Nvidia to Supply 260,000 Blackwell AI Chips to South Korea for Sovereign AI Infrastructure

Nvidia has agreed to deliver 260,000 Blackwell AI chips to South Korea as part of a broader push to expand AI computing infrastructure globally. The deal, financial terms of which remain undisclosed, aligns with South Korea's ambition to build sovereign AI capabilities, reducing reliance on foreign cloud networks.

The chips will be deployed across public and private data centers, including facilities operated by Kakao, Naver, and NHN Cloud. Samsung is also constructing an "AI factory" housing over 50,000 Nvidia GPUs, which will be used to train in-house AI models. Nvidia claims collaboration with Samsung on lithography modifications could yield 20x efficiency gains for GPU performance.

CEO Jensen Huang promoted the initiative at the APEC CEO Summit, framing Nvidia's hardware as foundational for national-scale AI systems. The MOVE underscores the strategic intersection of semiconductor supply chains and geopolitical AI competitiveness.