Nvidia is positioning Korea as a key global hub for its industrial artificial intelligence (AI) simulation platform Omniverse and strengthening cooperation with related companies. The strategy is to verify physical AI technologies through digital twins and other tools in Korea, which has a world-class manufacturing base spanning semiconductors, automobiles, electronics and shipbuilding, and then spread them to global industrial sites. The industry expects that the visit to Korea by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, scheduled for the fifth of this month, will also focus on expanding the Omniverse ecosystem beyond the supply of graphics processing units (GPUs).
According to the information technology (IT) industry on Sunday, Huang introduced SK Telecom as a key cooperation partner in Nvidia's manufacturing physical AI field during his keynote address at "GTC Taipei 2026," held in Taipei, Taiwan.
The keynote video unveiled a case in which SK Telecom used Nvidia's Omniverse to introduce digital twin technology into SK hynix's (000660) semiconductor manufacturing process. As part of SK hynix's ongoing "Autonomous Factory 2030" initiative, SK Telecom used Nvidia Omniverse to implement a digital twin of a semiconductor fab and conduct proof of concept (PoC). SK Telecom recently developed "agentic digital twin modeling" technology based on Nvidia Omniverse. The technology automates and applies intelligence to processing equipment, spatial structures and operational data at manufacturing sites in line with a digital twin environment. Nvidia introduced this as a representative cooperation case in the manufacturing physical AI field.
As the SK Telecom case demonstrated, the industry expects Huang's visit to Korea to serve as an occasion to move a step beyond the "GPU alliance" known from last year's "gganbu meeting" and to begin expanding the Omniverse-based digital twin and physical AI ecosystem in earnest.
Omniverse-related activities are also expected to be prominent during Huang's visit to Korea this month. Hyundai Motor Group, LG Electronics (066570), Naver and Doosan, all currently mentioned as possible meeting partners, are companies that have either already established cooperative relationships with Nvidia in the fields of digital twins or robotics or are pursuing related cooperation.
In particular, the companies currently mentioned as possible meeting partners largely overlap with those visited by Madison Huang, Nvidia's senior director of product marketing for Omniverse and robotics, who came to Korea in April this year. Huang, the eldest daughter of the CEO, visited LG Electronics, Doosan Robotics (454910) and Naver at the time, and was also reported to have made contact with officials from Hyundai Motor Group, Samsung Electronics (005930) and SK Group. Given the activities of senior director Huang, who oversees the Omniverse and robotics businesses, the industry expects the CEO's visit to Korea to also place weight on plans to expand the digital twin and physical AI ecosystem, beyond GPU supply or AI infrastructure cooperation.
In Nvidia's industrial AI strategy, Omniverse serves as a key gateway. Omniverse is an industrial three-dimensional (3D) simulation platform that implements real-world physical systems such as factories, robots, autonomous vehicles and logistics centers in virtual space, enabling AI to be trained, verified and operated. Building on this, Nvidia is constructing a physical AI ecosystem that develops, trains and verifies robots and autonomous systems by linking its robot development platform "Isaac" and its world foundation model for physical AI, "Cosmos." The industry views Nvidia as seeking to expand its cooperation with Korean companies beyond simple digital twin construction into robotics and autonomous manufacturing. Analysts say a structure is forming in which Korean companies participate across Nvidia's overall physical AI strategy of implementing real-world environments with Omniverse, training robots and autonomous systems with Isaac, and generating and verifying various physical environments with Cosmos.
"Nvidia's core business is GPU supply, but there are not many countries and companies worldwide that can receive, operate and expand on this," an industry official said. "Korea, which has AI infrastructure and world-class manufacturing capabilities, is the optimal market for Nvidia to implement its physical AI strategy." He added, "Nvidia appears to have a strategy of building an Omniverse-based physical AI ecosystem together with Korean companies and then spreading it as a standard model for global manufacturing."
