SK Group, a major South Korean conglomerate spanning semiconductors, telecommunications, and energy, is significantly expanding its strategic partnership with NVIDIA, a global leader in GPUs and AI computing platforms. The expanded collaboration involves an investment exceeding $500 billion, aimed at strengthening global AI infrastructure and advancing next-generation AI memory technologies.

According to SK Group's official press release, the two companies formalized the agreement by signing Letters of Intent. The partnership encompasses the development of large-scale AI factories powered by NVIDIA's next-generation computing technologies, with a focus on reinforcing the AI ecosystem across South Korea and the broader Asia-Pacific region. SK hynix has been a primary supplier of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to NVIDIA, and this agreement deepens a supply relationship that has become increasingly central to the global AI hardware supply chain, where HBM capacity has been a persistent bottleneck for GPU production.

🤝 @SKhynix and @NVIDIA are taking their AI memory partnership to the next level. As part of a $500B+ strategic partnership, SK hynix will advance next-generation AI memory, including #HBM , to meet growing global AI demand. 🔗 #SKhynix #NVIDIA #AIMemory — SK hynix (@SKhynix) July 25, 2026

Asia-Pacific AI Expansion

The partnership reflects growing demand for high-performance computing capabilities to support large language models, agentic AI, physical AI systems, and enterprise AI applications. A key component of the initiative is SK Telecom's plan to develop a 1-gigawatt AI Cloud within South Korea. The project will leverage NVIDIA's DSX AI Factory platform and accelerate computing workloads using NVIDIA's Vera Rubin architecture.

NVIDIA's DSX architecture integrates advanced computing devices, networking, collaboration technologies, and software into a unified AI factory platform. By combining these technologies, the two companies aim to deliver high-performance AI infrastructure while reducing computing costs and improving energy efficiency.

The collaboration is expected to accelerate autonomous AI projects, cloud-native AI services, and enterprise-scale AI deployments throughout the Asia-Pacific region. It also represents a significant step toward securing a stable supply of advanced memory products, extending the existing technical cooperation between the two firms to jointly develop and optimize HBM solutions for increasingly demanding AI workloads. The agreement comes as multiple governments across Asia-Pacific—including Japan, Singapore, and India—have launched national AI infrastructure initiatives, placing South Korea's effort within a broader regional push to build domestic AI computing capacity.

Positioning South Korea as a Global AI Innovation Hub

Jensen Huang, CEO and founder of NVIDIA, stated: "Together with SK Telecom and SK hynix, we are building a new generation of AI factories that will power Korea's next wave of growth."

Chey Tae-won, SK Group Chairman, added: "By leveraging SK hynix's AI memory and SK Telecom's AI infrastructure capabilities, SK will collaborate with NVIDIA to build a world-class AI factory, helping Korea transcend its role as a leading adopter of AI and become a global hub that drives AI innovation."