U.S. chip titan Nvidia on June 8 announced a large-scale data center construction project in South Korea with SK Telecom, among a raft of other business deals in the country.
Nvidia, the world's most valuable company, also said it would work with chipmaker SK hynix to develop the advanced memory components that help run AI systems and are currently in short supply.
The tie-ups were unveiled after CEO Jensen Huang spent the weekend eating barbecue in Seoul with the country's tech leaders and appearing on a popular TV show.
SK Telecom and Nvidia plan "to build a gigawatt-scale AI Cloud in Korea... with the first AI factory planned to come online in 2027", a joint statement said.
The project "will support sovereign, physical and agentic AI services for enterprises and industries across Korea, with the vision to expand to greater Asia regions", it added.
No figure was given for how much the two companies will invest in the data centers.
SK Telecom operates under the same parent company, SK Group, as SK hynix, which on June 8 announced a "multi-year technology partnership" for memory chips with Nvidia.
As governments and companies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, Nvidia's value has topped $5 trillion, more than the gross domestic product of Japan or India.
The race to build AI data centers has created a global shortage of memory chips, sending profits skyrocking for manufacturers like SK hynix and rival Samsung Electronics.
Nvidia last week unveiled a powerful laptop chip for Windows machines, staking its claim in the market for next-generation consumer PCs integrated with AI.
