Home to cutting-edge sovereign AI infrastructure and robotics innovators, as well as one of the world’s most passionate gaming communities, South Korea is one of the world’s centers of AI. NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang is in Seoul this week to meet the partners and builders behind that work.
Monday, June 8, 10:00 a.m. PT
From Industrial Leadership to Gaming and AI: Go Korea!
“Thank you for your friendship. Thank you for your partnership. Go Korea!” NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said, addressing a reception that brought together roughly 200 partners from every part of the Korea AI ecosystem, corresponding to the five‑layer cake.
“I’m very happy to be here with all of you. This is Korea’s ecosystem,” Huang said. “This is the industrial base. This is the venture investors. This is the young entrepreneurs. We brought them all together. Frankly, next year I hope to see this be 10 times larger — not two times larger, 10 times larger.”
Hosted at the Young Bin Gwan at The Shilla Seoul, the gathering rounded out Huang’s trip, which spotlighted Korea’s place at the intersection of gaming, industry and AI, and the many partnerships shaping what comes next.
Off of a series of surprise visits to PC bangs and the announcement a week earlier of NVIDIA RTX Spark — a new superchip reinventing Windows PCs — Huang kicked off remarks on gaming and esports, tracing NVIDIA’s origins and Korea’s tech roots back to its earliest bet on computer graphics.
“Almost all great technology started out as toys,” he said. “And we realized that computer games were complicated, because they were trying to reproduce reality. Reproducing reality requires extraordinary algorithms, extraordinary computing technology. And we dreamed from that beginning, we could someday be one of the world’s most important technology companies. That was our dream. That was 33 years ago.”
That dream has “revolutionized the gaming industry,” Huang said. “It transformed an entire generation. It made video games something fun into something worthy to endeavor, to be great at. Now, Korea is the world leader in esports.”
Huang described Korea also as a “world-class leader in heavy industries” — and now in AI.
“Now we’re sitting in a country where you are world-class at manufacturing, world-class at electronics, world-class at software — and you are now world-class at AI.”
The gathering capped off a week of meetings with partners — including LG Group, SK Group, Hyundai Motor Group, Naver and Doosan — expanding collaborations that support the nation’s AI infrastructure and setting the stage for advancements in agentic AI, physical AI and beyond.
“You have everything that it takes,” he told the cheering crowd. “We are here to partner with you. I’m here to partner with you.”
Monday, June 8, 12:00 a.m. PT
Building AI Factories at Gigawatt Scale in Korea
NAVER is building a full-stack NVIDIA AI factory in Korea with NVIDIA DSX.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang met with NAVER founder and chairman Haejin Lee while in Korea as NAVER plans to expand its GAK Sejong AI data center to 55 megawatts and beyond to gigawatt scale.
As useful AI increasingly moves to production, AI factories are becoming critical infrastructure for training, post-training and inference. Built with the NVIDIA DSX platform with NVIDIA accelerated computing, NAVER’s AI factories will give Korea a sovereign foundation to create intelligence for enterprises, manufacturers, government organizations and AI cloud customers.
NAVER is also the first Korean company to participate in the NVIDIA Nemotron Coalition, contributing to open model development across pretraining, post-training and reinforcement learning to accelerate global AI innovation. It plans to launch an AI Agent Platform in Korea in the second half of the year, powered by NVIDIA NemoClaw blueprints.
Sunday, June 7, 11:00 p.m. PT
NVIDIA and Hyundai Motor Group
AI is changing how vehicles, factories and robots are built.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang met with Hyundai Motor Group leadership to discuss NVIDIA and HMG’s work across mobility and physical AI.
Sunday, June 7, 9:00 p.m. PT
Build-a-Claw at Seoul National University
The next generation of AI builders brought the energy.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang stopped by Seoul National University for a Build-a-Claw pop-up, packed with students, developers and AI researchers building intelligent agents from the ground up.
“The entire industry, the entire world is changing. Everyone is in the same starting line just like you,” Huang told the crowd. “It’s a great opportunity for you to shape this technology, to apply this technology. It’s brand new technology, so you are the expert.”
Sunday, June 7, 8:00 p.m. PT
NVIDIA and LG Expand Collaboration
Today, NVIDIA and LG Group announced plans to build an AI factory to support LG’s robotics, autonomous driving, data center technologies and GPU cloud services.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang met with LG Group chairman Koo Kwang-mo while in Korea as the companies expand their AI collaboration.
The combination of LG’s production technology data and know-how from global manufacturing sites with NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure and digital twin technologies will help enhance AI-driven manufacturing AI competitiveness. The two companies will collaborate to build an autonomous manufacturing ecosystem in which the entire process — from raw material procurement to production, logistics and customer delivery — is connected in real time through data and AI, and establish it as a new global smart factory standard.
Sunday, June 7, 7:30 p.m. PT
NVIDIA and SK Partnership
Speaking with reporters in Seoul, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won outlined an expanded AI partnership. This builds on a multiyear partnership announced today to codevelop memory for four NVIDIA platforms spanning AI infrastructure, personal AI and physical AI.
NVIDIA’s work with SK also extends to AI infrastructure. SK Telecom plans to build a gigawatt-scale AI Cloud in Korea using the NVIDIA DSX platform to support sovereign, physical and agentic AI services.
Sunday, June 6, 10 a.m. PT
First Pitch for the Doosan Bears
Sunday at Jamsil Stadium in Seoul, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang threw out the first pitch for the mighty Doosan Bears, joined by Doosan Group chairman Park Jeong-won on the field.
The event underscored the two companies’ collaboration, which is expanding to advance new opportunities across physical AI, robotics and AI factory infrastructure, spanning Doosan Robotics, Doosan Bobcat, Doosan Enerbility and Doosan Corporation Electro-Materials BG.
The collaboration will bring together NVIDIA’s full-stack accelerated computing platforms with Doosan Group’s capabilities in industrial automation, power generation and advanced electronics materials to support next-generation AI infrastructure.
Saturday, June 6, 11 p.m. PT
NVIDIA, KRAFTON, NC and Reigning ‘League of Legends’ Champions T1 Celebrate RTX Spark at Korea’s PC Bangs
On Friday in Seoul, Huang headed to T1 Base Camp — a PC bang owned by T1, one of Korea’s top esports teams. There, he met with T1’s reigning League of Legends World Champion team, including six-time World Champion Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok to unveil RTX Spark.
Today, Huang headed to Seoul’s Gangnam district, where he surprised PC-bang gamers with a first look at RTX Spark with KRAFTON and NC.
At the first stop, Optimum Zone PC, Huang and KRAFTON Chairman Byung-gyu Chang showcased PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and Subnautica 2 on RTX Spark to a captivated crowd of gamers.
Next, Huang stopped at another PC bang, Portal PC, where he showcased NC’s CINDER CITY and AION 2 on RTX Spark, with support from Taekjin Kim, co-CEO of NC.
Friday, June 9, 8:00 a.m. PT
KBBQ With Naver, LG Group, SK Group Execs
To shouts of “Welcome to Korea” from the crowd gathered outside on a Friday night, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang visited Seoul’s popular Hongdae district for a sit-down with the heads of some of Korea’s leading technology companies over a meal of Korean BBQ.
Huang joined SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won, LG Group chairman Koo Kwang-mo and Naver chairman Lee Hae-jin for a casual night filled with food and plenty of toasts. “Go Korea, go SK, go LG, go Naver,” Huang said with his glass raised.
Twice during the dinner, Huang stepped outside to pass out snacks to the crowds gathered hoping for a glimpse of the tech leaders inside.
Fittingly, Huang and Chey handed out “HBM Chips,” to cheers from the crowd. HBM references SK Hynix’s leading “high-bandwidth memory,” but in the case of the snack, HBM stands for “honey banana mat (flavor).” Get it?
Thursday, June 4, 10:30 p.m. PT
Touchdown in Seoul
On the heels of GTC Taipei at COMPUTEX, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang touched down in Seoul Friday afternoon, greeted by fans and media as his visit got underway.
A key focus of the trip, Huang said: to align the AI supply chain ahead of a busy second half of the year.
“We have a very significant, very large AI infrastructure buildout — already a very successful first half,” Huang told media. “Grace Blackwell, our system, is doing very well, and Vera Rubin is in full production — so we are going to be very busy the second half [of the year].”
Huang also touched on the huge potential for robotics and physical AI in Korea.
“Robotics is going to be the next major sector here in Korea — this is a great opportunity for Korea to invest in AI,” he said.
From memory manufacturing to robotics and gaming, Huang is off to a packed schedule with partners — but not without leaving time to enjoy some Korean fried chicken and BBQ. “It’s all delicious,” Huang said.
