Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia plans to supply hundreds of thousands of its graphics processing units for projects with South Korean businesses and the government to advance the country’s artificial intelligence infrastructure and technologies.
The government, Nvidia and leading South Korean chip maker Samsung Electronics announced the plan after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met Friday with Nvidia’s chief executive Jensen Huang.
Huang has gotten rockstar treatment reminiscent of Apple’s Steve Jobs since arriving in South Korea on Thursday to attend meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Gyeongju. As APEC host, South Korea is using the gathering of world leaders to showcase its ambitions in AI.
Lee’s office said Nvidia will supply around 260,000 GPUs to support South Korea’s AI computing capabilities. The company will also work with Samsung and other South Korean technology firms including SK Hynix and Hyundai to improve manufacturing processes using AI and to accelerate the development of new technologies.
Santa Clara-based Nvidia, whose GPU chips power much of the global AI industry, featured in talks Thursday between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Gyeongju, where the leaders agreed to take steps to ease their escalating trade war.
Following the meeting, Trump said he discussed sales of computer chips to China. Trump and former President Joe Biden have imposed restrictions on China’s access to the most advanced chips, including those used for AI. Trump said China will speak with Nvidia about purchasing their chips, but not the company’s latest Blackwell AI chips.
In August, Trump announced a deal with Nvidia and AMD, another chipmaker, to lift export controls on sales of advanced chips to China in exchange for a 15% cut of the revenue, despite concerns among national security experts that such chips will end up in the hands of Chinese military and intelligence services.
Nvidia earlier this week confirmed that it has become the first $5 trillion company, just three months after the company broke through the $4 trillion mark. The milestone underscores the upheaval driven by the AI craze, widely seen as the biggest technological shift since Apple co-founder Jobs unveiled the first iPhone 18 years ago.
But there are also concerns over a potential AI bubble. Officials at the Bank of England warned earlier this month that tech stock prices fueled by the AI boom could collapse, and the head of the International Monetary Fund has issued a similar warning.
