Nvidia to deploy 260,000 AI chips in South Korea, quintupling capacity

Nvidia will supply up to 260,000 of its AI chips to South Korean companies and the country's government as part of a major national AI program, including agreements with four major players: semiconductor and electronics manufacturer Samsung, SK Group, which owns key memory maker SK Hynix, carmaker Hyundai, and cloud and AI infrastructure developer NAVER Cloud.

Samsung, SK Group and Hyundai have announced the construction of separate AI factories, each utilizing 50,000 Nvidia GPUs. NAVER Cloud - Korea's counterpart to Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, and a key IT partner for the country's government - is also ramping up its AI infrastructure by adding 60,000 GPUs. In addition, South Korea's Ministry of Science will purchase more than 50,000 Nvidia chips in the coming years through the National Center for Artificial Intelligence Computing and partnerships with NHN Cloud and NAVER Cloud. The government will also use Nvidia's software to develop its own sovereign AI models, the company said.

The deals will increase the number of its AI chips used in South Korea by five times. There are now 65,000 processes deployed there, the release suggests.

The agreement with South Korean companies follows a series of large-scale sovereign AI deals Nvidia has struck over the past year in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Europe and the U .K., Yahoo Finance recalls. In August, the company said such partnerships could bring it more than $20 billion in revenue in fiscal 2026. And in June, it predicted that the sovereign AI market would grow to $1.5 trillion in the coming years.

Shares of Nvidia rose 11% in five trading sessions ended Thursday, October 30. At the premarket on Friday, October 31, the company's shares were up just over 2%. This week, it became the first company in history to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor