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Korea secures 260,000 Nvidia Blackwell chips to power national AI expansion

Published: 31 Oct. 2025, 15:00

LEE JAE-LIM
[email protected]

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang waves to onlookers as he arrives at Pohang Gyeongju Airport to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit held at Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang, on Oct. 31. [NEWS1]

Nvidia will supply 260,000 Blackwell processors to strengthen Korea’s artificial intelligence infrastructure — the largest volume the U.S. chipmaker has pledged to a single country — as part of efforts to embed AI across the nation’s semiconductor, automotive and robotics supply chains.

The announcement, foreshadowed earlier this week by CEO Jensen Huang as “delightful” during the GPU Technology Conference in Washington, marks a major expansion of Nvidia’s footprint in Korea.

Of the total, 50,000 GPUs each will go to Samsung Electronics, SK Group and Hyundai Motor, while 60,000 units will be supplied to Naver Cloud and the remaining 50,000 will be allocated to the Korean government, according to the company. The timeline and investment size for the Blackwell deployment were not disclosed.

“The new Blackwell infrastructure will boost the total number of AI GPUs from 65,000 to more than 300,000, giving Korea the foundation needed to be a world leader,” said Raymond Teh, Nvidia’s senior vice president for the Asia-Pacific region, at an online briefing Thursday.

Nvidia’s processors remain in short supply worldwide amid an AI boom, making the 260,000-GPU commitment one of its largest ever to a single market. The company has also pledged 120,000 Blackwell GPUs to the UK and 100,000 to Germany.

Nvidia will also join Korea’s government-led project to build sovereign AI foundation models with LG AI Research, Naver Cloud, NC AI, SK Telecom and Upstage, and cooperate with Samsung and mobile carriers SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ to advance 6G network development. It will also partner with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information on the government’s Hangang supercomputer project.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [[email protected]]