Chey Tae-won, chairman of SK Group and the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said on the 1st that "the new collaboration with Nvidia is another important leap to deliver tangible benefits from artificial intelligence (AI)."
On the same day, Chey posted on his social media (SNS) LinkedIn a message saying that "a new AI cloud build partnership for manufacturing in Korea has been realized through cooperation between Nvidia and SK."
SK Group said the previous day it would bring in 50,000 of Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) to build an "AI factory," and would use the manufacturing AI platform Omniverse to establish a "manufacturing AI cloud."
The crux is to contribute to boosting the productivity and efficiency of Korea's manufacturing ecosystem based on AI.
Chey said, "Over the past few years, I have discussed with Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive officer (CEO), how we can work together to drive meaningful change through AI," adding, "The technologies of Nvidia and SK hynix have pioneered AI supercomputers."
SK hynix is a key partner supplying High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to Nvidia.
Chey said, "I believe this effort will have a global impact," adding, "Korea is small in size but is a highly advanced manufacturing hub, ideally positioned as a testbed (experimental field) for AI manufacturing. A model that works successfully here could become a new standard for manufacturers around the world."
Huang also emphasized the importance of the Korean market and the partnership with SK.
Visiting Korea for the first time in 15 years, Huang said at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Gyeongju, "Korea has software, manufacturing and AI capabilities," adding, "We seek to build an AI ecosystem in Korea. Korea will now become an AI sovereign nation, an AI frontier."