South Korean telecommunications firm SK Telecom, AI chip startup Rebellions, and NVIDIA have announced a collaboration that aims to advance South Korea’s AI infrastructure by bringing together data centers, processors, and an open infrastructure platform.
As outlined by NVIDIA in a press release, Rebellions will use NVLink Fusion to connect its Rebel R200 neural processing units (NPUs) to NVIDIA’s infrastructure platform. SK Telecom plans to deploy these systems, drawing on its expertise in the data center space.
“This collaboration is meaningful in that it validates the potential of next-generation sovereign AI infrastructure by combining global AI infrastructure technology with Korean AI semiconductors,” said Jung Jai-hun, SK Telecom Chief Executive Officer and President.
“As a leading Korean AI silicon startup, we will lead the charge to establish Korean technology as a core pillar powering AI worldwide,” said Sunghyun Park, Rebellions co-founder and Chief Executive Officer.
“Korea has the talent, technology and industrial ambition to become a world leader in AI,” said Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and Chief Executive Officer. “Sovereign AI gives nations the power to turn their language, culture and expertise into intelligence.”
Together, the firms plan to develop an approach to disaggregated inference. This will assign different stages of AI response generation to the processor architecture best suited to the task at hand. The plan includes using NVIDIA GPUs for prefill and Rebellions NPUs for decode to improve inference throughput.
The collaboration is supported by South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT), which sees it as a means to strengthen the country’s sovereign AI infrastructure.
“This collaboration with NVIDIA marks a significant step forward, as it enables Korean-developed NPUs to enter the computing infrastructure market alongside NVIDIA, a global leader in AI computing, through NVLink Fusion,” said Bae Kyung-hoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and ICT. “The government will actively support this collaboration to deliver tangible results and further advance cooperation with NVIDIA across a range of areas, including physical AI and securing GPU supply.”
Earlier this month, w.media reported that the South Korean government had set aside KRW 21.3 trillion (US$ 15.83 billion) in its budget for 2027 to support the development of physical AI, data centers, and semiconductors. A further KRW 4.7 trillion (US$ 3.5 billion) has been earmarked to develop a sovereign AI model. The South Korean government will also train 2,000 specialists to lead semiconductor design and the wider chip industry.