NVIDIA and SK Telecom are developing a gigawatt-scale AI Cloud in Korea using the NVIDIA DSX platform, with the first AI factory coming online in 2027.
SK Telecom’s AI Cloud will use NVIDIA DSX, a full-stack reference architecture covering software, hardware and operations. NVIDIA describes the platform as designed to reduce token cost and improve energy efficiency.
SK Telecom’s AI Cloud will support training, inference and agentic workloads, including sovereign, physical and enterprise AI services for companies and industries in Korea. SK Telecom also plans to extend the infrastructure model to other Asian countries. This initiative aligns with Korea’s industrial focus on AI deployment across telecommunications, memory, semiconductors, manufacturing, robotics, mobility and consumer technology.
“Telecom networks are becoming national AI infrastructure,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “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.”
“Through our close partnership with NVIDIA, we have now secured full-stack AI infrastructure capabilities, from chips to data center operations,” said Chey Tae-won, Chairman of SK Group. “We will work with NVIDIA to tackle GPU, memory and energy challenges and become a leading AI factory player shaping Asia’s AI ecosystem.”
Scaling Agentic and Physical AI
SK Telecom’s AI Cloud is designed to address demand for accelerated AI computing infrastructure.
The infrastructure builds on SK Telecom’s work in physical AI and agentic AI. At GTC Taipei, SK Telecom announced applying digital twins to SK hynix semiconductor fabs using NVIDIA Omniverse libraries, with the technology optimized for large-scale manufacturing environments.
In April, SK Telecom adopted NVIDIA Nemotron datasets to train the A.X K1 model as part of the Korean government’s Sovereign AI Foundation Model Project. As part of the collaboration, SK Telecom will become an NVIDIA Cloud Partner. Program participants use NVIDIA AI infrastructure, software and developer tools to provide AI cloud services.
DSX for AI Factory Operations
The NVIDIA DSX platform is designed for AI factories spanning NVIDIA chips, systems, software, facilities and partner technologies. The platform is intended to reduce token cost and shorten time to first production.
NVIDIA DSX MaxLPS software is designed to maximize token performance per megawatt. NVIDIA DSX OS provides an operating layer for lifecycle management, runtime consistency, health automation, resiliency and multi-tenant AI factory operations using open source, modular software.
Joint Research on AI Infrastructure
NVIDIA and SK Group also plan to pursue joint research to codevelop next-generation AI factory architecture, extending the collaboration beyond infrastructure deployment.
The companies will focus on silicon-to-grid work across accelerated computing, memory technologies and data center operations. NVIDIA and SK Group companies, including SK Telecom, will also explore projects for full-stack AI factory optimization to support more efficient, scalable and resilient AI services.
Source: NVIDIA
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.
About SK Telecom
SK Telecom is a South Korean telecommunications company based in Seoul. Founded in 1984, it provides mobile service, broadband, data services, enterprise connectivity, cloud infrastructure, and AI-related services. The company serves consumers, businesses, public agencies, and industries that need communications and digital infrastructure. SK Telecom operates wireless and fixed-line networks and supports 5G, data center, and digital service operations. Its subsidiaries support broadband, network, and enterprise services. The company serves mainly South Korea, where it reports more than 30 million mobile subscribers. It reported about 17.5 million 5G subscribers. SK Telecom had about 5,500 employees worldwide.