[비즈한국] Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won stood side by side at the SK headquarters in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on the 8th to officially announce the expansion of their companies' strategic partnership. This marks their fifth meeting in eight days. The two began their series of meetings at the Nvidia-hosted GTC developer conference in Taiwan on the 1st and 2nd, followed by further discussions on the 5th and 7th during Huang's visit to Korea.
The core keywords of this partnership, as defined by CEO Huang himself, are "multiyear," "multiplatform," and "multitechnology." The main objective is to move beyond the existing memory-focused cooperation with SK Hynix and significantly expand the scope of collaboration to include the entire SK Group, covering AI infrastructure construction, the sharing of research and development (R&D) roadmaps, and even physical AI and robotics.
During the morning briefing, CEO Huang announced that all four of the recently unveiled new products will feature SK Hynix memory. These include the next-generation AI supercomputer 'Vera Rubin' and 'Grace Blackwell', the 'RTX Spark' AI PC developed jointly with Microsoft, and the robotics-specific processor 'Jetson Thor'. He explained, "Through these four projects, we are expanding our partnership from AI supercomputers to CPUs, PCs, and robotics."
Regarding the duration of the partnership, he mentioned "over two years" and added, "There are opportunities to extend it further." CEO Huang emphasized, "SK Hynix has been Nvidia's largest memory partner, and it will continue to be so. Nvidia has already been purchasing billions of dollars worth of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) from SK Hynix annually, and this scale is set to increase significantly."
Furthermore, he projected that next year alone, the two product families—Vera Rubin and Grace Blackwell—would generate a sales value of $1 trillion (approximately 1,550 trillion KRW) in Nvidia's total revenue. He added, "To achieve the $1 trillion scale, we need massive quantities of chips, interconnects (circuits connecting chips), memory, wafers, and packaging. SK Hynix will be at the center of that."
Cooperation with SK Telecom017670 is also a major pillar of this partnership. SK Telecom CEO Ryu Young-sang, who sat with CEO Huang and Chairman Chey during their 'Kkanbu (buddy) meeting' in Gangnam-gu, Seoul, on the 6th, was also present at the briefing. The two companies plan to pursue 'Full-Stack AI Cloud' (an AI service encompassing everything from hardware to software) cooperation based on the Nvidia 'DSX Platform' (a software and infrastructure integration platform that defines the entire AI factory from chips to data center operations).
The plan also includes expanding 'AI Factories'—data centers specialized for AI computation—to the gigawatt (GW) scale, with initial operations in South Korea starting in 2027 and expanding the infrastructure across Asia. CEO Huang remarked on the significance, saying, "The most advanced AI technology will be produced at SK Hynix fabs, and it will be used by both SK Telecom and SK Hynix. This partnership is a structure where we create the technology and directly utilize it simultaneously."
Chairman Chey highlighted two major changes in the nature of this collaboration: building AI factories together with Nvidia and sharing R&D roadmaps. To respond to the rising global demand for AI factories, the two companies plan to share R&D roadmaps and strengthen their partnership through custom memory development. Chairman Chey explained, "If previous cooperation was centered on memory between SK Hynix and Nvidia, this is raising the partnership to a new level involving the entire SK Group and Nvidia."
Regarding the outlook for the AI industry, CEO Huang remained an optimist. When asked about the recent Nasdaq plunge amid talk of an AI bubble, he firmly replied, "You should be happy because you can buy stocks cheaper. It is an absolute fact that the future of AI is very bright." He predicted, "AI will become the infrastructure for every country, every company, and every industry in the world, just like the internet. We are at the starting point of the AI revolution, and infrastructure construction will continue for the next 10 years, or perhaps even longer."
He also highly evaluated South Korea's AI capabilities. CEO Huang stated, "The combination of semiconductors, heavy industry, and AI software capabilities creates the optimal environment for the era of Physical AI (technology that incorporates AI into physical environments like robots and manufacturing). Being the world's 3rd largest AI contributor, following the U.S. and China, is an amazing achievement." However, he noted, "While Korea has a world-class AI ecosystem, it still lacks AI infrastructure," and announced that they would build essential infrastructure that university labs and startups can utilize through the partnership with SK Telecom.
The event was attended by key executives including Chairman Chey, CEO Ryu, and SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-jung from the SK side, and CEO Huang, along with Senior Director of Omniverse and Robotics business Madison Huang, and Senior Vice President Jeff Fisher from the Nvidia side.