Jensen Huang's 'Gift Package': Was the Real Prize Hidden Inside?

[Anchor]

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has concluded his whirlwind visit to South Korea. The surprise gift he unveiled during meetings with major domestic companies was the joint construction of 'AI Factories,' the next generation of artificial intelligence data centers. While this presents a clear opportunity for us, there are also aspects that warrant caution.

Reporter Jeong Seong-jin has the story.

[Reporter]

From SK, LG, and Hyundai Motor to Naver.

Jensen Huang spent today, June 8, visiting major domestic companies one after another from early in the morning to build an 'AI alliance.'

The gift package he had teased was the 'AI Factory.'

[Jensen Huang/NVIDIA CEO: Building AI factories is very important. If there is profitability, everyone will want more AI factories.]

An AI Factory is a next-generation AI data center capable of everything from data collection and large-scale AI model training and inference to the final generation of customized AI.

This requires massive amounts of electricity, semiconductors to process data, and manufacturing capabilities such as robotics and mobility to utilize the AI models.

Over the past four days, Huang specifically visited locations connected to these AI factories.

[Jensen Huang/NVIDIA CEO: From robotics to the AI factories of the future, we are working together as one big team.]

The goal is for these AI factories to be operational by next year. The domestic companies that have joined the NVIDIA alliance will play a key role in the AI infrastructure business, including memory, communication networks, cloud services, and data center operations.

This provides them with an opportunity to go beyond being simple component suppliers and help design a new infrastructure market.

However, some analysts suggest that the bigger gift was secured by Jensen Huang himself.

[Choi Byung-ho/Research Professor, Korea University Human-Inspired AI Research Institute: (NVIDIA) is aiming to solidify its monopoly and take complete control of next-generation services. In that sense, Korea is a quite advantageous partner. That is likely why he came here.]

There are also significant concerns that Korea could become locked into NVIDIA's ecosystem, extending from hardware to software and development environments.

[Jang Young-jae/Director, KAIST Manufacturing Physical AI Research Center: The hardware itself could end up acting as nothing more than a shell, with the actual value-added benefits being captured by NVIDIA. We need to develop our own independent strategies...]

Analysts suggest that behind his friendly image, which included appearances on entertainment shows and throwing a ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game, lies a sophisticated strategy to preemptively secure the domestic AI ecosystem.

(Reported by Jeong Seong-jin | Video by Yang Hyun-chul | Video Editing by Kim Ho-jin | Graphics by Park Cheon-woong)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.