In a landmark move, Nvidia has announced plans to deliver 260,000 of its most powerful artificial intelligence chips to South Korea, a nation rapidly positioning itself as a global hub for next-generation computing. The announcement follows a high-level meeting between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, signaling a strategic collaboration that could reshape the nation’s technological infrastructure.

According to AFP, Nvidia confirmed its partnership with Seoul to accelerate the expansion of the country’s AI ecosystem, deploying over a quarter-million GPUs across sovereign cloud networks and AI factories. This initiative aligns with South Korea’s aggressive push to integrate AI into every major sector, from manufacturing to public services, reinforcing its identity as a technological trailblazer in Asia.

Leading South Korean corporations are among the primary recipients of Nvidia’s high-end chips. Samsung Electronics, one of the world’s top semiconductor producers, will receive 50,000 GPUs for its expanding AI factory. The company revealed that embedding AI “throughout Samsung’s entire manufacturing flow” will revolutionize production efficiency and innovation. Likewise, industrial heavyweights SK Group and Hyundai Motor Group are each set to receive 50,000 chips, which will power their respective AI-driven operations and propel their transformation into data-centric enterprises.

NAVER Cloud, South Korea’s largest internet platform operator, will be allocated the largest individual share—60,000 GPUs—to enhance its growing AI research and digital services capacity. This move will significantly strengthen NAVER’s role in developing the infrastructure necessary for Korea’s digital transformation, bolstering its competitive edge against global giants like Google and Microsoft. An additional 50,000 chips will be distributed across government projects, including Seoul’s National AI Computing Centre, ensuring that the benefits of Nvidia’s technology extend beyond corporate boardrooms into national innovation frameworks.

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang described the agreement as a “historic step” toward embedding AI infrastructure into the fabric of South Korea’s economy. “Korea’s leadership in technology and manufacturing positions it at the heart of the AI industrial revolution—where accelerated computing infrastructure becomes as vital as power grids and broadband,” Huang told AFP. His statement underscores the pivotal role of computational power in defining the next industrial era, one increasingly driven by machine learning, automation, and high-performance data processing.

Adding a human touch to the business collaboration, Huang was spotted dining with Samsung Chairman Jay Y Lee and Hyundai Motor Executive Chair Chung Euisun at a popular Seoul restaurant, Kkanbu Chicken. The casual meeting drew national media coverage as fans and journalists crowded the venue. During the evening, Huang gifted both executives Nvidia’s signature DGX AI systems, symbolic of their shared technological aspirations. Lee later posted a photograph of Huang’s handwritten note, which read: “To our partnership and future of the world!”—a gesture that quickly went viral on South Korean social media.

This deal, encompassing some of Nvidia’s most advanced chips, stands as one of the largest AI hardware commitments to a single country to date. It reflects both Nvidia’s confidence in South Korea’s innovation capacity and Seoul’s determination to reduce its dependency on Western AI ecosystems. For President Lee Jae Myung, who has repeatedly emphasized AI as the “backbone of South Korea’s economic renaissance,” the partnership cements his administration’s commitment to lead in next-generation technologies that define the global economy’s future.

As the world’s demand for AI computing continues to surge, South Korea’s deepened alliance with Nvidia marks a turning point. With Samsung, Hyundai, SK Group, and NAVER Cloud at the forefront, the nation is not just participating in the AI race—it is building the infrastructure to lead it. This collaboration positions South Korea as an AI powerhouse, capable of shaping the direction of digital progress across Asia and beyond.