Seoul Purpose: How NVIDIA and South Korea Are Building the Future of AI

Summary

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's visit to Seoul in June 2026 resulted in a series of partnership announcements focused on building 'gigawatt-scale' AI factories and co-developing memory and robotics platforms with NAVER, LG, SK, Hyundai, and Doosan. The visit was capped off by the surprise unveiling of RTX Spark in Korean PC cafes.

Why it matters

South Korea is positioning itself as a sovereign AI hub through simultaneous commitments to infrastructure. The broad range of partners, spanning from telecommunications to heavy industry and esports, signals a national-scale investment in NVIDIA's end-to-end platform. From an AI infrastructure market perspective, these deals secure demand for NVIDIA DSX, NemoClaw, and Nemotron tools in a major economy and reinforce supplier dependency at the national level.

Highlights

• NAVER's GAK Sejong data center currently has a capacity of 55 MW. The company's goal to reach 'gigawatt scale' represents a gap of approximately 20 times. However, no timeline or capital expenditure figures have been disclosed for this target.
• SK Telecom will build a gigawatt-scale AI Cloud on NVIDIA DSX infrastructure. Additionally, it will co-develop memory for four NVIDIA platforms covering artificial, personal, and physical AI.
• NAVER became the first South Korean company to join the NVIDIA Nemotron Coalition. The company plans to build an AI Agent Platform based on NemoClaw drafts in the second half of 2026.

Critical take

This text is essentially an NVIDIA corporate blog post disguised as news. Every 'partnership' is announced directly by the supplier; independent investment figures, delivery dates, or technical specifications are not shared. The phrase 'gigawatt scale' is an ambitious goal rather than a concrete commitment. The text reads like a single executive's weekly travel log, making it impossible to distinguish genuine multi-year commitments from handshakes at a press conference.