APEC 2025: Hyundai, Nvidia to strengthen partnership in AI
Hyundai Motor, South Korea's leading carmaker, said on Friday it will strengthen collaboration with Nvidia Corp. to accelerate innovation in artificial intelligence (AI)-based future mobility solutions through a new AI infrastructure powered by the U.S. firm's latest Blackwell chips.
The two companies have agreed to jointly develop AI capabilities for mobility solutions, next-generation smart factories and on-device semiconductor technologies that will help enhance Hyundai Motor Group's future competitiveness, Hyundai said in a press release.
Under the partnership, they will jointly develop, validate and deploy integrated AI models using 50,000 Nvidia Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs), it said, reports Yonhap news agency.
"As we enter a new era of AI-powered mobility and smart factories, deepening our collaboration with Nvidia marks a pivotal step forward," Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung said. "Together, we are not only building advanced technologies but also laying the foundation for a robust AI ecosystem in Korea."
The report follows an earlier announcement by Nvidia founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Jensen Huang that his company will supply up to 260,000 Blackwell GPUs to build AI data centres with South Korean partners that include Samsung Electronics Co. and Naver Cloud Corp., as well as the Seoul government.
AI will revolutionise every facet of every industry. In transportation alone -- from vehicle design and manufacturing to robotics and autonomous driving -- Nvidia's AI and computing platforms are transforming how the world moves, Huang said, according to Hyundai Motor.
"Together with Hyundai Motor Group, we're building intelligent cars and factories that will shape the future of the multi-trillion-dollar mobility industry," the Nvidia chief was quoted as saying.
With its Blackwell-based AI factory and AI computing infrastructure, Hyundai plans to integrate in-vehicle AI, autonomous driving, factory automation and robotics into a single, interconnected and intelligent ecosystem, the company said.
For example, Hyundai will use the Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise platform to develop advanced factory digital twins -- virtual replicas of manufacturing environments that unify and manage factory data -- as well as enable precision control, software- and hardware-in-the-loop validation, discrete event simulation and virtual commissioning, the release said.
Nvidia's software-based AI models could also enable over-the-air updates of capabilities and features across Hyundai vehicles, it added.
Separately, the two companies signed a trilateral memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the South Korean government to invest in a state-led initiative to build a national physical AI cluster that requires about $3 billion, Hyundai said.
