By Kang Yoon-seung
SEOUL, Oct. 31 (Yonhap) — SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won met with Nvidia Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jensen Huang on Friday to discuss ways to harness artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in the manufacturing sector, the South Korean conglomerate said.
The two business leaders met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in the southeastern city of Gyeongju, sharing ideas on ways to use the U.S. tech giant’s graphics processing units (GPUs) to establish an AI cloud system for the manufacturing industry.
The discussion came after Nvidia unveiled its plan to deploy up to 260,000 GPUs in South Korea in partnership with the government and major companies, including SK Group.
“SK Group’s collaboration with Nvidia is making AI the driving force for innovation across Korea’s industrial landscape,” Chey was quoted as telling Huang.
“Leveraging the Nvidia AI Factory, SK Group will establish a next-generation infrastructure to power advances in memory, robotics, digital twins and intelligent AI agents,” the SK chief added.
Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang speaks during a meeting with President Lee Jae Myung in the southeastern city of Gyeongju on Oct. 31, 2025. (Yonhap)
In response, Huang described SK Group as a “vital memory technology partner” for Nvidia, which helps the U.S. giant produce the world’s most advanced GPU computing platforms.
“We are delighted to partner with SK to build its AI foundation on Nvidia accelerated computing and software, creating AI factories that will transform SK and energize Korea’s AI ecosystem,” Huang said, according to SK Group.
In detail, SK Group said it plans to build what it calls a manufacturing AI cloud powered by Nvidia’s Omniverse platform, a virtual simulation-based digital twin platform that simulates the manufacturing process online.
“As global manufacturing competitiveness hinges on early defect detection, timely maintenance and data-driven productivity improvements, adoption of Omniverse by Korean startups and manufacturing firms is expected to further strengthen Korea’s manufacturing AI capabilities,” the group said.
In addition, SK Group said it will build an AI factory with Nvidia in South Korea utilizing 50,000 units of the U.S. company’s GPUs.
“Through its collaboration with Nvidia, SK Group aims to become an industrial AI service provider equipped with digital twin technology, robotics, large language model training and inference, and advanced 3D simulation capabilities,” it added.
On the sidelines of the meeting, South Korea’s top mobile carrier SK Telecom Co. signed a memorandum of understanding with Nvidia to carry out joint research on AI mobile network technologies.
SK Telecom will join hands with Nvidia, Samsung Electronics and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute to develop AI-RAN technologies, considered a core aspect of the sixth-generation mobile network.
colin@yna.co.kr
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