NVIDIA and SK Telecom announced plans to build a gigawatt-scale AI Cloud in Korea using the NVIDIA DSX platform, with the first AI factory expected to come online in 2027. The initiative is designed to provide large-scale AI infrastructure capable of supporting sovereign, physical, and agentic AI services for enterprises and industries across Korea, with a long-term vision of expanding throughout Asia.
The AI Cloud will consist of AI factories that generate tokens, the fundamental units of AI intelligence, from data. Unlike traditional cloud providers that offer general-purpose computing services, AI Clouds are optimized for GPU-powered AI workloads, including model training, inference, and agentic AI applications.
Built on the NVIDIA DSX full-stack reference architecture, the platform combines hardware, software, and operational technologies designed to maximize energy efficiency while minimizing token production costs. The infrastructure will leverage SK Telecom’s expertise in telecommunications networks, data centers, and enterprise services to deliver AI capabilities across a wide range of industries.
The project reflects Korea’s growing role as a leader in AI adoption and industrial innovation. The country is home to globally competitive companies in telecommunications, semiconductors, manufacturing, robotics, mobility, and consumer technology, sectors where AI is increasingly moving into production environments.
The new AI Cloud also builds on SK Telecom’s recent AI initiatives. At GTC Taipei, the company showcased work involving digital twins for semiconductor manufacturing facilities using NVIDIA Omniverse technologies. Earlier this year, SK Telecom announced it had adopted open-source NVIDIA Nemotron datasets to train its A.X K1 model as part of the Korean government’s Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project.
As part of the collaboration, SK Telecom will also become an NVIDIA Cloud Partner, joining a global network of providers that utilize NVIDIA’s latest AI infrastructure, software, and developer ecosystem to deliver AI cloud services.
Beyond infrastructure deployment, NVIDIA and SK Group plan to expand their partnership into research and development focused on next-generation AI factory architectures. The companies will collaborate on innovations spanning accelerated computing, memory technologies, and data center operations, while exploring opportunities to optimize full-stack AI factory performance for more scalable, resilient, and efficient AI services.
KEY QUOTES:
“Telecom networks are becoming national AI infrastructure. They connect people, companies, devices and machines, and now they can become the backbone of new AI clouds. With NVIDIA DSX, SK Telecom can build Korea’s AI cloud at scale and bring agents, enterprise and physical AI to the companies and industries that power Korea and the world.”
Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO, NVIDIA
“Through our close partnership with NVIDIA, we have now secured full-stack AI infrastructure capabilities, from chips to data center operations. We will work with NVIDIA to tackle GPU, memory and energy challenges and become a leading AI factory player shaping Asia’s AI ecosystem.”
Chey Tae-won, Chairman, SK Group
