President Lee Jae-myung met with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the 24th and said, "Thanks to your smooth supply of graphics processing units (GPUs), we are changing really quickly even in an unprepared state." Huang, who met President Lee on the occasion of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit last October, had promised to supply 260,000 Nvidia GPUs. During President Lee's current visit to the United States, Nvidia also signaled it would announce a $500 billion business partnership with SK Group.
President Lee held an individual meeting with CEO Huang at a hotel in downtown San Francisco that day. After mentioning the three mega-projects recently announced, he said, "We are preparing a new society and a new nation centered on artificial intelligence (AI)," and stressed, "I hope CEO Jensen Huang will continue to play a major role." In response, CEO Huang said, "SK Group and Nvidia will announce a business partnership between the two companies," adding, "The scale amounts to $500 billion."
Huang then drew attention by successively introducing the potential for investment and collaboration with Korean companies. "SK hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Nvidia are pursuing a partnership on chip design and memory design. We are also making a large-scale investment in Naver," Huang said. He added, "Naver is Korea's leading cloud company, and through this partnership, we will support not only its expansion in Korea but also its global expansion."
Huang also said, "Through a partnership with Hyundai, we plan to jointly develop self-driving Genesis vehicles and also work together on robotics," adding, "With LG, we are jointly developing power systems and also developing systems that can be used in factories and homes."
Huang said, "We are launching an AI Frontier Lab in Korea," and announced, "Nvidia's leading AI researchers plan to relocate from California to Korea." He also explained, "We plan to cooperate with KAIST to build Korea AI," adding, "We have a plan to develop a Korean LLM in Korea, for Korea."
President Lee said, "This is just the beginning," and added, "When it comes to artificial intelligence, and when it comes to the realization of artificial intelligence, Korea is determined to become the most advanced country in the world." He continued, "Nvidia and our CEO Huang have already played a truly major role in helping Korea enter the golden age of artificial intelligence, and I believe and expect that you will play an even more central role going forward."
CEO Huang praised the achievements and determination of the Korean people and partner companies, saying, "The energy I could feel in Korea, from fried chicken to samgyeopsal, was truly amazing."
