La Jornada: Nvidia creates synergy with South Korean firms in AI

Seoul. Nvidia announced agreements in South Korea with technology giants such as Hynix and Naver, in a bid to secure its supply of essential memory chips and boost its goals in artificial intelligence (AI) and attract new customers.

On the business trip, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also met with a well-known video game player. Nvidia and its partners, such as Telecom and conglomerate Doosan Group, did not disclose the value of the deals.

Doosan, South Korea’s second-largest family-owned consortium, said its Hynix and Telecom divisions have closed deals with Nvidia. Memory chip maker Hynix has signed a multi-year technology alliance committing to develop advanced types of memory for AI data centers globally. The pact comes as other memory chip makers scramble to meet demand and will allow supply to accommodate Nvidia’s plans, which have expanded into robotics, personal computers and AI supercomputing.

“Hynix will continue to be Nvidia’s largest memory partner,” Huang said after a meeting with the group’s president, Chey Tae-won, at the company’s headquarters in Seoul.

Huang pointed out that the agreement with Hynix, a competitor of Samsung Electronics and the American Micron Technology, has a duration of two years with an option to extend.

Ryu Young-ho, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities, said the partnership between Hynix and Nvidia reinforces the idea that memory chips are moving from a commodity to a more customer-specific business.