First batch of Nvidia GPUs arrive in Korea as part of government’s 1,46 trillion won AI chip drive

First batch of Nvidia GPUs arrive in Korea as part of government’s 1,46 trillion won AI chip drive

Korea received its first batch of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) as part of the government’s 1.46 trillion won ($993 million) program to secure advanced AI semiconductors, the Ministry of Science and ICT said Monday.

The ministry said the shipment is part of the 13,000 GPUs that Nvidia agreed to supply this year. The units come from the 1.46 trillion won supplementary budget approved in May.

Officials aim to bring in all 13,000 units by December to support domestic research and development.

The government plans to allocate the hardware to industry, universities and public research institutes to expand access to high-performance computing. Naver Cloud, NHN Cloud and Kakao, which are working with the government to build Korea’s own AI computing infrastructure, will set up server environments and receive the remaining shipments in stages.

Cooperation with Nvidia has widened in recent months. Jensen Huang, the company’s CEO, visited Seoul in October for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit and outlined plans to provide 260,000 GPUs to the government and key Korean companies.

The ministry said it will continue regular imports as additional units become available and aims to speed up the expansion of national AI infrastructure.

To coordinate deployment, the government recently launched a GPU working group led by Second Vice Minister Ryu Je-myung of the Science Ministry and joined by Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor, SK Telecom and Naver Cloud.

The group was created to spell out how the planned 260,000 GPUs will be brought in and used, and will discuss an introduction road map and usage strategy. It will serve as a joint government-industry channel to prepare support measures for domestic AI infrastructure and policy.

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

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First batch of Nvidia GPUs arrive in Korea as part of government’s 1,46 trillion won AI chip drive, source