Jensen Huang's Gift of 'AI Factories': Opportunities Mixed with Concerns of Dependency

[Anchor]

The surprise gift unveiled by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang is the construction of "AI factories" in South Korea. While this is clearly a great opportunity for our companies, there are aspects that require caution.

Reporter Jeong Seong-jin has the story.

[Reporter]

From SK and LG to Hyundai Motor and Naver.

Jensen Huang has been visiting major domestic companies one after another since early this morning to build an "AI alliance."

The gift he had promised to bring was the "AI factory."

[Jensen Huang/CEO of NVIDIA: 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 power and semiconductors to process data, as well as manufacturing sectors such as robotics and mobility to utilize the AI models.

Over the past four days, Huang has specifically visited companies that are directly linked to these AI factories.

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

The goal is to have these AI factories operational by next year. Domestic companies participating in the NVIDIA alliance will take on key roles in the AI infrastructure business, including memory, communication networks, cloud services, and data center operations.

This provides an opportunity to go beyond being mere parts suppliers and instead help design a new infrastructure market.

However, some analysts suggest that the biggest gift is the one Huang secured for himself.

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

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

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

From television appearances to throwing the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game, analysts say that behind his friendly image lies a sophisticated strategy to secure a foothold in the domestic AI ecosystem.

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