A surprise $500 billion commitment and a planned 2 GW data center in 2027 signal South Korea’s leap toward becoming a global AI power.
On July 24, 2026, in San Francisco, the South Korean president Lee Jae Myung held an AI summit that brought together leaders of Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic and Broadcom, along with leading representatives of South Korea’s business community. The event aimed to accelerate Seoul’s ambitions to make the country a global center for artificial intelligence.
In his opening remarks, Lee stressed that South Korea should lead a new era of artificial intelligence in partnership with global technology companies.
“I would like to present a vision for the future of artificial intelligence and propose global cooperation to make it happen.”
– Lee Jae Myung
According to sources, about 150 executives, investors, researchers, and startup founders participated in the summit.
During the event, Nvidia and SK Group announced an initiative valued at over 500 billion US dollars, spanning large-scale data centers for artificial intelligence and next-generation memory.
SK Telecom plans to build a 2-gigawatt data center that will run on Vera Rubin chips and SK Hynix’s HBM4 memory. The data center is expected to be operational in 2027.
Participants and Next Steps
At the summit, leaders of Samsung Electronics (Jay Y. Lee), SK Group (Chey Tae-won), Hyundai Motor Group (Euisun Chung) and Naver (Lee Hae-jin) were also present, who joined in expanding the regional AI development partnership platform locally and beyond.
During separate meetings, Lee discussed with the leaders of Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic and Broadcom issues of collaboration and access to their technologies and resources in the global AI ecosystem.
According to attendees, the event underscored South Korea’s ambitions to become a key player in the global AI economy through partnerships with leading technology companies and the United States.
Under the agreements, Nvidia and SK Group are developing a large-scale AI project spanning data centers and next-generation memory, focusing on expanding the country’s computing power and data.
The launch of a 2-gigawatt data center using Vera Rubin chips and HBM4 memory is planned for 2027, and it will be an important step in strengthening the global AI infrastructure.
Such moves reflect South Korea’s drive to lay the foundations for one of the world’s leading AI directions through strategic partnerships and the development of digital capabilities.