TLDR
- NVIDIA approached South Korean power equipment makers about designing 800V DC data center infrastructure.
- The 800V system replaces the current industry-standard 54V setup, reducing copper use, cable bulk, and conversion stages.
- Potential partners include Hyundai Electric (267260), LS Electric (010120), and Hyosung Heavy Industries.
- South Korea is already deep in NVIDIA’s supply chain via Samsung and SK Hynix memory chips.
- SK Telecom and NVIDIA are jointly developing A.X K2, a Korean AI foundation model, building on a partnership dating back to 2021.
NVIDIA is making a quiet but concrete push into South Korea’s power infrastructure sector, and it goes beyond the memory chips the country already supplies.
According to Korean outlet The Asia Business Daily, NVIDIA reached out to major South Korean power equipment manufacturers about building data center infrastructure based on 800 volt direct current systems. The report cited industry sources but did not name the specific companies involved.
The 800V DC architecture is a meaningful departure from the current norm. Most data centers today run on 54V systems, which require electricity to pass through multiple conversion stages before it reaches processors.
NVIDIA’s proposed approach cuts that down to a single DC conversion. The company outlined the benefits in a blog post — less copper, thinner cables, and lower current throughout the facility.
It’s a pragmatic solution to a growing problem. As AI workloads scale up, data centers are consuming more power, and the existing infrastructure is showing its limits.
Korean Companies in the Frame
While NVIDIA hasn’t confirmed which firms it’s in talks with, three names stand out as likely candidates: Hyundai Electric & Energy Systems (267260), LS Electric (010120), and Hyosung Heavy Industries. All three are active players in new energy infrastructure.
LS Electric rose 5.14% and Hyundai Electric climbed 3.02% following the report, reflecting market interest in the potential opportunity.
The compatibility question is the big one. Existing data center infrastructure isn’t built for 800V systems, so any rollout would require careful planning around what can be retrofitted and what needs to be built from scratch.
South Korea already has a firm foothold in NVIDIA’s supply chain. The chipmaker sources high-bandwidth memory from both Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, making the country a critical part of its hardware stack.
SK Telecom Partnership
Separate from the power infrastructure story, SK Telecom confirmed it is working with NVIDIA on a project called A.X K2 — a Korean-language AI foundation model developed under a South Korean government initiative.
The two companies have history. They started working together in 2021, when SK Telecom built its Titan supercomputer using NVIDIA A100 GPUs.
Last year, they trained A.X K1 using the NVIDIA NeMo dataset. SK Telecom said that model has 519 billion parameters.
A.X K2 will also use NVIDIA tools, and the companies plan to conduct joint research on multimodal and vision language models going forward.
NVIDIA stock (NVDA) was down 1.08% at the time of reporting.
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