developers are working with RTX Spark. The list includes KRAFTON, NC, Riot Games, NetEase, Remedy Entertainment and Xbox.

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