Nvidia presented its fiscal year 2027 first-quarter (Feb.–Apr. 2026) revenue outlook at $78 billion (about 111.345 trillion won) and cited physical AI (artificial intelligence embedded in robots and devices that perceives physical space and makes its own judgments) as a future growth engine. Revenue in the previous quarter hit an all-time high of $68.13 billion (about 97.4327 trillion won), up 73% from a year earlier, and the company said it can achieve even better results this year.
After the announcement, LG Electronics drew attention in Korea's stock market. Shares of LG Electronics jumped 10.05% to close at 146,700 won on the 26th, when Nvidia released its results, marking a new 52-week high. Why did LG Electronics' stock react to Nvidia's earnings growth?
The direct reason is that Nvidia named LG Electronics as one of its key partners in physical AI. Colette Kress, Nvidia's chief financial officer (CFO), said on the earnings conference call, "The era of physical AI has already arrived and contributed more than $6 billion (about 8.6 trillion won) to revenue," introducing LG Electronics and Hyundai Motor Group's Boston Dynamics as "key partnership cases."
With a market capitalization of 6,441 trillion won, Nvidia, the "most valuable company in the world," gave a "shout-out" (Shout out, the act of giving a positive assessment of a specific group in a public setting) to LG Electronics, which stoked investor sentiment. So what kind of collaboration led Nvidia to mention LG Electronics in its earnings release?
◇ LG Electronics–Nvidia partnership made official in Oct. last year… bearing fruit with "Cloid"
The products Nvidia mentioned when introducing LG Electronics were Cosmos and Isaac GR00T. Cosmos is a platform that accelerates the development of physical AI such as Autonomous Driving vehicles and robots, and Isaac GR00T is a reasoning AI foundation model that helps a Humanoid Robot think and act like a person and understand its environment.
Collaboration between LG Electronics and Nvidia was officially announced in Oct. last year. At the time, LG Electronics said it had adopted Isaac GR00T and was developing its own physical AI model. The result of the partnership was unveiled as the home robot "LG Cloid" at CES 2026, the world's largest IT exhibition held in Jan. Cloid, which has five fingers, is a Humanoid Robot designed to ease users' household burdens. Cloid also appeared on the CES 2026 keynote stage of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, drawing market attention.
LG Electronics plans to begin field validation of the robot starting next year. It is currently training Cloid in the lab to respond appropriately to various situations, and Nvidia's robot development platform is being used for this as well.
The two companies' collaboration is not limited to robotics. LG Electronics is advancing its smart factory solutions by combining the manufacturing and production data accumulated over 60 years with Nvidia's digital twin technology (product name Omniverse). A digital twin is a concept that precisely implements the real world in a digital space to run simulations and more. LG Electronics is building a virtual space that covers down to the level of individual factory equipment. This allows AI to verify safety and other factors in the virtual space before actual equipment is installed, and it can also streamline logistics operations and maintenance. Nvidia's AI chip "Blackwell" is used for this analysis.
LG Electronics is effectively a major Nvidia customer in robotics and digital twins. Conversely, LG Electronics may also supply products to Nvidia. LG Electronics is currently undergoing related certification procedures to supply Nvidia with "coolant distribution units" (CDUs), a core element of liquid cooling used to manage heat in AI data centers.
◇ LG Electronics bets on robots as a future growth driver
Analysts say LG Electronics naming robots as a future growth business and moving to secure related technologies is also powering the recent share-price gains. Unveiling Cloid at CES 2026, LG Electronics also introduced its actuator brand for robots, "Actuator AXIUM." An actuator is a module that combines ▲ a motor that creates rotational force ▲ a driver that controls electrical signals ▲ and a reducer that adjusts speed, serving as the "joints of a robot." The strategy is to establish a new revenue source by supplying the key components that account for the largest share of robot manufacturing costs.
Ahead of this year's regular shareholders meeting, LG Electronics also, for the first time, specified "home robots and actuator business, a core robot component" in the outline of its home appliances (HS) business unit. In the first half of last year, it exercised a call option to raise its equity stake in Bear Robotics to 51%, securing management control, among other aggressive moves to enter the robot market.
Park Kang-ho, an analyst at Daishin Securities, said of LG Electronics, "It is expanding new growth platforms such as physical AI and Robotics," adding, "The competitiveness of the AI Exaone is diversifying its portfolio from household robots to industrial robots." He also analyzed, "ROBOTIS (actuators), Robostar (industrial multi-joint robots and smart factories), and Bear Robotics, in which it has invested equity, are expected to create synergy across LG Electronics' overall portfolio."
Meanwhile, at the LG Group level, collaboration with Nvidia is also strengthening. LG AI Research is continuously boosting the performance of its in-house model "EXAONE" using Nvidia's AI chips and platforms. LG Display is also enhancing its own digital twin technology with Nvidia's AI platform to improve the efficiency of its organic light-emitting diode (OLED) process development. An LG Electronics official said, "We will continue to strengthen our global competitiveness in next-generation technology areas such as physical AI and digital twins."