LG Chairman Koo Kwang-mo (left) shakes hands with Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang during a meeting at the LG Twin Towers in Yeouido, Seoul, on June 8, posing for a commemorative photo. LG
LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have formed a strategic alliance spanning robotics, AI factories and mobility. After sketching out the broad outlines of their cooperation in Seoul in June, the two sides have now finalized detailed development and demonstration timelines for AI cooperation at Nvidia’s U.S. headquarters. Observers say LG and Nvidia are moving beyond simple technology exchange or a graphics processing unit (GPU) supply relationship into a strategic alliance aimed at claiming industry standards for the era of physical AI.
LG said it signed a strategic business cooperation memorandum of understanding (MOU) at Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, California, on the 13th local time, with executives from both companies in attendance, including Chairman Koo, chief executives of major affiliates, and Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang.
The meeting came about two months after the two companies’ top executives met at LG Twin Towers in Seoul’s Yeouido district in June. Where the first meeting confirmed the possibility and direction of cooperation, this time the two sides fleshed out commercialization plans in three areas: robotics, AI factories and mobility. The companies plan to set up a joint task force to accelerate everything from research and development to on-site demonstration and commercialization.
LG and Nvidia race ahead on robots
First humanoid to be unveiled in the first quarter of next year
LG’s humanoid robot “Cloid” waves in greeting at the “Physical AI Leading Technology Development Project Kickoff Report” held at LG Science Park in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, on the afternoon of the 9th. Reporter Jang Hyung-im
The first area of the LG-Nvidia strategic alliance to yield visible results will be humanoid robots. Targeting an unveiling in the first quarter of next year, LG is developing a bipedal humanoid reference robot based on Nvidia’s humanoid foundation model, Isaac GR00T.
The robot will use Nvidia’s high-performance robotics computing platform, Jetson Thor, as its brain, while drawing together affiliate technologies including actuators from LG Electronics, sensors from LG Innotek and batteries from LG Energy Solution. Within this year, LG will also deploy a wheel-based version of its CLOiD robot on a washing-machine production line at its plant in Tennessee for demonstration in a real manufacturing environment.
At the core of the cooperation is the goal of pooling the two companies’ capabilities to claim an early lead in the global physical AI market. The plan is to combine LG’s manufacturing sites and component technologies with Nvidia’s AI platform to create references validated on industrial sites, then spread them as global standards. Data accumulated on the manufacturing floor will also be used to advance the robot foundation model LG is developing in-house.
One LG joins Nvidia’s DSX
Targeting the global AI factory market together
LG Electronics’ home AI robot “Cloid.” Photo courtesy of LG Electronics
Nvidia’s Rubin GPU. Yonhap News
In the AI factory area, the capabilities of LG affiliates are brought together. An Nvidia AI factory is a next-generation AI infrastructure and operating model that goes beyond a conventional data center, which simply stores data, to mass-produce “tokens” — the core output of AI — and intelligence. Just as a factory processes raw materials into products, an AI factory produces, through learning and inference from data, the AI intelligence used in actual business.
To claim an early lead in the global AI factory market, the two companies will combine Nvidia’s DSX architecture with LG Electronics’ cooling technology, LG Energy Solution’s batteries, the design and operation capabilities of LG CNS and LG Uplus, and LS’s power solutions.
Going further, LG will build a reference site in the first half of next year to validate cooling, power and IT technologies based on Nvidia’s next-generation AI platform, Vera Rubin. In the first half of 2028, it plans to expand this into an 80-megawatt (MW) AI factory in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province.
Through this, LG’s strategy is to validate its own AI infrastructure capabilities while proposing a “One LG” package to global Big Tech firms in the future, strengthening its competitiveness in winning AI data center contracts.
LG Chairman Koo Kwang-mo (left) and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shake hands during a meeting at the LG Twin Towers in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul, on June 8. Yonhap News
Auto electronics move beyond IVI to autonomous driving
LG and Nvidia form one team in mobility, too
In mobility, the companies will combine Nvidia’s Drive Hyperion with LG’s in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) and software capabilities to develop a high-performance computing platform for the next generation of AI-defined vehicles (AIDVs).
Using Nvidia’s AI-based autonomous driving technology and its automotive computing platform, LG will expand its auto electronics business capabilities, previously centered on IVI, into the autonomous driving domain. The strategy is to offer global automakers (OEMs) next-generation vehicle solutions that integrate autonomous driving functions with in-vehicle AI services, securing a new growth engine in the mobility market.
Business circles see the MOU as advancing the LG-Nvidia relationship a step further into that of “joint business partners.” Under the arrangement, Nvidia provides the brains and platform of AI, and LG implements them in real-world industries such as factories, robots and cars.
In particular, as the “One LG” strategy Koo has pursued combines with Nvidia’s physical AI ecosystem, observers say LG has laid a foundation to broaden its scope beyond home appliances and auto electronics into an industrial infrastructure provider for the AI era.
“As the two companies’ collaboration gains speed, the tasks we will work on together in AI factories, physical AI and mobility have become clear,” Koo stressed. “Through building industry-leading references, we will accelerate the spread of AI.”
Huang said, “The most important opportunity that physical AI offers lies in giving every machine the ability to understand and reason about the real world and to act safely alongside people,” adding that “this will transform our daily lives anew, from homes to factory floors to roads.” He continued, “Building on years of cooperation, LG and Nvidia are combining LG’s leadership in product engineering and manufacturing with Nvidia’s technology to bring forward a new era of robots, AI factories and autonomous vehicles.”