South Korean President Lee Jae Myung (3rd from R) meets with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (3rd from L), Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong (2nd from R), Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Chung Euisun (R), SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won (2nd from L) and Naver founder Lee Hae-jin at the Gyeongju Hwabaek International Convention Center, the main venue of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, in this Oct. 31, 2025, file photo. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Nov. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea has taken another step toward remaking itself as a global center of artificial intelligence. On Thursday, the government convened the first meeting of a new working group made up of officials and senior executives from Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor Group, SK Telecom and Naver Cloud.
The mission: figure out how to absorb and deploy an extraordinary influx of computing power — up to 260,000 of Nvidia’s newest Blackwell GPUs — slated to arrive in the country in the coming years.
The meeting, chaired by Second Vice Science Minister Ryu Je-myung, followed Nvidia’s announcement last month that it would partner with Seoul and a set of major Korean conglomerates to build what the company calls “AI factories” across the country.
If fully realized, the plan would increase South Korea’s AI compute capacity from roughly 65,000 GPUs today to more than 300,000, placing it among the world’s largest AI infrastructure hubs outside the United States.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks from the podium during the 25th-anniversary event for the company’s GeForce GPU lineup, held at COEX in Seoul on October 30. (Yonhap)
Representatives from the participating companies traded early ideas on how to translate that surge in hardware into actual national capability — how to share compute, coordinate investment, and create an ecosystem that doesn’t simply house cutting-edge silicon but puts it to use.
The group agreed to meet regularly, establishing a standing coordination channel that reflects both the complexity of the project and the urgency with which the government and industry hope to act.
What emerges from this “GPU plan,” as it is already being called, could help determine whether South Korea becomes a country that merely consumes AI or one that helps shape its future — an ambition that, for now at least, is backed by an unusually large amount of computational muscle.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
