NVIDIA and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) are opening a joint AI research lab at KAIST’s Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI in Seoul. The lab will focus on agentic AI, starting with models built for the Korean language and local use cases.
The lab will use NVIDIA Nemotron open models and compute infrastructure sourced from local NVIDIA Cloud Partners. The total collaboration is valued at $300 million, with compute contributions of $50 million per year across an initial five-year period.
“Korea is home to leading AI researchers and is one of the world’s most advanced technology ecosystems,” said Bill Dally, chief scientist and senior vice president of research at NVIDIA. “The joint NVIDIA-KAIST research lab will provide a foundation for the next frontier of AI research to accelerate AI models and agent systems built for Korea’s industries, language and future.”
“AI research is entering a new era – one that requires frontier talent, large-scale infrastructure and deep collaboration across academia and industry,” said Hyunwoo Kim, incoming faculty member at the KAIST Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI, who will serve as head of the joint NVIDIA-KAIST lab upon joining KAIST. “Together, NVIDIA and KAIST Kim Jaechul Graduate School of AI will pursue ambitious work that helps Korea attract and retain top AI scientists while building lasting ties with NVIDIA’s global research organization.”
The lab plans to fund at least 10 KAIST researchers annually, each with an internship opportunity at NVIDIA. The company also plans to hire Korean researchers for full-time positions. KAIST is headquartered in Daejeon and conducts public research in engineering, AI, semiconductor technology, robotics, and digital humanities.
Source: KAIST
About KAIST
KAIST is a national research university based in Daejeon, South Korea. Founded in 1971, it provides education in science, engineering, technology and management. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programs through five colleges and related schools. KAIST also conducts research and manages patents, technology transfers and industry partnerships. Its work covers manufacturing, electronics, computing, mobility, health, energy and public-sector applications. The university serves students, researchers, government agencies, and companies. It operates laboratories, research centers and programs supporting entrepreneurship and commercial research. KAIST reported about 12,500 students and 1,600 faculty and staff. It also reported about 82,000 alumni across bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA, founded in 1993 and headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, designs and manufactures graphics processing units, systems on chips, networking hardware, and AI intelligence software such as CUDA. Its products serve industries including gaming, data centers, autonomous vehicles, professional visualization, robotics, health care, and energy. The company introduced the GPU in 1999 and later expanded into accelerated computing and AI infrastructure. In gaming, its GPUs support high-performance rendering, while in AI and high-performance computing, its systems provide the infrastructure for training and deploying large-scale models. NVIDIA also develops tools for robotics and autonomous driving.