Key Highlights

  • NVIDIA and SK Group announced a partnership worth more than 500 billion dollars spanning AI factories and memory supply.
  • SK Telecom will build a 2 gigawatt AI factory in Korea using NVIDIA's Vera Rubin platform, targeted for 2027.
  • SK hynix and NVIDIA entered a long term partnership to codevelop next generation AI memory, including HBM.
  • Samsung Electronics separately signed an estimated 200 billion dollar memorandum of understanding with Broadcom on memory and foundry technology.

A Landmark Deal Spanning Compute and Memory

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) and SK Group announced plans for a partnership worth more than 500 billion dollars to establish AI infrastructure serving surging global compute demand, with the two sides signing letters of intent covering everything from AI factory construction to AI memory supply. The agreement, announced late Friday in San Francisco, includes the construction of large scale data centers expected to come online in 2027.

As part of the collaboration, SK Telecom will build a 2 gigawatt scale AI cloud in Korea using the NVIDIA DSX platform and Vera Rubin accelerated computing, powered by SK hynix HBM4 memory. NVIDIA said it is targeting enough capacity to require 2 gigawatts of power, a scale that indicates a buildout involving hundreds of thousands of graphics processing units.

Securing Memory Supply Amid a Global AI Shortage

Beyond the AI factory buildout, SK hynix (NASDAQ:SKHY) is entering a long term AI memory partnership with NVIDIA, allowing NVIDIA to secure a stable supply of next generation AI memory while enabling SK hynix to expand its growth foundation. The two companies will codevelop and optimize next generation AI memory solutions, including high bandwidth memory, to meet demands ranging from large language model training to agentic and physical AI.

NVIDIA enterprise vice president Raj Mirpuri said the expansion includes a codevelopment opportunity on next generation SK hynix AI memory, which will help NVIDIA secure a stable HBM supply. The deal comes as NVIDIA aggressively secures memory supply amid a global shortage created by the AI boom, with SK hynix widely regarded by analysts as the leader in HBM production. In a separate but related development, Samsung Electronics signed a memorandum of understanding with Broadcom to expand collaboration across memory and foundry technologies, a deal estimated to be worth 200 billion dollars, further underscoring how memory supply has become a central battleground in the AI infrastructure race. NVIDIA also said it would invest 1 billion dollars into Naver, a Korean cloud company building data centers around NVIDIA GPUs, with 200 megawatts of capacity planned.

Balancing Execution Scale Against a Broadening Set of Global Partners

The scale of this partnership signals that massive AI infrastructure buildouts are moving beyond a handful of US hyperscalers, with foreign governments and large conglomerates increasingly involved. The deal was announced at an AI summit in San Francisco attended by South Korean officials, including President Lee Jae Myung, reflecting the strategic national interest behind the agreement.

Should the planned 2 gigawatt AI factory and associated memory supply agreements proceed on schedule toward their 2027 target, NVIDIA could secure meaningfully improved visibility into its HBM supply chain, easing a key bottleneck that has constrained GPU system production. However, execution risk remains given the scale and multi year timeline of the buildout, and continued global competition for memory supply, as evidenced by the parallel Samsung Broadcom agreement, suggests the broader AI memory market could remain tight even as new capacity comes online.

Conclusion

The NVIDIA and SK Group partnership represents one of the largest announced AI infrastructure agreements to date, combining a large scale Korean AI factory buildout with a long term memory supply and codevelopment arrangement. Whether the partnership delivers on its 2027 timeline may depend on execution across both the data center construction and memory codevelopment tracks. The parallel Samsung Broadcom agreement suggests that securing AI memory supply will likely remain a defining competitive dynamic across the industry in the years ahead.