South Korea is making a major push to become a global AI powerhouse, with the government and top tech companies investing over 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs across sovereign cloud platforms, AI factories, and research centers. The initiative, announced during the APEC Summit, is a strategic move to build a national AI infrastructure foundation for physical AI, digital twins, robotics, and agentic systems. The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) is leading the effort, deploying up to 50,000 of the latest NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs to the National AI Computing Center and cloud providers NHN Cloud, Kakao Corp., and NAVER Cloud. NAVER Cloud is expanding its infrastructure with over 60,000 GPUs, including the NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition, to support enterprise and physical AI workloads. The company is also developing Korean sovereign foundation LLMs in partnership with LG AI Research, SK Telecom, NC AI, Upstage, and NVIDIA, using open models like NVIDIA Nemotron and frameworks such as NeMo and PhysicsNeMo. Samsung Electronics is building a semiconductor AI factory with more than 50,000 GPUs to advance intelligent manufacturing, digital twins, and AI-driven product development. The company is leveraging NVIDIA’s CUDA-X, cuLitho, Omniverse, and Isaac Sim to improve chip design, yield, and home robot development. SK Group is constructing a massive AI factory with over 50,000 GPUs, set for completion by late 2027, to support semiconductor R&D, digital twins, and AI agent development. The factory will also host a GPU-as-a-service model, offering access to startups and enterprises. SK hynix is using the infrastructure to build autonomous digital twins and accelerate chip design with AI physics, while SK Telecom is deploying over 2,000 RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs for industrial AI and robotics via its new industrial cloud. Hyundai Motor Group and NVIDIA are collaborating on a $3 billion initiative to create an AI factory with 50,000 Blackwell GPUs, focused on autonomous driving, smart factories, and on-device semiconductors. The project includes the creation of an NVIDIA AI Technology Center, a Physical AI Application Center, and regional data centers to support Korea’s national physical AI cluster. NVIDIA is also working with KISTI to establish a Center of Excellence for quantum computing, using Korea’s HANGANG supercomputer and NVIDIA’s NVQLink open architecture to connect quantum processors with GPU supercomputers. The partnership will advance research in quantum error correction and hybrid AI-quantum applications, with support for physics-informed AI models using the open-source PhysicsNeMo framework. In addition, a new startup alliance, powered by NVIDIA Inception and supported by government and venture capital partners, will provide startups with access to accelerated computing, software, and expertise. The program will support the N-Up AI incubation initiative by the Korea Ministry of SMEs and Startups. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, called the move a transformational step, comparing AI infrastructure to power grids and broadband. Korea’s Deputy Prime Minister Bae Kyung-hoon emphasized that the investment will solidify South Korea’s position as a top three global AI leader, leveraging its manufacturing strength to export intelligence. The combined efforts of government, industry, and research institutions are setting the stage for a new era of AI-driven innovation across Korea’s key sectors.